There are around 300 species of
Earthworms in Australia. Most people just call any worms they find in
the soil Earthworms. These worms prefer to live in real soil, unlike the
compost worm species which like to live in rich compost.
Earthworms could be thought of as little hollow tubes/ hydraulic rams
that tunnel about under our feet, out of sight, working tirelessly day
and night aerating our fields and gardens. Not only do these little
creatures earate the soil, they also free up nutrients for our plants.
Imagine a bucket
full of soil, now instead of soil...think of the bucket as containing
10 different coloured marbles.. This is our soil. each coloured marble
represents a different nutrient,bacteria,salt, element etc. Lets
say your plant only likes eating red,green and blue marbles. So as
your plant eats the red, green, and blue marbles it grows but it
replaces the coloured marbles in the bucket with black ones. Over time
the soil is depleted and we all know what happens once the coloured
marbles are all gone and turned black don't we... Nothing grows any
more and you will find yourself heading down to the fertiliser store
buying nutrients, etc to fertilise your soil to grow more plants.
Here's what what makes Earthworms so special...! THEY EAT THE BLACK
MARBLES AND GIVE US COLOURED ONES FREE!
Not a very technical explanation I know..but I'm sure you see the
benefits of having Earthworms in your soil at your place and in YOUR
garden.
As a general rule, the
worms in your soil will eat almost anything that was once living. Most
of the Earthworm species that I have tried to grow don't seem to like
the same kinds of stuff that our bait worms like. I have found the
Earthworms like to live in normal dirt, the black mud type of dirt
that you can find along the river banks etc. They are more of a deep
diver and rather spend their days out of sight deep in the worm beds
and are more docile and seem to take forever to do anything. Unlike
the compost worm species and the nightcrawler bait worms that rather
be up the top of the worm beds.
I
have also found the Earthworms like to eat pumpkin, just a few chopped
up pumpkin chunks burried in the worm beds seems to keep them going
fine. They alse seem to like living in the compost worms castings. I
don't know why but when I put a wheelbarrow full of compost worm
castings on the ground in a pile and keep it damp.. It seems to
attract the native earthworms from the soil into the pile of castings.
One of the old fisherman tricks is to burry some pumpkin chunks down
at the river bank in a few spots and bucket a good dose of water onto
the ground where he stashed the pumpkin pieces... then he comes back a
week later and gets out his digging fork and with a few casual turns
of the fork he soon has all the worms he needs for his fishing trip.
The young fellows I have seen down at the river banks around here
haven't cottoned on yet and they will dig away for hours randomly here
and there and only find a pocket full of worms for their efforts..
Owning a worm farm is a good idea if your a fisho. You get free worms
and save the river bank from errosion by not digging it all up.
Imagine thousands of guys with digging forks all around Australia
digging up the river banks looking for worms for bait. That's a lot of
potential errosion. In the great scheme of things that is not a big
deal i guess but every little bit YOU can do helps.
anyway, back to the Earthworms...
Worms are blind. They have no eyes. They have no ears. all they really
are is a hollow tube of muscle with a head, clitellum, and a tail.
The clitellum is the part of the Earthworm that is about a quarter of
the way down the worm from it's head. It is like a thick sleeve and
this is the worms reproductive gizmo. The clitellum is not always
highly visible. It gets bigger when the worm is mature and when the
clitellum is nice and big.. thats when they can breed. I have
watched it thousands of times, one worm slips under the other worms
clitellum, sort of like an elastic band wrapped around a pencil.
anyway, one worm sticks his head under the other worms clitellum and
they have their clitellums touching each others and then they stay
joined together for a few minutes or so and then they slide apart.
What happens then is that the clitellum makes this slimy sort of
mucous ring and then the worm slips the ring up over the clitellum
over it's head and it drops the ring into the soil... THAT IS THE
WORMS EGG. It looks white at first but then it starts to dry out on
the outside and as the egg gets ready to hatch,(somewhere between 21
days and a couple years depending on conditions) it gets darker and
darker. That's how you know when the eggs are ready to hatch.. lighter
= new eggs, darker = older eggs.
Sometimes when you find a worm egg that is getting ready to hatch, you
can pick it up between your thumb and first finger and gently squeeze
it. (there is two ends on the earthworms egg.. round and pointy. the
baby worms come out the pointy end) Squeeze the round end of the worm
egg and if your lucky you can squeeze them out one at a time. they are
tiny and delicate so be gently.
Some people have a hard time breeding their Earthworms that they dig
up and take home to start their bait worm farm. There are some tricks
that you can use... and if you give me 5 dollars, I will tell you the
trick.
Nah, just kidding. lol.
Worms are not very smart and we can trick them into breeding more than
usual. In nature, worms use cues from their environment that trigger
them into breeding. What we want to do first is "prime the Earthworms
up". What I mean by that is, that we want to fatten them up and get
their clitellum nice and big. Think spring. warm them up so they are
comfortable in the beds, have it nice and damp, add some protein to
their diet.. (not too much or you will make the beds go acidic) then
once the clitellums are nice and big, we starve them and let them dry
out.
What we are doing is tricking
the worms into thinking that they are dying. We take the primed worms.
Then we slowly let the beds dry out and we stop feeding them and after
a while the worms think to themselves... "shit it's getting dry around
here"and "GEE I'm starving". When the worms think they are dying from
dry and starvation they lay heaps of eggs... I don't know why but I
would guess it's natures way of keeping the species alive.
So they lay heaps of eggs. We do an egg count in the worm beds and
when there's heaps of eggs, we sieve them out and let them dry out for
a couple of weeks and then we stimulate them to hatch. (Trade secret)
If you are interested in getting a little more technical and are
thinking about starting your own earthworm farm or are a farmer or
vegetable grower and want to know how to get the worms back into your
soil since you have already sprayed chemicals and killed all yours...
You should take my advise and join the worm forum.
The earthworm forum was designed to bring real worm farmers and worm
farm wannabees together in a way that allows members to share
experiences and ask questions about farming all types of worms. Most
of the biggest names in worm farming and compost are already signed up
and the website is growing at a fast pace. In my opinion the worm farm
forum is the best bang for buck you will find on the entire internet
if you want to know more about them. It is a paid membership site so
you can be sure every one there is serious and the information shared
is high quality.
here's the link:
worm farm forum
If you would rather get a proper paper book to have a read of, here is
the book that I highly recomend you buy: This one book was responsible
for me starting my own worm business and is worth every cent and the
short wait for it to be sent to you is worth it. Just order it online
right now from here. click the book to go to the order page and learn
more.
Just type anything you want into this
box below and we'll try find the page for you.
