I've Got Worms!

Here they are, fresh out of their shipping package and on their way to their new home!

One of the first things I did upon moving in to my new apartment was to save one of my smaller moving boxes to start a little worm bin.  I choose a box that a regular plastic grocery bag will easily line.  I filled the bag/box about 1/3 full of organic potting soil, and then I collected a handful of clay and loam rich soil to add to the potting soil.  (That was a gift from a gopher who makes his home along the local river.)

Worms need some fine mineral soil--they ingest it and it helps their digestion.  The clay particles they ingest also supper-charge the worm castings.  It seems that the clay-humus combination excreted by worms provides many plants with exactly what they need as far as nutrition is concerned, and also as far as the delivery method.  Clay also contains cation exchange sites--which hold on to the nutrients until the microorganisms involved with the soil nutrient cycle present them with something in exchange.

There are microorganisms in the soil whose sole business is to trade nutrients they obtain from cation exchange sites with plant root hairs.  What they get in the bargain are the carbohydrates that fuel their lives.  The only source of carbohydrates, of course, are plants.  They make them from sunlight and water using nutrients they exchange with microorganism in their root hairs.

In most natural environments here in North America, this all proceeds without the help of earthworms.  There are very few earthworms indigenous to North America and they inhabit very small environmental niches.  All most all the worms we encounter here were originally from Europe. And in fact, worms are not always a welcome part of natural environments. They can disrupt indigenous soil nutrient cycles and in some areas this is threatening native plant species and the organisms that depend on them.  Just something to think about before you toss out worms leftover from fishing or before you introduce worms to your garden if you live adjacent to natural areas that do not already harbor earthworms. 

Soil nutrient cycles can do what they need to do without earthworms, but where appropriate, worms supper-charge the process!  They do their best work right in the soil of your garden, rather than in a worm bin or box.  If you haven't already, check out my article on gardening with worms here: 

Let Worms do Your Work!   You might also want to check out my related photo album on facebook: 
The Compost Hole Method.

Alas,  having recently moved into an apartment, I am no longer in a position to bury my compostables on a regular basis. Not to worry though, I do have a community garden plot in the next town, I will still be gardening and tending soil!  The only worms available locally  are night crawlers, which I really enjoy in the garden, but I have never raised them in a box before, and I wanted to stick with something familiar.  So I ordered 1/2 pound of red compost worms on-line. 

Before they arrived I made sure that their organic potting-soil-bedding was evenly moist, but not soggy.  Using a soil thermometer, I found a good spot for them in the apartment.  Sixty degrees Fahrenheit up to the high seventies is ideal.  Colder and they become sluggish, hotter and they suffer.  I found the perfect spot in my water heater closet!  Next I buried about a pint of kitchen waste in the potting soil and waited for my worms to arrive.  

Most people use shredded paper for worm bedding, and I do add some paper to my worm boxes if they start getting too damp.  However, I have found that my worms are happier, healthier, and more vigorous if their bedding is mostly chemical free natural materials, like organic potting soil and fallen leaves.  All paper has been through chemical processes and retains traces of these chemicals.  I have seen with my own eyes the difference between raising worms on paper bedding and on natural bedding.  I will stick with using a preponderance of natural material.

My current worms take about a week and a half to processes about a half a weeks worth of my kitchen waste.  I figure that eventually I will want about four times as many worms.  Living in a small apartment, this will take some creativity on my part . . .  but I am sure it can be done!

A word about smells.  A properly managed, maintained, and cared for worm box or bin has hardly any smell at all.  If I put my nose right down in the box, it has a very slight forest earth kind of scent.  If your worm box smells unpleasant, it may be too moist, too hot or cold, you may need a higher ratio of bedding to kitchen scraps, or you may need more worms or less scraps.  It is a learning process.  However there are lots of books and blogs and articles devoted to indoor "vermiposting."   Vermiposting is what composting with worms is called! Almost anyone can use this technique to recycle kitchen waste into supper-charged soil!

If you would like to leave tips, ask questions, or share useful web sites or books, please feel free to leave a comment.  I don't think Blogger will let you put a URL in comments, but you can give the names of useful websites and we can search them out!

Let Worms do Your Work!

The lowly earthworm is really a knight in shinning armor when it comes to garden soil. They tirelessly work to improve water retention and drainage, decrease run off and erosion, aerate the soil, and improve tilth and structure. They also increase nitrogen and the bio-availability of other plant nutrients. They do all this for free and with very little help. All they ask is a safe place to live and plenty of organic matter. You can encourage worms in your garden and let them work for you. Here’s how:


Throw away your rotor-tiller:

I know this might sound sacrilegious to many gardeners, but tillers kill worms. And worms turn soil. While you are out there tilling that soil – risking injury, straining your back, and burning up expensive fossil fuel, you are killing the very creatures that will do the work for you, for free. Tilling soil encourages erosion, topsoil loss through oxidation; and the formation of hard pans. While you are loosening the top layers of the soil by tilling, you are also compacting the subsoil. Repeated tilling on the same plots eventually causes the subsoil to become impervious to water and roots. Worms on the other hand will gradually loosen and aerate all levels of the soil, recycling nutrients that have leached into the subsoil back into plants active root zones.

OK, you ask, if I can’t use my tiller, what do I do? There are many options available to home gardeners. These methods generally involve mulching with plenty of organic matter, or building raised beds. “No Till Gardening” was first made famous in 1959 by Ruth Stout in her book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. Fortunately for us, there is a new edition: Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent, published by Lyon Press (1998). A more scientific look at no till gardening can be found in Weedless Gardening, by Lee Reich, published by Workman Publishing (2001).

Feed the Worms:

Worms like organic matter, and plenty of it. They are living creatures; they need to eat. They don’t actually live on dirt, however they do ingest plenty of common garden soil. That soil is used as grit in their digestive process, which also involves beneficial bacteria. (These bacteria fix nitrogen, improving your soil for free!) What fuels a worms metabolism is the organic matter that we burry, mix in to the soil, or use for mulch. As that organic matter begins to decompose worms work their magic.

Worms prefer freshly decomposing organic matter. That organic matter gets mixed with the grit from garden soil, beneficial bacteria, and, well, worm slime inside the worm’s gut. The worm extracts its energy and nutrition and out the other end comes what is referred to as “worm castings.” Lots of research has been done on this substance. Worm castings are high in nitrogen and nitrogen fixing bacteria, which continue to improve the soil after they have been cast. Their digestive process reduces or eliminates harmful bacteria and soil born disease organisms. The castings are also a unique chemically bound composition of mineral soil, worm slime, and organic matter. They have very beneficial effects on plant health and nutrition.

Worms deposit their castings through out the soil and at the soil surface as they go about their business tunneling and searching for food. I find that by the end of summer, any organic matter that I buried in spring has become pure worm castings. When I make my fall planting holes I use those worm castings to top dress my garden. Then I burry more organic matter for the hungry worms and plant broccoli or kale for my own dinner. Fall buried organic matter is usually not completely devoured until the following fall, but the spot can be used in summer by tucking in your plants and providing them with plenty of mulch.

"There is an entire ecosystem in a handful of soil: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms.  Through their breeding and dying such creatures vivify the world."   Fred Bahnson, Soil and Sacrament.

Worms, worms, where are the worms?

If you don’t find several worms when sifting through a shovel full of your garden soil, you may want to purchase some to supplement those that may be hiding. The red wigglers and night crawlers available for use as fishing bait make a dynamic garden duo.

Red wigglers work the top few inches of soil, and will happily consume manure, decomposing mulch, and other organic tidbits. When temperatures turn hot, they will burrow deeper into the ground. If you have buried organic matter down where the soil stays cool, they will thrive through the summer months.

Night crawlers, when well fed, can grow to tremendous proportions. They form semi-permanent burrows and feed at the surface and on buried organic matter. They will also pull grass cuttings used as mulch down into their burrows adding more organic matter to your soil.

Between the two squiggly creatures your soil will be thoroughly cared for. Just make sure you have a shady spot with good drainage and plenty of organic matter before you hire them on. They will multiply and spread through out your garden with very little effort on your part.


More Benefits:

Besides saving your back, and improving plant nutrition, worms benefit the soil in many ways. The very slime that glues the organic matter to the mineral soil in worm castings prevents erosion and top soil loss. This glue reduces the ability of the soil to dissolve in water and get washed away by normal irrigation. The granular nature of the castings reduces the soils tendency to turn to dust and get blown away. The physical structure of the castings also benefits plant roots. Worm castings resist compaction (unless you work at it). The spaces between the castings provide room for air and moisture in the soil. And the loose structure of the castings are easily colonized by plant roots.

Worms are wonderful. They improve the soil both nutritionally and structurally. If we let them, they reduce the work of gardening immensely. They are out there right now, waiting to go to work for you.
More info:

For more information see the following articles from my blog:
A Simple Garden Routine - useful for bad backs, no time, short budgets – this article tells in detail exactly how to garden for and with the worms.

If you missed the article on organic matter, Nurture Your Soil for Free, you can read it here: http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/2006/05/nurture-your-soil-for-free.html

You can also use the search function in the upper left corner of this blog to find more information on worms, soil, and organic matter: http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/

For the low down on the research related to worms and gardens check out this site:
http://mypeoplepc.com/members/arbra/bbb/id19.html




Copyright 2006 Harvest McCampbell, from my column "Digging the Dirt," published in The Hoopa Valley People Newspaper, June 20, 2006. Posted here with permission.


Updated with a book quote and minor editing on 11/17.16.  Text and photo copyright Harvest McCampbell.  Please feel free to use the buttons below to share.  All other rights reserved.