Earthworms, Your Dinner's Best Friends

It all begins with food. I like this saying. It puts the emphasis on food, not the supermarket or your pay cheque but food. It all begins with the soil. I like this one, as well . It focuses on the importance of soil to a healthy garden. I think my favourite saying is: It all begins with you. This places the responsibility right where it belongs on the individual, on you, me and all our neighbours. Each day we make choices: what to eat, where to shop, how to treat others. It is the nature of the choices we make that determines the world we live in.

Now lets turn out attention back to the garden and see how our choices make a difference. How much do you know about the creatures that inhabit the soil where your garden grows? The soil food web is a complex structure where millions of life forms live and die each minute. It is their existence that creates the healthy garden. So how well you treat them directly decides how well your garden produces. Feed them only good, organic stuff and your garden thrives. Feed them synthetics and your garden struggles to produce a small amount of food.

When you begin to use synthetic chemicals, you enter into a vicious cycle, if you want your garden to produce you must continue to add synthetic inputs. You can avoid this cycle by adding only organic material. Think of it as feeding your garden. To get healthy food you must feed the soil. Add this thought, whatever you feed the soil, you feed to all the life forms that, when safe and sound, work together to create a thriving garden. So feed them well and they, in turn, will feed you well.

Let's take a closer look at one of the major players in your garden, the earthworm. When you feed the soils, say by adding compost, you encourage earthworms to move in and do their thing. This is a cause for celebration. earthworms are very desirable tenants. They aerate and feed the soil and help your garden grow. Treat them well and your garden thrives.

There are two actions you can take that will go a lonmg way to guarantee that earthworms want to move into your garden. Mulch and compost and make sure to spread the compost around the garden. Worms will come a wriggling and bring their extended families along with them. If you avoid chemical inputs you are guaranteed that worms and their offspring will stay and work with the other underground denizens of your garden to create a soil that will give you the very best food and flowers.

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