08/15/2022
🪱 In greenhouse experiments with vegetables, Edwards and Burrows (1988) reported that vermicomposts improved seedling emer- gence over that in a commercial plant growth medium, using a wide range of test plants such as peas, lettuce, wheat, cabbages, tomatoes, and radishes. Additionally, the growth of ornamental shrubs such as Eleagnus pungens, Cotoneaster conspicua, Pyracantha, Viburnum bodnantense, Chaemaecyparis lawsonia, Cupressocyparis leylandii, and Juniperus communis was better in a vermicompost mixture than in a commercial plant growth medium. 🌳🎋🌴🌲
🪱 They also reported that some ornamental plants, such as chrysanthemums, salvias, and petunias, flowered earlier compared to those grown in commercial peat and plant growth media. Plant growth was promoted, even in response to a 💥5% substitution of a 50:50 mixture of pig and cattle manure vermi- composts into a commercial plant growth medium. Similar results were obtained by Atiyeh et al. (1998), who demonstrated that vermicomposts increased vegetable and ornamental seedling growth at relatively low concentrations, even when all needed nutrients were available.
In a greenhouse pot trial by Buckerfield et al. (1999), using 0%–100% mix- tures of vermicompost and sand, similar trends in growth responses were reported. Although the germination of radishes decreased by less than 50% with increasing vermicompost concentrations, growth and radish harvest weights increased directly in proportion to the application rates of vermicomposts, with the yields of plants grown in 100% vermicompost being up to 10 times greater than those grown in 10% vermicompost.
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