Wood Worm Farms

Since last year I use on my lawn only my own compost. I try to generate as much compost as possible, but it's always not enough... So some spots on the lawn get more, some less. On the picture is pretty clear, where I spread compost in spring 2009. As for me it's some prove, that home made compost is effective and applicable to lawns.

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If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich
state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to
vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
E. O. Wilson

I am always amazed of how environmental ideas are reflected by public behavior.
It's so fashionable now to speak about reducing carbon emission, minimizing ecological footprint,
growing ecological food, recycling, composting. It seems like if all those thing will come
to life, the environment will return to it's natural "state of equilibrium". The only thing,
that is always missing from those projects, is how to support the existing number of humans, while returning to natural balance.
Since many authors criticize the human technology as a phenomenon, let's see how can we do without it.
According to "Food Energy and Society" by David Pimentel, one human without technology (aka hunter-gatherer) needs 150ha of land to survive. So 9 * 10exp(9) hunter-gatherers need 150*9*10exp(9)ha, that is more then all the available land on Earth.
So we have to solve one of two questions:
1. Should we reduce worlds population?
or
2. How to support existing number of humans and save natural biodiversity at the same time?

There are many opinions for question 1. From as drastic as global nuclear war, to a liberal "Be fruitful and multiply".
As for wars, at my opinion, they harm the environment much more, then save it by reducing human population. Destruction of nature during wars always got to catastrophic scales, judging by all the written history of wars. Humans, though, managed to recover from war losses relatively fast. Other measures to reduce world population, like birth control, laws against large families,economical penalties, etc, also don't seem to be very effective.
And that's logical. Childbirth is one of the most important functions of a human body. Suppressing it could bring sicknesses physical and mental. It's, actually, the same as disabling any other vital function of our body, for example mobility, nutrition or vision. Beside of this, by reducing the human numbers we reduce our genetic diversity. We kill future Beethovens, Roosevelts, Einsteins. This way we risk to get to mental stagnation of a predefined society, with a scheduled number of people taking their planned slots.
I think that trying to reduce the human population is not a solution. And, in any case, it's impossible without technology.
As for question 2, it seems to me, that only technological solution is possible.
Actually, why should we use more and more land to grow our crops? Why not to use artificial ecosystems, like aquaponics, worm composting, vertical farming?
Only this way we can reduce land used for agriculture and return it to natural ecosystems. To be a part of nature we have to learn its ways.
If we could learn how to built artificial ecosystem, we also could solve the question of human overpopulation by colonizing space and hostile environments on Earth. There is a lot of space on other planets and, maybe, other star systems. Earning experience, we can make our artificial ecosystems more and more complex, including more and more species - more and more approaching the natural ones.
This way mankind gets a new role - its real mission - to protect, grow life and propagate it to space.

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After spring rains those beautiful worms usually remain on open light longer, then others.
They also start their spring travels earlier. I think, I found their scientific name, thanks to Warm Watch. It's Octolasion Cyaneum. According to British Natural History Museum:
"Blue-grey worm (Octolasion cyaneum)
Habitat
Found in pasture and arable land, gardens and woodlands. Lives in the topsoil.
Diet
Eats soil"
So, theoretically they can be used as compost worms, if they will survive the next fish feeding...

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The total volume of this unit is approximately 21' x 9' x 3' = 567 cu. feet.
I started to fill it with compostable material from Cafe Twigs on the beginning of March 2010. In parallel I was adding some worms once in 2 - 3 weeks. The cumulative amount of worms didn't go more, then 500 by now.
The usual required production amount of worms per volume is 500 per cu. foot. So my worms have to multiply from only 500 to 567*500 that is 567 times!
How much time will it take?
Here is some data from All About Worms

1) Red Worms (Eisenia Fetida) Reproductive rate: Approximately 10 young per worm per week under ideal conditions.
2)Average number of young per cocoon: Approximately 3.
3) Time to emergence from the cocoon: Approximately 30-75 days under ideal conditions.
4) Time to sexual maturity: Approximately 85-150 days under ideal conditions.

According to 1), 3) and 4) it takes average 40 + 100 days = 20 weeks for a cycle of worm generation: for worm from a cocoon be able to lay a cocoon.
We get the next distribution:

Weeks	Number of worms	Number of Cocoons
1	500	500 * 10
2	500	500 * 10 + 500
3	500	500 * 10 + 500 * 2
...	...	...
20	500	500 * 10 + 500 * 19
21	500 + 500*10	(500+500 * 10) * 10 - 500 * 10
22	500 + 500*10*2	(500+500 * 10) * 10 + (500+500 * 10) - 500 * 10 *2
...	...	...

So under ideal conditions worms should reach the production amount in about 40 - 50 weeks.

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Fist warm rain in Spring - it's worm collection time, as usually...
This year the goal is much more prosaic. The nightcrawlers will be fed to fish , since I have a sharp shortage of composting worms due to high demand and many projects.
It's interesting to watch survival abilities of the wild worms. Collected from almost dry sand they managed to recover after an hour in a plastic container with little water. Those, who didn't recover, or was squished by a car, remain in the container. They should be fed first.
The bedding is also different this year. It's a standard bedding I use for compost worms - shredded cardboard and leaves 50:50, plus small amount of clayish soil.

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