Re: [compost_tea] Worm food

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 08:50:23 -0400

In a message dated 10/21/2003 7:07:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time, daylily_at_bigpond.com writes:

Steve wrote:
> i left the heap to "cool down" for 6 months before using a thin layer of it as a mulch. During that six months some kikuyu grass had grown up onto the pile and when i took the manure from there I saw the most amazing thing. Under the grass and amongst its roots were 1000's of big native worms but elsewhere there was not a worm in sight. What were the worms "eating"? Roots? Decomposed manure? Bacteria?

The manure is a great source of bacteria food. By combining with sawdust (a fungal food, but often not a great sole source unless a mix of different woods), and leaving it compost for 6 minths (it's going to compost no matter you mean for the material to do something or not), it was developing some good populations of bacteria and fungi for your native worms. Probably with the manure/wood base, the pile of material was somewhat to very anaerobic early on, but with time, microbial growth slowed, and oxygen was not used up as rapidly. So the pile became more aerobic, and the protozoa and nematodes, maybe some microarthropods, moved in. The worms found the pile a great place to live. Because the pile is probably quite highly bacterial-dominated (typical of manure-based materials), and therefore nitrate-dominated, the grass was selected for, and is what is growing on the pile.

Without testing to know what is home, however, this is what is likely. Don't know for certain unless we have some data.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Tue Oct 21 2003 - 11:22:17 EDT

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