Now you know that good, healthy top soil is alive. The most important critter in most of our soil and gardens is the earthworm.
Captain Earthworm. Long and skinny and sort of the color of a rainy day and actually a little wet and soggy like that too, the earthworm just may be the captain of the ecological9 ship out in your yard. If they could, I’m sure they’d have a whistle like a coach or a gym teacher, but earthworms do their work silently.
Most of their good work is underground. They like things cool and moist. That’s why you’ll occasionally see them lying around on the surface on rainy and overcast days, looking kind of lazy.
But their work is so important.
Boiled Spaghetti. Pick up a handful of cooled cooked spaghetti (I recommend doing this before the sauce is applied) and feel it slide between your fingers.
Feels funny, right? It’s the closest way to imagine exactly what an earthworm feels like.
It’s the earthworms’ slimy skin that allows them to slither through soil and leave tiny tunnels behind them. These tunnels allow air and water to move freely through the soil to help the roots of the plants in your garden. Even the warmth of the spring sun can be drawn through these tunnels to warm the roots of plants. They crawl their way through the harder ground (called hardpan10) and in between all the rocks that haven’t rolled quite enough. And they’ve been doing this for millions of years.
Eating Machines
As if this isn’t enough, earthworms do even more. They’re eating machines. These critters are constantly eating as they move. They sort of eat their way forward. Their favorite foods are in the soil around them. Earthworms especially love things like fungus11 and algae12 and even bacteria13.
The greatest thing about worms is that they take all this stuff they eat and process it through their wiggly, slimy bodies and turn it into food for the soil and things that grow. What comes out of the worms is lunch for our soil and plants. Moving through this dark and wet world they leave behind what are called castings—the digested plant food. The big, long name for this is vermipost. “Worm poop” works too.
So next time you see a worm on the cool ground you might want to say thanks.
Worms like it cool and moist.
Worm Bin
There are lots of worm bins available at stores. But you can make your own by using plastic bins. Don’t use clear bins because the sun will heat up the interior and, remember, worms prefer cool. Start with a couple of plastic bins with five to ten holes punched or drilled through the bottom of one. Place the one with holes on top of the other and connect them with wire or clips. Make small holes in the cover of the top bin.
Fill the top one with compost material like peat moss, coffee grounds, tea bags, and even shredded newspaper. The worms will feed on this stuff and create that great natural fertilizer vermipost. The rich vermipost will settle through the holes and the bottom bin will fill with great stuff for your garden.
Place the bins in the shade of the yard. If you want to do this in the winter they’ll need to be kept inside or moved to a place that doesn’t freeze.
You can add a third bin on top of the second and more worms after you’ve had some success. And when your garden looks better than ever remember to tip your cap your wiggly friends.
A worm “high rise”
A Few Other Good Bugs
The Ladies of the Landscape: Ladybugs (Lady Beetles)
These are those pretty red bugs that you see out in the yard and let crawl on your finger. But don’t be surprised if they suddenly take off and fly away. Ladybugs can only fly in warm weather and can go a long distance south as winter approaches.
Ladybugs are good for the yard because they eat bugs that are not good for plants, like aphids, scale (which are another type of very small flying insect), and mites. The same thing that might attract us to ladybugs—their bright colors—are just the thing that helps protect the ladybugs from other insects and predators (such as insect-eating birds) that might not want to treat them like a lady. Birds and other insects shy away from the bright colors.
Painting Ladybug Rocks
Find a smooth round stone at least as big as your fist. Wash and clean it and let it dry. Find a good picture of a ladybug with the bright red shell and the black polka dots and draw it with pencil or chalk on the stone. Then paint the stone just like a ladybug. It makes a great paperweight or a door-stop or just something to keep on your desk or shelf or even in the garden.
Bugs that Pray.
Praying Mantis. Well, they’re not exactly praying. They get their name from their big front legs that are bent and held together as they stand. To some, they look they’re praying. They’re usually green or brown in color and they can grow up to 6” long. They have huge appetites and eat flies, moths, mosquitoes, and even cockroaches.
Praying Mantis
Lacewings (or Flying Lions) are actually called “aphid lions.” That’s because they hunt and then eat a lot of aphids, spider mites, white flies, mealy bugs, and others that are not good for our gardens.
Lacewing
Dragonflies. These beautiful insects have been around for over three hundred million years and archeologists have found fossil imprints that show that in the time of the dinosaurs, these bugs were over two feet long. The good thing about them now is that they eat pesky bugs like gnats, mayflies, and mosquitoes.
Dragonfly
Bees. One of the best bugs to see in the backyard, the honeybee, is a valuable pollinator. Pollination is when the pollen of one flower is transferred to another flower and fertilizes the new plant.
Like a little delivery service, the honeybee pollinates almost 10 percent of the world’s food crops. And lately there has been a drop in bee population and activity. That’s not so good and there are many people working to keep the bee population healthy.
Bee
Other bees and wasps do some of the same but are nowhere near as good or busy as the honeybee. But the other bees and wasps feed on rotten fruit and harmful caterpillars, so they’re helpful too. Just don’t mess with them in the yard, because they have a pretty mean sting when they’re disturbed. All bees give us a lot more good than bad.
Butterflies. Butterflies are so cool, I’ve given them their own chapter called Flying Flowers (see Chapter 7).
A HEALTHY MIX. In the long run, a good mix is the healthiest thing for the garden and landscape. This means insects and birds and rain and lots of different types of plants. This is called bio-diversity. But all it really means is allowing everything into the celebration we call nature. It helps keep the circle rolling like a wheel.
Some insects can be a nuisance and some insects can harm your favorite plants. But most insects are really good for us and very important, so we should be careful of what we spray or treat them with.
9 Ecological: a part of science that studies organisms and their natural environment
10 Hardpan: a compacted hard layer of soil
11 Fungus: a type of plant that includes mushrooms and mildews
12 Algae: tiny plants that thrive in moist conditions
13 Bacteria: very tiny plants that live in soil and water and can be beneficial to people