earth day
TRASK BEDORTHA
Will Work
for Food
Nonnative earthworms move slow, compost fast BY RACHEL FOSTER
I
t may be hard to imagine life without
earthworms, but the common earthworm
and almost all its relatives are not native
to North America. It seems that they arrived
with European settlers. The earthworms’
appetite for organic matter can create havoc
in forest ecosystems, where native plants
and animals depend on a deep litter of
decaying leaves. But worms are a boon to
gardening and agriculture, devouring plant
waste as they aerate and fertilize the soil.
Common earthworms are sometimes
sweetly called nature’s plough. They are
burrowers, and spend most of their time
below ground, where they consume soil
particles and bits of the leaves they pull
down into their tunnels. Other species,
such as the red worm or red wiggler, are
surface dwellers, pursuing a life between
the soil surface and its overlying blanket
of organic debris which is their food. They
can consume half their weight in food each
day, and this voracious appetite can be put
to work as a disposal system for unwanted
yard and food waste.
A surprisingly large part of a community’s
waste is discarded food — 16 to 20 percent
in Lane County. Much of that could be kept
out of landfi lls if more of us composted at
home. Sherry Wellborn, a compost specialist
with the city of Eugene, believes we should
look on food waste as a valuable resource
and keep it in the neighborhood.
Composting with red worms is a
good option. Vermicomposting is a
well-established practice with reams
of literature. The process is odor-free,
relatively clean and doesn’t require much
space. It can even be done indoors, where
the worm bin will be active year-round
(red worms are sensitive to extreme heat
and freezing temperatures). Worms move
quite slowly, so the nonnative factor is not
an issue if they aren’t turned loose.
Wellborn joined with Amazon
Neighbors to put in a proposal for a
neighborhood matching grant from the
city to build a new sort of worm bin as a
demonstration project. The bin will serve
four adjacent households in her immediate
neighborhood. The design is inspired by a
bin operated by Rodney Bloom for FOOD
for Lane County that has a simple vertical
fl ow system: a box with a horizontal array
of nylon ropes stretched internally between
the sides of the box, about two thirds of
the way down. Digested stuff falls between
the ropes into a harvest area below. A door
in the side allows you to rake across the
underside of the ropes to bring down more
fi nished material.
To get around rot issues and dispense
with the need for carpentry skills, Wellborn
proposes using a ready-made, totally
recyclable HDPE shipping crate, 30 x 30
x 54 inches high. You will need to cut a
hole in one hinged side to form a door, add
a fastener at the top of the door, and punch
holes to thread 1/4” braided nylon rope
from side to side, two inches on center.
(Wellborn believes that Dan Holcombe
of Oregon Soil in Corvallis pioneered this
vertical fl ow-through system.)
To put such a bin to work, you place
some straw on top of ropes, then layer in
moistened, high-carbon worm bedding
such as leaves, straw, shredded paper or
sawdust (bedding should be moist, not
dripping wet) alternating with food scraps
or coffee grounds. Then pop in a ball
of red worms, which you can probably
obtain from a neighbor, if not from your
own garden. Keep adding food scraps,
covering each addition with bedding.
Go easy with onions and citrus peels,
Wellborn says, as too much will hurt the
worms’ skin.
Food scraps can contain a lot of
water, so add enough bedding to the keep
moisture level moderate. Worms don’t like
to be too wet, and may leave if things get
soggy. The bin will drip, so put it on the
ground or on a palette so water can drain
away. By the time the average household
has fi lled the bin almost to the top, you can
harvest some compost from the bottom,
which will lower the level in the box so
you can add more material. Harvesting
should not bring down too many worms,
because they will be working further up
the pile by then.
What the worms are eating is mostly
bacteria, as well as fungi, nematodes,
protozoa and organic matter. Worms have
no teeth with which to bite off pieces of
food, but they do ingest particles small
enough to pass into the esophagus. Because
worms eat and break down potential
pathogens, compost made this way should
be disease-free. If you put in weed seeds,
however, they will still be viable.
Locate the bin out of the sun, to avoid
overheating. When the temperatures drop
into the 20s, your worms will need help:
either insulate the bin with leaves, blankets,
straw, etc., or create a small “hot build”
in the pile that the worms can snuggle
up to. The hot-build can be food scraps
mixed with coffee grounds or manure —
something that will heat up fast. à
The Willamette Valley has a unique earthworm species
— the Oregon giant earthworm — which can grow
over four feet long and is threatened by nonnative
earthworms,
www.xerces.org/oregon-giant-earthworm
For more information on the nonnative earthworm issue
go to greatlakeswormwatch.org and don’t release your
composting or fi shing bait worms into the wild.
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18 APRIL 21, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
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