“Worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, perforating and loosening the soil, rendering it pervious to rains and fibers of the plants by throwing up such infinite number of lumps of earth called worm casts which being their excrement is a fine manure for grain and grass”
-Charles Darwin (February 1809 - April 1882)
During rainy season, we came across many long, thin brown coloured animals wriggling around on wet surfaces. Take a closer look. You will instantly recognize them. Those wrigglers are the Earthworms. Of course, we cannot use those varieties of earthworms as they live mostly on the soil surface. We are more interested in those varieties of earthworms that live deep within the soil by digging their ‘burrows’ which are their own ‘houses’.
We have been learning since our childhood that the earthworms are friends of farmers as they help in increasing the soil fertility by adding highly nutritious manure naturally. Earthworms usually feed on dead and decaying organic which is mixed in the soil and give out excreta in the form of “vermicasts” that are rich in nitrates and minerals such as phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and potassium.
These are used as fertilizers and enhance soil quality. This ability of earthworms to ‘eat’ the soil, process it as it passes through their long, hollow, tubular ‘gut’ or the ‘digestive system’ and excrete or poop it out of the body in the form of little invisible chunks or ‘pellets’ rich in nutrients as mentioned above, has been tapped by humans since several decades to process and treat the green, biodegradable wet or kitchen waste so that it breaks down, eaten by the worms and you get a compost or manure of the best quality.
This scientific method of making compost, by using earthworms is known as Vermicomposting. This is different from bio composting which we learned through earlier articles, in that, here we are using the earthworms and in bio composting, we are using those microscopic bacteria.
Vermicomposting is highly recommended for biodegradation of the wet waste on a large scale such as for the housing societies and similar establishments. To set up one such vermicompost unit for a housing society, the following raw material is required.
Cow dung, Thatch Roof, Soil or Sand, Gunny bags, Earthworms, Weed biomass, A large bin (plastic or cemented tank), Dry straw and leaves collected from paddy fields, Biodegradable wastes collected from fields and kitchen.
Once you have all these items ready, you have to now prepare a suitable ‘bedding’ for the worms to settle in. Alternatively, you can construct a proper pit using bricks and cement. The size of the pit will depend upon the volume of biodegradable waste you want to process. More details about this will be provided in the next article. Meanwhile, Paryvaran Dakshata Mandal’s project called ‘Nisargayan’ near village Mamnoli on Kalyan -Ahilyanagar highway has a large manufacturing unit of vermicompost.
This compost is available at the Green Shopee of Paryavran Dakshata Mandal. For more details, please contact PDM Green Shopee at +91 9987334277.
See you next Saturday. Till then have a good weekend!
(The author is an environmentalist. Views personal.)
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