The Worm

 The consumption by worms of our organic waste is a ecologically safe method of converting our organic wastes to a environmentally friendly product known as Worm castings. One pound of Redworms and their off spring can convert one ton of  waste to castings in a years time.

The very active red wriggler, or manure worm, can be found in compost piles. You know you have a red wiggler when you pick it up: it thrashes about, wiggling and squirming. The true red wiggler, Eisenia foetida, has alternating bands of yellow and maroon down the length of its body. A similar worm, Lumbricus rubellus, is a deep maroon color without the yellow bands.

These manure worms need extremely high organic matter, such as manure or rich kitchen scraps to survive. Manure worms just cannot live in common garden or lawn soil.  So when you shovel your red wigglers from your compost pile into the garden, you are dooming these guys to provide nitrogen for your plants by their bodies.

The existance of an earthworm in general is hard. Their bodies are about 70% protein; rich food for many predators. Their major enemies are insect eating birds, like robins, and mammals like moles. Robins can actually hear the earthworm moving under ground. The earthworm, although sightless and ear-less can feel the vibrations of the bird on the surface. Its the deadly game of survival.

Another major earthworm predator is the mole. This voracious insect predator loves to dine on any earthworm it can find. The earthworm can feel the vibrations of the mole digging and quickly try to flee. The star nose mole developed a unique method to find earthworms. It uses its funny looking nose to detect the faint electrical fields that earthworms radiate. Not only does this mole detect and find an earthworm, but it knows how to bite it so it is paralyzed but does not die. The mole stores the living worm along the burrow as food for dining at leisure.

When you till the ground, the earthworms flee the tillers vibration. So active earthworms are not usually chopped by the tiller. Tilling the soil does reduce the earthworm population. Not because it kills or disturbs them, but because tilling ariates the soil, and this oxygen quickly reduces the organic matter that the earthworm uses as food. Mulching with green matter will help provide food to earthworms to replenish what is lost in tilling.

Earthworms are hermaphrodites with both male and female organs. They mate by lying head to tail with each worm producing a temporary skin canal through which the sperm flows into each other to be stored in a sperm sack. The girdle like ring around the front of an earthworm, called the clitellum, later slides along the worm and picks up the mature eggs and sperm. It falls off the worm and the combination tube, egg, sperm and mucous form a well protected nest for the worm eggs.

One of the major myths, reported by many otherwise informed authors, is that earthworms come out of their burrows during a rain to avoid drowning. Worms have no lungs, they take their oxygen directly thorough the skin, either from air or from water. In fact, rather then fear water, they love it. Its drying out they fear and dry soil kills them. When it rains, they come to the surface because its easier to find a mate in the flat open ground then in the three dimensional burrows. The wet ground allows them to move without fear of drying out. 

Earthworms use lots of water since they produce 60% of their body weight in urine every day. Urea is very high in nitrogen and provides an excellent fertilizer. The worms in a field easily produce about 50 lbs nitrogen/acre, which is the same amount of nitrogen that a crop of hay takes out of an acre! The earthworm casts of contain concentrated nitrate, phosphorous, exchangeable magnesium, potassium and calcium. All essential to plant growth. The organic material bound to earthworms and other soil dwellers is about 1 ton/acre which is released gradually as they die in the dry summer, providing a great nutrient reservoir for our plants.

As a society, we are so use to going out and purchase what we need to solve our problems: need to chop vegetables quickly? Buy a food processor. Need to water the garden easily? Buy a drip system and an automatic timer. It is so tempting to do the same for insects: need to eliminate some grasshoppers? Buy some preying mantises. No worms in your soil, buy some earthworms. Gardening just doesn't work like that. You must provide conditions for the worms to flourish.

Earthworm populations are limited by the amount of organic matter, water and survival over the winter. To grow a good earthworm crop, feed the soil. The ultimate factor limiting worm population is usually food and water! Night crawlers have been kept alive for 10 years, but in the garden their life span is usually no more then one year, maybe two. Its necessary to insure the eggs and young survive the winters.

That's what organic gardening always comes back to: feeding the soil and the rest takes care of itself. Earthworms need organic debris and mineral soil for food. The use of artificial fertilizers, be they chemical or organic, do not provide the necessary food for earthworms. Neither do dry leaves. Before they fall, the tree sucks out all the essential chemicals it can and leaves a leaf that has almost no nitrogen in it. At least, not enough for the earthworm to eat and survive. Grass clipping, corn stalks, green leaves provide good sources.