My friend Sheryl gave me a most interesting magazine the other day. It's published by The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environment-awareness group that chronicles man's deprivations on the natural world. The lead article was about the ecological damage pig farming is doing in Iowa. The other articles seemed intriguing so I read them all. Imagine my surprise when I read "The Worm Has Turned".
You probably, like I, have been told that earthworms are good for the soil and their presence indicates whether you have good organic dirt to grow your veggies in. The more earthworms, especially red bandlings, the better. I was an avid organic grower of fruits, flowers and vegetables for almost thirty years. In 1980 I removed a huge blackberry patch that had taken root over our old septic tank and lived off our sewage (it turns out the septic tank was just a rusted out 50 gallon drum which leaked effluent out onto the ground). When I finally got the blackberry out of there, I found a cherry tomato plant growing. The tomatoes, despite having been nourished by our "night soil", were quite tasty. I had an epiphany: I should start an organic vegetable garden! That all came to pass in several phases over those thirty years. I threw myself into this new venture with my usual enthusiasm. I got all the books and magazines and seed catalogues pertaining to organic growing and schooled myself in the various techniques and processes.
One thing every good organic gardener learns is that good soil and earthworms go together. Most of this homestead, at the time, I had converted into a horse pasture for four boarded horses. I collected all their manure to make a big compost pile. The garden had grown to such size by then (enclosed area > 12,000 sq. ft.) even my four equestrian boarders couldn't provide as much compost as I wanted. There is a commercial stable down near Muir Beach about five minutes from Happy Acres with more than forty horses being boarded. I would take my pick-up truck down there and collect all the horse manure I could shovel up. By the time Winter rolled around, my horse manure compost pile was eighty feet long, fifteen feet wide and three feet high. There's no such thing as too much compost, especially when you are amending the California Adobe clay soil that we have.
You couldn't get very far in organic growing literature before being proselytized about the wonder of worms; especially red bandling worms. The red bandlings, as opposed to the regular garden variety earthworm, were ten times more active and productive in digesting organic material and their castings were like brown gold to the soil. So I got into vermiculture--all things wormlike--and built several large worm beds. In addition to the shredded biomass from my garden, I went to the local Whole Foods and relieved them of the stuff left over after the juice pressings. These black plastic garbage bags weighed about eighty pounds since there was still a lot of moisture in the juiced pulp. I would sling several bags of that into my worm beds to mix in with the shreddings and some soil. From a nursery catalogue, I purchased a box of a thousand red bandlings and dumped them into beds and told my red wigglers; "go to work, boys!"--actually, I think their hermaphrodites. I also bought another box of worms to sprinkle into my compost pile. I walked across the top of the pile, scattering worms as I went. When I got to the end, I turned around and all the worms had already disappeared into their new home.
This area where the deer are is where I placed my annual compost pile. Notice its proximity to trees on the left. That's the beginning of a copse of mostly California Bay trees. It never occurred to me that there might be a problem between forest and earthworms.
Twenty years ago, what's now our apiary, was filled with a huge windrow of horse manure compost, filled with red bandling earthworms.
I had to modify the worm bed mix as too much juice pulp attracted maggots. The red bandlings were truly awesome in their ability to synthesize organic material. After a few months, I pulled back the wet blankets and dug my hands into the muck and started harvesting. Within about an hour I had a two gallon bucket full of worms. It looked like moving pasta in there. This I would distribute in the compost pile and in the growing beds directly. So now I'm not only growing produce, I'm growing worms, to boot. I had read that these worms, also called manure worms, were so relentless when it came to devouring their food (actually done by bacteria in their gut) they could digest anything that was made of natural material. This included paper and clothing. As an experiment, I took an old T-shirt and spread it out on top of one of the worm beds. Then I put the wet blankets back. A week or so later I pulled back the blankets. All that was left of the T-shirt was the stitching around the neck and the arm holes. The thread was nylon and it was still in the exact same pattern as it had been on the T-shirt.
It is pretty much axiomatic that earthworms are good for the soil and you won't find an organic gardener who would dispute you. So imagine my surprise when I read this article in the Natural Resource Defense Council Magazine.
One thing every good organic gardener learns is that good soil and earthworms go together. Most of this homestead, at the time, I had converted into a horse pasture for four boarded horses. I collected all their manure to make a big compost pile. The garden had grown to such size by then (enclosed area > 12,000 sq. ft.) even my four equestrian boarders couldn't provide as much compost as I wanted. There is a commercial stable down near Muir Beach about five minutes from Happy Acres with more than forty horses being boarded. I would take my pick-up truck down there and collect all the horse manure I could shovel up. By the time Winter rolled around, my horse manure compost pile was eighty feet long, fifteen feet wide and three feet high. There's no such thing as too much compost, especially when you are amending the California Adobe clay soil that we have.
You couldn't get very far in organic growing literature before being proselytized about the wonder of worms; especially red bandling worms. The red bandlings, as opposed to the regular garden variety earthworm, were ten times more active and productive in digesting organic material and their castings were like brown gold to the soil. So I got into vermiculture--all things wormlike--and built several large worm beds. In addition to the shredded biomass from my garden, I went to the local Whole Foods and relieved them of the stuff left over after the juice pressings. These black plastic garbage bags weighed about eighty pounds since there was still a lot of moisture in the juiced pulp. I would sling several bags of that into my worm beds to mix in with the shreddings and some soil. From a nursery catalogue, I purchased a box of a thousand red bandlings and dumped them into beds and told my red wigglers; "go to work, boys!"--actually, I think their hermaphrodites. I also bought another box of worms to sprinkle into my compost pile. I walked across the top of the pile, scattering worms as I went. When I got to the end, I turned around and all the worms had already disappeared into their new home.
This area where the deer are is where I placed my annual compost pile. Notice its proximity to trees on the left. That's the beginning of a copse of mostly California Bay trees. It never occurred to me that there might be a problem between forest and earthworms.
Twenty years ago, what's now our apiary, was filled with a huge windrow of horse manure compost, filled with red bandling earthworms.
I had to modify the worm bed mix as too much juice pulp attracted maggots. The red bandlings were truly awesome in their ability to synthesize organic material. After a few months, I pulled back the wet blankets and dug my hands into the muck and started harvesting. Within about an hour I had a two gallon bucket full of worms. It looked like moving pasta in there. This I would distribute in the compost pile and in the growing beds directly. So now I'm not only growing produce, I'm growing worms, to boot. I had read that these worms, also called manure worms, were so relentless when it came to devouring their food (actually done by bacteria in their gut) they could digest anything that was made of natural material. This included paper and clothing. As an experiment, I took an old T-shirt and spread it out on top of one of the worm beds. Then I put the wet blankets back. A week or so later I pulled back the blankets. All that was left of the T-shirt was the stitching around the neck and the arm holes. The thread was nylon and it was still in the exact same pattern as it had been on the T-shirt.
It is pretty much axiomatic that earthworms are good for the soil and you won't find an organic gardener who would dispute you. So imagine my surprise when I read this article in the Natural Resource Defense Council Magazine.
Here's the story, in a nutshell. What's great for garden soil is not so great for forests and other natural landscapes. Before the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century, the vast wooded lands of North America's temperate forests had been serviced by a very different set of detritivores, the agents that break down organic material into humus. Bacteria and fungi had evolved, along with the forests, into the principle detritivores, slowly breaking down the fallen leaves, twigs etc. that are the natural litter of forest floors. Because they can't digest all that material, a large part of that mass becomes what's known as duff, the five or six inches or so of soft spongy material that carpets the floor of natural forests.
A very delicate ecology builds up between these forces including the tiny root hairs of trees and a host of other mycelia, bacteria, nematodes and protozoa. The symbiosis of all these agents facilitate the uptake of nitrogen by the trees and plants by intertwining with their small root hairs. The layer of duff, the unfinished business of decomposition, provides a haven for other life forms as well; the nematodes graze on the fungi and bacteria. They, in turn, are grazed upon by other arthropods of the forest such as mites, millipedes and beetles. These in turn are grazed on by the salamander. (In fact the article was about a scientific exercise in counting the number of salamanders in a forest environment. The author was confused when he reported the presence of more earthworms than salamanders. The biologists directing the survey were distressed to hear that.) The natural process of forming this forest ecosystem and the resultant duff, which allows seeds buried in it to wait for a propitious time to sprout, takes centuries to develop.
The introduction of earthworms by the new world colonists changed this delicately balanced system. Earthworms accompanied the new world colonists as they spread out into the woodlands. Surprisingly fisherman, in more current times, are also responsible for the spread of earthworms by using them as bait. The ones they don't use get thrown into the lake where, instead of drowning, they eventually wiggle their way to shore and burrow into the forest soil. Earthworm decomposition activity is a lot different than that of the natural and native fungi and bacteria. The worm's can destroy, in a few year's time, this crucial layer of duff which is so integral to the life of the forest. As the duff layer is reduced, sometimes by as much as ninety percent, the seeds and roots of trees and plants become exposed. The sub-surface life of these fungi, nematodes, millipedes, beetles and salamanders gets destroyed in the process, eventually affecting the trees and plants themselves. To put it succinctly, invasive earthworms are destroying North America's native temperate forests.
It makes you realize how delicately balanced the interplay between species is when something as supposedly beneficial as the "lowly" earthworm can make such a difference. The Gaia Principle supposes that all life forms that have evolved naturally compose a closed system. Once you have "pierced the veil" of that system, profound changes are in store. Now that we have, reluctantly, entered the Anrthopocene age where the effects of man's activities are driving changes in the world, we are in for lots and lots more of it. As my brother once apocryphally said, "Mike, there's no such thing as natural weather any more". About the only natural events that haven't been affected by us are the movements of the tectonic plates and the occasional upwelling of magma that creates volcanoes. All other, formerly natural phenomena, have been profoundly affected by man. Just one caveat; MOTHER NATURE BATS LAST.
I'm afraid I'll never be able to see our garden earthworms in the same light again. L&K, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
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