Soil Health Solutions

Worms and healthy soil – what more needs to be said?

Quite a lot actually. Long and intensive cultivation using conventional methods is not good for the health of the soil.  A dead and compacted soil means poor availability of nutrients to the roots, high ‘locking-up’ and run-off of fertiliser, risk of fungal attack, poor soil aeration and movement of water and nutrients, stunted root development.  For centuries farmers have looked for good worm populations as evidence of soil health.

Quite why applying Wormtech products attracts worm populations into the soil is not clear, although there are some logical explanations.  More obviously the invisible side of soil health – microbe populations in the form of beneficial fungi and bacteria – are boosted directly by the presence of those microbes in the products. 

Wormtech Canopy is applied to foliage with high water volumes, resulting in considerable run-off and so treating the soil as well as the canopy.  Wormtech Ground also contains extra humic acids, which hold nutrients, attract moisture, provide carbon for micro-organisms and help in the development of soil structure.  It can be sprayed onto the ground or ground probe injected, achieving decompaction as well as deeper penetration of the product.

All Wormtech application programmes therefore target soil health.  Kiwifruit growers wishing to dramatically improve soil health should look in particular at Wormtech Hi-Plan and Wormtech Kickstart.

Growers with severe soil health problems should look into blending Wormtech Solid into their soil.  An extremely rich, odourless and pure vermicast product, it should be used sparingly and well mixed into the soil, being too rich to serve as a growing medium in its pure form.

'It's been a cold season so far and yet these vines have good colour, decent firm leaves and fat flower buds.  Look at the grass, I've never had to mow so bloomin' much!' - Scott Macintosh, green and gold vine crop manager, Paengaroa, Oct 2002.