Clean Parks in Japan

We live in a neat and clean country: There's usually a caretaker for every neighborhood park who sweeps the leaves, gathers them up and collects them into, yes, garbage bags. These are then picked up and disposed of in incinerators just like all the rest of the city's garbage. It always baffles me that nobody thinks of composting these leaves. They'd also make good material for worm bedding.

Oligochaetologists R US!

If oligochaetology is the study of worms, does that make us oligochaetologists?






"Oligochaete! Thou taxonomic pain!
My mouth and mind and memory affirm,
Twould be much less a stress upon the brain
To designate you merely as a worm..........
The object of my study is to try
To help both man and worm see eye to eye."
- D. N. Howell (1976)




Oligochaetology is the study of worms - specifically, the Class Oligochaeta within the Phylum Annelida. Other classes in the Phylum Annelida, the true segmented worms, include the Acanthobdellae (bristle worms), Aphononeura (suction-feeding worms), Branchiobdellae (crayfish worms), Hirudinea (leeches), and Polychaeta (sand worms, tube worms, and clam worms). Over 15,000 species of worms have been described worldwide; we now recognize 2,450 species in North America north of Mexico.








Worms occur in virtually all habitats where water is present, even in areas that are only slightly moist. Numerous species also occur exclusively on land. Most annelids are free-living, but many species are parasitic, mutualistic, or commensal during part of or throughout their life cycle.

Worms are an important and often dominant group in aquatic systems, providing a valuable food source for many other aquatic organisms; 131 species presently are known to occur in Illinois. As early as Aristotle, aquatic worms have been recognized for their ability to thrive in organically polluted waters, often forming dense colonies that resemble red waving carpets. Recent works have noted the presence of aquatic worms in almost every habitat that is associated with water, including pristine springs, streams, wells, seeps, and lakes, as well as industrially polluted harbors, large rivers, and waste retention ponds.

Earthworms, although numbering only about 30 species in Illinois, play an important role in the decomposition of organic matter, mineral cycling, and the aeration, drainage, and root penetration of the soil; through this activity, they also provide suitable habitat for smaller soil fauna, particularly micro-organisms. It has been estimated that earthworms can 'move' up to 18 tons of soil per acre each year. Abundance estimates of earthworms have been as high as three million per acre.


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This entry is borrowed from The Illinois Natural History Survey.

You can find them on the web at:

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/

Worms slow down during winter

Activity slows down considerably during cold months

Winter

It's getting cold in Kobe. Temperatures around 5 C at night and 12 or 13 during the day. Worms are lazy and by far not as active as a month ago. Am considering 2 options:

A) buy a glasshouse to raise day time temperatures in the boxes and hop that the bedding will keep warm during the night
B) move a couple of worm bins into the house.

Cyd, my wife, does not protest.

Test Podcast

here you can listen to my podcast by clicking on the title. This is only a test podcast and not the real thing.

Worm Party

Had a few friends with children over to learn about worms and how to make a worm box. Got rained out but did manage to make 1 box. Kids just love to work with worms.

where it all begins

Garbage garbage garbage - the planet drowns in garbage and we as a society spend a lot of tax dollars on getting rid of it.
When I was a kid, it was clear that not all garbage gets collected by trucks and then 'thrown away' [in landfills or expensive incinerators]. Some garbage was recycled in the backyard compost bin and reused as fertilizer in the garden. According to some statistics, 60% of all garbage produced is organic. Most, if not all of this can be recycled right there where it is produced. I use worms to help me accomplish this job in my home.

Nowadays, I doubt that children know that garbage can be the raw material of valuable fertilizers. I also doubt that adults are aware of the huge cost to our tax dollars (or Euros or Yen) as well as our environment (those garbage trucks burn Diesel and emit CO2 and other toxic gases).

Hence it becomes an educational issue.

For this reason, I have initated the "Neighborhood Worm Farm, with the following mission statement:

Neighborhood Worm Farm promotes vermiculture in urban areas with the objective to recycle organic wastes on the spot with the aid of earthworms and educate children and adults in vermiculture.
Neighborhood Worm Farm will provide knowhow as well as live worms and the necessary hardware.