Boulder Vermicomposting

Book Review: The Earth Moved

September 7th, 2009

“The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms”, by Amy Stewart, is 200 pages of fun for any home worm keeper. While Stewart’s home worm keeping, including her own journey and experiences, inform the book and pop up throughout the text, the focus is larger. Starting with Darwin, Stewart covers a broad swath of worm science.  The writing is easy to follow, refreshing, and interesting. At least if you’re interested in worms. However, as the subtitle indicates, if you aren’t already, you may be amazed by what they can do! These lowly creatures, with hardly any organs at all, are responsible for creating soil. And, as the book “Dirt” showed, soil is the foundation of human civilization.

Stewart does a great job of describing some of the characters in the world of worms.  Sam Jones started out studying grasslands, but ended up “one of the world’s leading earthworm taxonomists”.  Exotic species of worms are now his passion, to the point of creating a “Worms of the Philippines” poster (I search for this online, but was unable to find a reference). She also goes to Ohio and talks to Clive Edwards, a professor who’s done a lot of experiments on the efficacy of worm castings.  Edwards on vermicompost:

We found that 2 to 4 tons [of worm castings] per acre [of cornfield] increased yields, and also reduced crop loss due to disease and damaged fruit.  Not only that but there was a residual benefit that lasted up to four years.

Scott Subler, a former coworker of Edwards, founded a worm composting company, which unfortunately doesn’t appear to be around anymore.  He is interviewed talking about vermicomposting dairy cow manure with an industrial grade worm “reactor”. He has even “gone on QVC to sell his product and spread the message about the benefits of worm castings”.  Subler has found that “the inputs [to vermicomposting] are not the problem… It’s the output that’s a problem”; that has certainly been what I’ve found in my readings on large-scale vermiculture.

I don’t want to give the impression that Stewart focuses on people entirely.  On the contrary, each chapter is devoted to a specific aspect of worm knowledge or history.  She discusses the business of raising worms for sale, spends a page or two on the biological history of worms, writes about how she harvests and uses her worm castings, and covers different types of worms.  She talks about the difference between red wigglers and redworms (they’re different species).  Stewart even visits a sewage plant in California, where her uncle is working on a pilot project to use worms to process biosolids (I didn’t see any mention of vermicomposting on the facility website so I guess the pilot project didn’t work out).

Stewart’s book covers a lot of ground, from Darwin’s studies of worms to modern use of worms as biodetectors, from giant worms in Australia to the destruction of the Minnesota forests, due to non-native worms (more on that here).  She also has a very useful epilogue where she discusses how to get started keeping worms, a two-page bibliography full of interesting books that talk about worms, and an appendix full for resources, from newsletters to websites to worm bins.  The book was published in 2004, but many of the resources listed are still around.

All in all, a fantastic, fun book.  I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.

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