Vermicompost, compost or cow dung: what's the difference?

All three come from organic waste, but they are not interchangeable.

Fresh cow dung

Fresh dung is still breaking down. Put it straight into pots and it heats up, can burn roots, smells, attracts flies and often carries weed seeds. It needs to be composted first.

Regular compost

Dung or kitchen waste left in a heap for 3–6 months. Good for soil, but the texture is often coarse and quality varies with how the heap was managed.

Vermicompost

Here earthworms do the work. They eat pre-composted material and leave behind castings: fine, crumbly and dark. Compared with regular compost, vermicompost is usually:

• finer and more uniform, so it mixes evenly into potting soil
• richer in beneficial microbes
• free of bad smells and largely free of weed seeds
• ready faster, in about two months in the worm beds