Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>]

I want to add a "second" to Dieter's advice below.  Why do all that work and take the time to do it?  Let the worms do their thing in the soil without any time or work by the farmer/gardener.  Have the soil covered to protect it.  No water runoff, etc.

 

Ken Hargesheimer

Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com> wrote:

Here is the opposing argument:

 

According to a calculation I read the other day, 200 to 400 earthworms can live

in 1 square meter of good garden soil, supposing further that each worm can

produce its own weight of high quality compost each day, this translates into

about 1 cm of compost over the entire surface or about 50 truck loads of high

quality compost per hectare (about 2.5 acres) a year.  Try to make this amount

of compost in your vermiculture facility!

If on the other hand, you raise earthworms in a box to liberate them in the

garden, the earthworms raised on a high nutrient diet in the box may not do

very well when left to their own devices in the wild.

 

What I mean is that it may be more advantageous to create the right conditions

in the garden or in the field for earthworms to prosper and multiply rather than to

raise a few in a box.

 

Dieter

 

 

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