FARMER FOCUS SERIES
Enumclaw's
Dinkelman Worm Farm - Part I
Composting animal manures along with plant biomass produces "black gold." Even compost without farm animal manures fosters biodiversity in your garden. Above ground, the good bugs keep the bad ones in check and, below ground, a rich microbial community means more beneficial relationships that improve the soil structure, fight disease, and segregate carbon so plants take up water and nutrients more efficiently. How do we backyard food growers and gardeners enhance compost without manure? WORMS! Vermicomposting is the art of using worms and their castings in composting piles or bins.
Earthworms are incredible creature! They are nature's waste disposal units...or rather...it is more accurate to call them waste renewal units. They don't simply consume the waste, they turn it into nutrient-rich compost. How? The Wikipedia dictionary gives a clear description. "Worms turn large pieces of organic matter (e.g. dead leaves) into rich humus by pulling down the organic matter deposited on dried dirt (such as leaf fall or manure) either for food or when it needs to plug its burrow. Once in the burrow, the worm will shred the leaf and partially digest it, then mingle it with the earth by saturating it with intestinal secretions." Excretion of mucus also allows them to slide through their tunnels pumping air and opening passages for water to traverse. Sounds like a lot of unrewarding work to me, but I guess they simply know what to do and then do it.
A worm cast or vermicast is a structure created in the soil that gives an appearance of multiple worms. "Vermicasts can contain 40% more humus than the top 9" of soil in which the worm is living." According to Nature Watch "earthworm castings have five times as much nitrogen, seven times as much phosphorous, 11 times as much potassium, and 1,000 times more "beneficial bacteria" than the stuff the worm consumes in the first place." Literally speaking, what goes in is far less valuable than what comes out. How did worms get so smart to create gold out of waste? I wonder why we humans don't understand this process.
Earthworms not only restore and make our soil rich for food and plant life, they have the potential to "detox"the organic parts of industrial sludge flowing out of industrial or hazardous waste. According to Indian researchers the method is ideal for industries such as paper, food processing, oil, textiles, dairy, distilleries and agro-chemicals. In other words, these small, underground, neglected creatures also have the capacity to help save life on Earth! Not all worms function at such high levels, however, only vermiculture worms: Tiger worms, red worms, manure worms, red wigglers, and eisenia foetida.
With all this talk about worms you are probably wondering, "How did our hometown people, Duane and Lori Dinkleman, get started in this business? How are their worms farmed and harvested? What do they do with all of them? Can I get some?" Very soon I'll acquaint you with these fine folks in our next issue of FARMER FOCUS. If you can't wait, and want to contact them directly the e-mail and phone numbers are dinksdirt@comcast.net, (253) 632-6184 or (360) 825-2394.
In the meantime here is some worm trivia courtesy of the Dinkelmans.
Worm & Vermiculture Trivia:
- Have no teeth or eyes
- Eat rotting foods "our garbage"
- Do not like bright light or loud noise
- Do not like vibration
- Like temps 40-75 degrees
- Need to be fed once a week
- Bins should be odorless
- Live 1-4 yrs.
- Eat by grinding waste in the gizzard
- Can double population in 90 days
- Need oxygen to live
- "Crawl" if not maintained and fed right
- Like environments that are 75% water
- Worms are bisexual. They move in clusters. As they "cluster up" they create more.
- Produce castings
- Castings will not burn plants
- Castings are rich natural fertilizer
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