The jewels in your garden
Have you ever found the jewels in your garden soil? Earthworm cocoon or compound eggs is one of the most important biomonitoring for soil quality and fertility. Biomonitoring can be defined as an organism that provides quantitative information on the quality of the environment around it for example soil degradation and pollution.
If your garden soil is not productive, it can be caused by the lack of the earthworms and other beneficial soil creatures. So, it’s time to supply more organic fertilizers such as worm castings or vermicompost, otherwise it will waste your time and energy.
The application of the worm castings to the garden soil will create a better soil environment and increase the population of the native earthworms (anecic or deep-burrowing earthworms and endogeic or upper-soil earthworms) that can be used as a bioindicator of the healthy and productive soil toward the natural way of farming. And the native earthworms will produce their own cocoons and thrive.
This photo are the cocoons of red wigglers (epigeic or above-soil compost worms, live in surface soil and organic waste near the compost heap). One cocoon can produce up to 6 juveniles of tiny worms that will grow into adult worms within 3 – 4 weeks in favorable conditions. The adult worms will mate and produce on average 1 cocoon per two days.
In vermiculture – vermicomposting, the cocoon’s production is an indicator that the worms are healthy and happy. By having the high production of cocoons per adult worm and hatchlings per cocoon, the population growth of the red wigglers will be fast. They can double their population within 2 months under the optimum conditions. During the active growth of the compost worms, they can consume the organic waste the same amount as their body weight per day and process it to become high quality vermicompost.
Please visit http://www.burnabyredwigglers.com at Portfolio to learn more about the life cycle of red wiggler and their optimum conditions, also at Products for worm castings or vermicompost application to your garden.
– Bintoro Gunadi
burnabyredwigglers 