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Earthworms: nature's plow
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A healthy pile of earthworms
When I was a little girl there wasn't much I could do to stump my mother. She could run faster than me, read faster than me, and she always beat me at Trivial Pursuit. It seems that the only time I really got the upper hand on her was working in the garden. My mother was deathly afraid of worms and I would seize the opportunity to wiggle a worm in her face whenever that opportunity presented itself.
It seemed so silly to me that she was so afraid of worms. Besides being wiggly and slimy they didn't seem all that fearsome. They didn't bite and they didn't sting. I remember scooping them out of rain puddles in the street and on the sidewalk and returning them to the safety of the dirt. As I've learned more about organic gardening I've become even more enamored with earthworms.
Charles Darwin once wrote about earthworms, "...it may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world as these lowly organized creatures." An earthworm's job in nature is to plow through the soil creating passageways that allow air and water to circulate and feed the roots of the plants and the microorganisms that live in the soil and feed the plants. Without the worms creating these passageways the soil would become compacted, air and water wouldn't circulate and plant roots would remain shallow.
To keep the worms in your garden happy and thriving just add nitrogen rich compost to your soil. As we discussed in "Preparing your soil for organic gardening," there are many different methods for creating a nitrogen rich compost. It is important to note that earthworms prefer natural and organic compost and according to Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, "Adding synthetic nitrogen fertilizers may repel earthworms."
As the earthworm works its way through the soil it eats everything that comes in its path. Even the soil gets digested, using the tiny particles of sand as miniature grinding stones in the gizzard. What comes out the other end are the nutrient dense worm castings. According to the website Microsoil, after passing through the worm the castings, "are five times as rich in available nitrogen, seven times as rich in available phosphates, and eleven times as rich in available potash as anything else in the upper six inches of the soil, producing a nutrient in just the right condition for the plant to absorb."
I don't know if my mother's repulsion at the sight of a worm has lessened any over the years. I haven't had an opportunity to wiggle one under her nose in quite a long time. Knowing what I know about worms now, however, I would probably leave my worm friends in the soft dirt where they are hard at work for me in my garden and not use them to taunt my mother. Maybe I should challenge her to a game of Trivial Pursuit instead.
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