Top Dress with Worm Castings

Is it a good idea to throw a 1/4" of worm castings on top of my soil?

The soil is pretty pathetic. It's crusting and cracking. I'm thinking that a layer of worm castings would help until my mulch is ready to be chopped and dropped.

Unless you have an abundance of castings, it would be a waste to use them like that as they too would dry out and lose some of their microbial value.

Perhaps it's better to lightly dig some compost, lawn clippings, dried leaves, etc into the patch and then mulch.

Keep the castings as a side dressing when you plant seedlings. Once they're well established, use some more to boost growth - it can also be used to make worm tea - simply wrap the castings in a cloth and soak in a bucket (like a tea bag). The resulting liquid fertiliser is gentle enough to use on all plants. The used casting can also be used as above.

i dig in some in the top few inches of soil and then mulch.