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About Partridge Creek Compost

Partridge Creek Compost

PCF is excited to announce its new sister org. PCC!

Growing crops in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is challenging; the climate is cold, the growing season short, and the native soil thin and rocky.  When we started Partridge Creek Farms, we knew our first priority was to obtain the best soil we could to give our crops everything they needed to grow and thrive in our challenging environment.  After exploring our options, we decided to manufacture our own high quality vermicompost for use in all our garden beds. The results were stunning and our gardens are producing bumper crops every season.  Now you can purchase our vermicompost to use on your houseplants, lawn, gardens, and trees. The sales of our vermicompost go to support our education programs with Ishpeming Public Schools, Great Lakes Recovery Center, MARESA, the Marquette Farmers Market, and our NMU internship programs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Vermi is Latin for worm. Vermicompost is a mixture of vermicast (basically, worm poop) and composted organic matter (such as vegetable waste, leaves, lawn clippings, and manure).  Pure vermicast (also called worm castings or worm humus) is created when worms eat everything, leaving behind nothing but their nutrient rich poop. You can think of vermicompost as what you get when worms don’t finish everything on their plate, and the leftover bits have decomposed (composted) and are ready for consumption by other microbes and plants.  In general, vermicast is more nutrient rich, but vermicompost has more biological diversity as well as higher microbial and fungal populations.  

Pure vermicast varies in quality based on production techniques, diversity of ingredients used in the composting process, and the time and manner that they are stored after processing.  We believe a casting-rich vermicompost is superior to pure vermicast. By using many ingredients from food waste to hay, manure, and paper built in a “lasagna” layered technique, and slowly letting red wiggler worms and diverse biota do its work, we at Partridge Creek Farm are building the most biologically diverse and nutrient rich soil amendment available for natural growing practice.