Subject: Worms and Vermicomposting Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:09 pm
The cut worm forgives the plough
- William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
_ David Attenborough voice _ The worm is without a doubt one of the most important creatures to crawl the earth, or underneath it, if you're looking at it from the point of view of another creature who relies on food coming from the soil....
Humans are one such creature and it is possibly true to say that there would be no human beings without the work of the worm, or a lot less humans anyway and those ones who didn't like fish would be living a charmed existence.
I found this lovely little website with nice information about the worm which I'd like to share. Don't know if all the info is accurate but I'll take their word for it. All quotes from http://www.jetcompost.com/burrow/primer.htm All pitchers got surreptitiously from different parts of the internet.
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Introduction Vermes is Latin for worms and Vermicompsting is essentially composting with worms.
In nature all organic matter eventually decomposes. In Vermicompsting you speed up the process of decomposition and get a richer end product called "worm castings." Vermicompsting has the added advantage of allowing you to create compost all year; indoors during the winter and outdoors during the summer.
The consumption of organic wastes by earthworms is an ecologically safe method to natually convert many of our organic wastes into an extremely environmentally beneficial product.
Two types of earthworms have consistently been domesticated for commerical use due to their relative insinsitivity to environmental changes. a) The Red Wiggler", or manure worm [Eisensia Foetida]. b) The Red Worm, another manure worm [Lumbricus Rebellus].
So, not only do we rely on worms in our gardens but they can also be housed in your apartment in town where according to Treehugger they will eat your vegetable peelings and then excrete compost stuff afterwards leaving you with a rich fertile soil to grow more veg which you can then eat yourself, feeding more clippings to the worms and so on and on.
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Three basic conditions control the size of a worm population:
1. availability of food 2. space requirements 3. fouling of their environment
When food and waste is regularly fed to worms in a limited space, the worms and associated organisms break down this waste. They use what they can and excrete the rest. As the worms reproduce, the voracious young worms compete with their parents and all the other worms in the culture for the limited food available. Additionally, all the worms excrete casting, which has been shown to be toxic to members of their own species.
As time goes on, more worms compete for the limited food, and more and more of the bedding becomes converted to castings. The density of the worms may exceed that favourable for cocoon production, and reproduction slows down. The controls you exert over your worm population will affect this whole process. You may choose to feed an ever increasing population, in which case, you will need to provide them with more space and fresh bedding.
No one knows for sure the life span of a worm. Some authorities believe that, under ideal conditions, worms may live as long as ten years.
So, the worm will not tolerate eating its own excrement while down in Ennis and elsewhere they regularly find e-coli from human sources in their water supply - lovely
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Reproduction
A worm's reproductive system is quite complex. Worms are hermaphrodic -- that is, each worm is both male and female and each can produce eggs and fertilize the eggs produced by another worm. Under perfect conditions a mature breeder will produce a cocoon every 7 to 10 days. During mating, any two adult worms can join together to fertilize each other's eggs. Then a mucous tube secreted by the clitellum (the band 1/4 of the way down the worm's body) slips over its head into the soil as an egg case or cocoon.
These cocoons are about the size of a match head and change colour as the baby worms develop, starting out as pale yellow and when the hatchlings are ready to emerge, cocoons are a reddish-brown. It is possible by observing with a good lens to not only see a baby worm, but to see the pumping of its bright red blood vessel. The blood of a worm is amazingly similar to ours, having the same function of carrying oxygen, and having iron-rich hemoglobin at its base.
It takes about three weeks development in the cocoon for one to several baby worms to hatch. These newly emerged worms look just like the grown-ups, only lighter in colour and much smaller. They will mature to breeding age in approximately 60 to 90 days.
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Biology
The Red Wiggler ingests waste at the front, through a soft mouth witha lip that can seize or grasp whatever the worm is trying to eat. The throat, or "phraynx"can be pushed forward to help pull matter in. They have no teeth so they coat their food with saliva, which makes it softer and easier to digest.
After the food is swallowed, it passes through the esophagus to the crop and then to the gizzard, where small stones grind it up. The food is passed into the intestine, ehich is almost as long as the worm itself. At the end of the intestine is the anus, for passing out the castings.
Worms have a brain and five hearts. They have neither eyes nor ears but are extremely aware of vibrations such as thumps or banging on the composter. They have a well founded hereditary aversion to bright lights. Ultraviolet rays from the sun are very harmful to earthworms. One hour's exposure to strong sunlight causes partial-to-complete paralysis and several hours are fatal. A worm breathes when oxygen from the air or water passes through its moist skin into the blood capillaries. If the body covering dries up, the worm suffocates.
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