What would our lives be like if we took earthworms seriously; took the ground under our feet rather than the skies above our heads, as the place to look, as well, eventually, as the place to be?  It is as though we have been pointed in the wrong direction.

Adam Phillips, Darwin's Worms, 1999

 

Turns out Richard Scarry was possibly misguided;  Lowly Worm - beloved storybook character of my son from an early age - is not so lowly after all.  

Earthworms eat their way through packed soil depositing behind them rich compost - probably the most valuable poop on the planet - which they have digested from nonliving organic matter.   Worms alter the composition of the earth, increase its capacity to absorb and hold water, and bring about an increase in nutrients and microorganisms.  

In the judgment of no less a naturalist than Charles Darwin himself: “It may be doubted whether there are any other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly creatures.”  Darwin reported that an acre of garden soil could contain over fifty thousand earthworms and yield eighteen tons of castings per year.  Current day earthworm scientists (called oligochaetologists) believe that his estimate was low and that the figure could be closer to one million.   Earthworms are literally ecosystem engineers.  They are at the very base of the ecosystem and their actions drive everything else that happens.

An abundance of them in your garden means that your soil is being prepared for gardening with no effort on your part.  On their nightly forage for food, worms act like small, very efficient ploughs and take care of our gardens much more efficiently than we can.  If we create ideal conditions for our earthworm populations to flourish, in other words, we feed our worms, they will in turn feed us.

As your gardening practice becomes more Earth-loving, you will no doubt develop an appreciation of the soil as an intact system, a community of microorganisms that live and breathe, and that functions best if we do not disturb it too much.   Any fruit or vegetable we grow is a product of its environment.  It derives its vitamins and minerals from the sun, the rain, and the soil.

To begin with, a simple worm composter will recycle your kitchen waste into a precious commodity with little effort on your part - provided that we understand that not all worms behave the same way.  Some of the worms we commonly find in our garden would find the environment in a worm composter completely inhospitable.  Red wiggler (Eisenia fetida) and redworm (Lumbricus rubellus), on the other hand, thrive in worm bins, outdoor compost piles, or very heavily mulched soil and produce castings that are a rich soil amendment.

Many of the techniques practiced by organic gardeners are designed to support a healthy earthworm and insect population:  a border of flowers at the edge of a vegetable patch attracts bees and ladybugs; a thick layer of mulch holds in soil moisture and feeds the creatures living underground; cover crops are used to stabilize the soil and protect it from winter erosion.

Want to know more?   One of my most fascinating recent reads is The Earth Moved.  On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms by Amy Stewart.  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (2004).

 

 

Worm Composter

Worm composting is used to continuously convert small quantities of kitchen waste into high quality compost in a clean and odourless way.

What you need:

  • eight-gallon (approx) plastic storage box
  • a drill
  • bedding material -- shredded newspaper works well
  • 4 or 5 cups of sand
  • handful of old leaves
  • 1 pound of red wriggler worms

 

What you do: 

  • drill ventilation holes on the bottom and all four sides of the box (see picture)
  • moisten paper and squeeze out water so it is moist but not soggy
  • put in box together with sand and leaves
  • add worms
  • "feed" them about half a pound per day of kitchen waste; in the beginning, it helps them if food is chopped quite small (they love greens like those slightly yucky lettuce leaves you feel guilty throwing out)
  • cover the food lightly with some more shredded paper from time to time so they can stay hidden when you lift the lid
  • include tea and coffee grounds regularly which helps to keep the moisture level consistent

 

Be careful not to overfeed them, at least initially.   If you are going away, they can go about two weeks without new food once some has built up in their home.

They are quite shy and will not respond well to you peeking at them.    When you want to scoop out the vermicompost, start to put all their food over on one side and eventually  - in a couple of weeks - they will move over there and you can remove what is on the other side.

After about 4 - 6 months their population will have doubled and you can start a new composter or take some and put it in your large compost bin (not directly in the garden - red wrigglers are not happy without garbage!)