Episode 263: Legends of the Leaf illustrator Helen Entwisle
Legends of the Leaf is out on April 27 2023. The Illustrations by Helen Entwisle were all created specially for the book and feature pots that Helen and I own.
I chat to illustrator Helen Entwisle about our collaboration on book Legends of the Leaf, plus I answer a question about using ‘worm juice’ on houseplants.
About Legends of the Leaf
My book is out on April 27 2023, although people who pledged during the crowdfunding are already receiving their copies! It profiles 25 iconic houseplant species, from boston fern to zamioculcas, with illustrations by the talented Helen Entwisle.
How houseplants went from the wilds to our windowsills
Care guides for each species explaining how to make them feel at home
Practical care advice from a houseplant expert
Want to get your hands on a copy of Legends of the Leaf? All the details are at legendsoftheleafbook.com. Read the latest edition of my newsletter The Plant Ledger for more news on the book, plus other houseplant news and info.
Subscribers to my Patreon at the Ledge End and Superfan level can hear me read the Aloe vera chapter from the book in my bonus podcast, An Extra Leaf 110.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Alice wanted to know if it’s OK to use the ‘worm juice’ from a vermicomposting system as houseplant feed. Basically, this means the juice that comes out of the bottom of a wormery, aka wormery leachate.
What is a wormery? Well, it's a specialist form of composting where you're using worms that snack on decomposing material - usually sourced from kitchen waste like potato peelings and apple cores to produce both worm casts, which are the worms poos, and also the leachate which is the brown liquid that collects at the bottom of the wormery and is usually delivered to you via tap, which in my experience, inevitably gets blocked.
Vermicomposting leachate does contain the major plant nutrients, but its exact content tends to be irregular from batch to batch and may be a little high in sodium which can damage plants. So depending on what mix of kitchen waste you put into your wormery, the various qualities of the leachate produced will vary in terms of things like ph - how alkaline or acidic it is - and levels of sodium, and that can make a difference to your plants. It’s what’s classed as a natural or organic fertiliser. it’s made from plants or animal materials and the nutrients and in organic form - that means they aren’t automatically going to be available to the plants’ roots, there may be a small amount that will but most natural fertilisers, rely on micro organisms in the soil to break down the materials in them and turn them into nutrients that the plant can use. If you use pesticides - and even if you don’t - your soil may not have enough of a richness of microorganisms
Obviously, if you are using a proprietary house plant feed, it's always going to be the same provided you apply or dilute correctly according to the instructions. Whereas with this leachate it's going to vary from batch to batch. That is something to definitely bear in mind if you're thinking of using it. It's what we’d call a natural or organic fertiliser. Other organic fertilisers that you could use in your compost include things like bone meal, liquid comfrey, feeds or liquid nettle feeds and also seaweed feeds either commercially produced or produced in your backyard.
And that’s really why I use worm leachate in the garden, because there I take an organic approach and work really hard to build up soil microorganisms with things like composting and no dig - something I am not trying to replicate in my houseplants.
Wormery leeachate needs to be diluted, usually at a rate of 10 parts water to one part leachate. There are warnings that leachate from wormeries can contain pathogens that can do harm to humans. I certainly wouldn't use any lead shake that smells really really weird because that probably is a sign that it's not doing so well. Even within the worm community there is disagreement about leachate and what to do with it - with that in mind I probably wouldn't add it to any edible house plants.
A halfway house might be that you use say a seaweed feed either in meal form or in liquid form that is organic, but comes from a company who can tell you what exactly the nutrient mix is. It's just a little bit more reliable, rather than using that leachate which for me has a bit too many factors going on.
If you want to use wormery products on your plants, you can buy wormcasts which will have been screened to remove pathogens, so this is probably a slightly more expensive but more reliable way of deliverying wormy goodness to your plants. You could also use one of the other organic fertilisers I named - I would say seaweed meal or liquid is probably the easiest, but bear in mind what I said earlier about
But I'd love to know your opinion. Do you use worm juice on your house plants and how do they grow? Let me know in do let me know.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue.
CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and I Snost, I Lost by Doctor Turtle. The ad music is Candlelight by Jahzzar.