04-13-2003, 01:00 PM
Make your garden worm-friendly Let nature raise your fish bait
Associated Press -
All those earthworms you saw wriggling in the top layers of soil last fall have not gone away; they've just traveled down into the earth to keep warm. As the soil surface warms in spring, these creatures will again rise to near the surface and begin to multiply.
If you want to increase the number of worms in your soil, just provide abundant food and a congenial environment. To a worm, a congenial environment is a moist soil with a near-neutral pH. Food for a worm consists of organic materials such as leaves, grass clippings, manure, peat moss, and compost. Avoid or minimize tilling the soil, not because it chops up worms, but because it burns up organic matter -- their food. Also avoid or minimize the use of pesticides because of their harmful effects on earthworms. Besides increasing worm numbers, caution with pesticides, minimum (or no) tillage, and keeping a soil moist and rich in organic matter are earmarks of good gardening. There's no need to include earthworms with your spring seed orders.
Earthworms eat their way through the soil, taking it in at one end and spewing it out the other, as earthworm castings. Charles Darwin reported that each year earthworms brought more than 10 tons per acre of castings to the surface of a field. One hundred square feet of good garden soil can be home to thousands of earthworms.
Physically, worms improve the soil by gently tilling it and creating channels for air, water, and roots. Earthworms' secretions bind soil particles together, giving the earth a porous structure. The journey through a worm's digestive tract also releases plant nutrients locked up in organic materials and even rock particles.
Earthworms benefit plants in even more roundabout ways. Apple scab disease, for example, survives the winter on old apple leaves lying beneath the trees -- but not if earthworms drag the old leaves into the ground and chew them up. Earthworms also help chew up and decompose lawn thatch.
Some gardeners, appreciative of earthworm benefits, purchase earthworms for soil improvement. But the type of earthworm that is most easily grown for sale is the redworm, which is adapted to living in compost or manure piles but would starve in soil.
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Associated Press -
All those earthworms you saw wriggling in the top layers of soil last fall have not gone away; they've just traveled down into the earth to keep warm. As the soil surface warms in spring, these creatures will again rise to near the surface and begin to multiply.
If you want to increase the number of worms in your soil, just provide abundant food and a congenial environment. To a worm, a congenial environment is a moist soil with a near-neutral pH. Food for a worm consists of organic materials such as leaves, grass clippings, manure, peat moss, and compost. Avoid or minimize tilling the soil, not because it chops up worms, but because it burns up organic matter -- their food. Also avoid or minimize the use of pesticides because of their harmful effects on earthworms. Besides increasing worm numbers, caution with pesticides, minimum (or no) tillage, and keeping a soil moist and rich in organic matter are earmarks of good gardening. There's no need to include earthworms with your spring seed orders.
Earthworms eat their way through the soil, taking it in at one end and spewing it out the other, as earthworm castings. Charles Darwin reported that each year earthworms brought more than 10 tons per acre of castings to the surface of a field. One hundred square feet of good garden soil can be home to thousands of earthworms.
Physically, worms improve the soil by gently tilling it and creating channels for air, water, and roots. Earthworms' secretions bind soil particles together, giving the earth a porous structure. The journey through a worm's digestive tract also releases plant nutrients locked up in organic materials and even rock particles.
Earthworms benefit plants in even more roundabout ways. Apple scab disease, for example, survives the winter on old apple leaves lying beneath the trees -- but not if earthworms drag the old leaves into the ground and chew them up. Earthworms also help chew up and decompose lawn thatch.
Some gardeners, appreciative of earthworm benefits, purchase earthworms for soil improvement. But the type of earthworm that is most easily grown for sale is the redworm, which is adapted to living in compost or manure piles but would starve in soil.
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