April 8th, 2022 - Living Soil and Earthworms a post by Deepak Sharma

More organisms live below ground than above it, even just a handful of soil contains millions of living things. We have all seen earthworms emerging after rainstorms and I am guilty of catching a few during monsoon rains in India.

If you dig in healthy soil it is full of living things: Earthworms, beetles, sowbugs, ants, centipedes, grubs and other small animals populate the soil. In a healthy acre of land, it is estimated the weight of the organisms in the top 6” of soil is between 2500 and 5000 pounds! The most iconic and important of these soil-dwellers may be earthworms.


 Casts excreted from earthworms contain microorganisms that facilitate the cycling of nutrients from organic matter and provide valuable nutrition to the plants. Casts are an excellent source of humus, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium. The castings combine organic material and mineral soil particles and are critical in developing topsoil.

 

Earthworms help to maintain the soil, as they naturally till the earth. The burrowing activities of worms help plants to grow by helping oxygen get into the soil and providing food to plants by mixing the soil with plant materials. By fragmenting organic matter, they also increase the water-holding capacity of soils to absorb water from the rain into the ground rather than rapid runoff, which causes soil erosion.

 

All those creatures living below our feet make our environment healthier and cleaner. I am sure we will talk about more underground dwellers in coming posts. 


Thanks to Deepak Sharma for sharing this post. 


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