Pick up a shovel and dig up dirt, and occasionally see a few earthworm probes, and you're likely to disturb the boudoir time of the earthworms! How can a deaf and blind earthworm find his other half in the pitch-black soil? There are many rumors of earthworms, I heard that before the earthquake tens of thousands of earthworms will first drill out of the soil to escape, the earthworms that are cut in half will become two, really fake? Farmers want to raise earthworms to make compost, which kind of earthworm should they raise?
Q1: How big can an earthworm grow?
Earthworms are associated animals, and more than 6,000 species have been found and named around the world, and there are currently about 110 species in China. At present, the number of species found is still increasing, and in the case of China, it is estimated that at least a hundred species have not yet been named.
Different kinds of earthworms, body size, thickness, color, texture is also different, in the fishing tackle shop often hear "red earthworm" and "black earthworm", and in Taiwan, the larger earthworm commonly known as snake earthworm or mountain earthworm, some species up to one meter long. The largest recorded worldwide are the Australian giant snake worm (Megascolides australis) and the Amazon earthworm Rhinodrilus priollii, which is endemic to the Amazon basin in South America, with adults exceeding two metres in length and weighing nearly 400 grams.
Q2: Why is there a section of color on the earthworm that is particularly different?
If you see a lighter, slightly expanded area on an earthworm," you've found an "adult earthworm." This part is called "ring belt", adult earthworms will have ring belts, different earthworm ring belt types are different, some are a full circle of "ring type", some are half a circle of "saddle type", closer to the ring belt is the head, the farther end is the tail.
From the beginning, the vast majority of earthworms have annular bands in the 14th to 16th node position, and there will be prostates, male holes, female holes in front of and behind the ring belt position, and there are also insemination sac holes that are closer to the head and far from the ring belt.
There will also be a thin line on the earthworm, which can be seen by the naked eye, which is the "dorsal blood vessel" of the earthworm, and this side of the blood vessel can be seen is the back of the earthworm, and the other side is the abdomen, and the earthworm is crawling on the ground.
Q3: How are male earthworms and female earthworms divided?
There are no male earthworms or female earthworms in this world, because earthworms are "hermaphrodites". Hermaphrodite earthworms mostly require mating with other individuals to reproduce, although some species of earthworms can be self-fertilized, while others have male reproductive systems that shrink and adopt parthenogenesis.
Earthworms can not see or hear, and when they encounter other earthworms, they will touch each other with their bodies, feel each other's body length, size and smell, and mate with the same species and similar body size. "Earthworms of different species and too different sizes are unlikely to mate." When the earthworms are in love, the two earthworms will intertwine with each other in reverse, and their male holes will be mated to the insemination sac hole of the other earthworm, "In human parlance, it is type 69!" Because the position must be accurate, the male foramen of different species of earthworms and the morphology and location of the insemination sac holes are different, and mating cannot be completed.
Earthworms in their natural state usually mate one-on-one, but farmed compost earthworms may also have "multi-P hybrid parties" due to their high rearing density.
Q4: Do earthworms eat native food?
Not necessarily. Earthworms can be divided into three categories depending on their living position in the soil: surface type, bottom type and penetration type. Surface-type earthworms live in the dead leaves, compost, organic matter or humus layers on the surface of the soil, and feed mainly on plant remnants (plant-feeding), some eat a little soil, and some eat no soil at all. The underlying earthworm lives within 30 cm below the surface of the soil and usually moves laterally. Tunnels through the earthworm are straight down from the surface of the earth, even up to a meter deep, usually larger and stronger. Both bottom and penetrating earthworms eat soil, either pure soil food or plant food and soil food.
Q5: Is the size of the earthworm the best fertilizer?
Not necessarily, it depends on the type and feeding habits of earthworms. Earthworms pull whatever they eat, and if they eat cow dung, the ingredients pulled out will also be cow dung. However, in soil ecosystems, the function of earthworms is to "decompose plant residues, accelerate mineralization of organic matter", and increase soil activity and porosity. In other words, earthworms eat plant remnants, which are broken down in the body and excreted, making it easier for other organisms to take advantage of the nutrients.
The cultured earthworm species have better defecation conditions, while the earthworm dung of the wild earthworm species has its own ingenuity. Lai Yide said that some earthworms will probe their tails in the middle of the night to defecate, and if the defecation position is fixed and the number is large, it will become a "worm manure tower", which can increase the soil aggregate structure or help mix the soil. However, if the worm dung is discharged on the golf course and landscape garden, it will become a gardener's nightmare.
Q6: If you want to make compost from your home kitchen waste, you can go outdoors to dig up earthworms and use them back?
No. Farmers who want to use earthworms to make compost need to confirm the "material", "method" and "earthworm type".
The recommended ingredients are raw kitchen waste such as fruit peels, vegetable residues, and animal feces, and cooked kitchen waste such as leftovers is less suitable. In terms of practice, avoid "heating up" and "stacking too high", because earthworms are afraid of heat, if the material is stacked high to make the fermentation warmer according to the general compost, it is not conducive to the survival of earthworms.
The type suitable for composting is called compost earthworm, which is mostly a surface-type plant-eating species that can be cultivated and processed in large quantities of organic matter waste. There are about ten species of compost earthworms in the world, and there are three species in China, namely the European red earthworm, the Indian blue earthworm and the African night earthworm, which are different in size, color and ring position. One way to obtain it is purchased, and two or three more polycultures are used in folk farms; The second is to dig near the manure placement of the livestock farm, and usually find a lot of Indian blue earthworms.
When making earthworm compost, you need to pay attention to the proportion of materials and earthworms, you can use the wide-mouth container of the storage box to hold the material and earthworms, the container is first placed with coconut fiber soil, and then put in the earthworm and raw kitchen waste, if there is 1 liter of raw kitchen waste every day, it can be matched with about 0.5 kg of earthworms to have sufficient processing efficiency. In addition to continuously providing raw food waste as food, it is more important to avoid direct sunlight on the compost bin.
Q4: Do earthworms eat native food?
Not necessarily. Earthworms can be divided into three categories depending on their living position in the soil: surface type, bottom type and penetration type. Surface-type earthworms live in the dead leaves, compost, organic matter or humus layers on the surface of the soil, and feed mainly on plant remnants (plant-feeding), some eat a little soil, and some eat no soil at all. The underlying earthworm lives within 30 cm below the surface of the soil and usually moves laterally. Tunnels through the earthworm are straight down from the surface of the earth, even up to a meter deep, usually larger and stronger. Both bottom and penetrating earthworms eat soil, either pure soil food or plant food and soil food.
Q5: Is the size of the earthworm the best fertilizer?
Not necessarily, it depends on the type and feeding habits of earthworms. Earthworms pull whatever they eat, and if they eat cow dung, the ingredients pulled out will also be cow dung. However, in soil ecosystems, the function of earthworms is to "decompose plant residues, accelerate mineralization of organic matter", and increase soil activity and porosity. In other words, earthworms eat plant remnants, which are broken down in the body and excreted, making it easier for other organisms to take advantage of the nutrients. The cultured earthworm species have better defecation conditions, while the earthworm dung of the wild earthworm species has its own ingenuity. Lai Yide said that some earthworms will probe their tails in the middle of the night to defecate, and if the defecation position is fixed and the number is large, it will become a "worm manure tower", which can increase the soil aggregate structure or help mix the soil. However, if the worm dung is discharged on the golf course and landscape garden, it will become a gardener's nightmare.
Q6: If you want to make compost from your home kitchen waste, you can go outdoors to dig up earthworms and use them back?
No. Farmers who want to use earthworms to make compost need to confirm the "material", "method" and "earthworm type". The recommended ingredients are raw kitchen waste such as fruit peels, vegetable residues, and animal feces, and cooked kitchen waste such as leftovers is less suitable. In terms of practice, avoid "heating up" and "stacking too high", because earthworms are afraid of heat, if the material is stacked high to make the fermentation warmer according to the general compost, it is not conducive to the survival of earthworms. The type suitable for composting is called compost earthworm, which is mostly a surface-type plant-eating species that can be cultivated and processed in large quantities of organic matter waste. There are about ten species of compost earthworms in the world, and there are three species in China, namely the European red earthworm, the Indian blue earthworm and the African night earthworm, which are different in size, color and ring position. One way to obtain it is purchased, and two or three more polycultures are used in folk farms; The second is to dig near the manure placement of the livestock farm, and usually find a lot of Indian blue earthworms. When making earthworm compost, you need to pay attention to the proportion of materials and earthworms, you can use the wide-mouth container of the storage box to hold the material and earthworms, the container is first placed with coconut fiber soil, and then put in the earthworm and raw kitchen waste, if there is 1 liter of raw kitchen waste every day, it can be matched with about 0.5 kg of earthworms to have sufficient processing efficiency. In addition to continuously providing raw food waste as food, it is more important to avoid direct sunlight on the compost bin.
Q7: Will the earthworms be cut into two pieces from the middle?
In the body structure of the earthworm, the first half of the ring belt has various digestive organs, circulatory organs and reproductive organs, and the second half has only a few digestive organs such as intestines. If cut into two pieces, most species of earthworms will only survive the first half, the second half will die, and only a few species of earthworms will be cut into two segments to generate two more earthworms.
The three existing compost earthworms in China, the European red earthworm, the Indian blue earthworm and the African night earthworm can all be cut into two pieces and then spawn two more. There have even been foreign studies that cut the Indian blue earthworm into three pieces and generate three earthworms. However, during the process of regrowth, the front and back sections of the earthworm will lose some organs due to each other, and lose the function of accelerating the decomposition of plant debris. "If it is to make the compost earthworm more, then natural reproduction is still relatively fast."
Q8: Earthworms are good for agriculture and will not cause any harm?
Earthworms are beneficial to the agricultural environment most of the time, in addition to making the soil softer and more breathable, helping to accelerate the decomposition of organic matter in the soil to make plants more absorbable, but also adjusting the soil bacteriophasis and reducing the damage of nematodes in the soil. However, earthworms can also transmit fungal diseases of certain crops, such as wheat smut disease, and some penetrating earthworms can eat the seedlings and seeds of crops.
Q9: Why are there earthworms in some fields? Some fields do not have?
This is related to the degree of disturbance to the soil during tillage. The higher the degree of disturbance in the soil, the more disadvantageous it is for earthworms to survive.
There are almost no earthworms in rice fields, because it is not only often flooded and lacks oxygen, but also turns over the field and hits the field after harvesting, which is quite unfavorable to the survival of earthworms. There are more earthworms in orchards and vegetable gardens, but the customary agricultural method of applying pesticides and fertilizers will reduce the number of earthworm populations, and the grass mat will also increase the soil temperature and not conducive to the survival of earthworms.
Q10: I often hear that the presence of an army of earthworms is a precursor to a major earthquake?
"Of course not!" This rumor is the most ironic, the Chinese people are frightened by the earthquake, and this kind of news suddenly becomes more. In fact, whether it is sunny or rainy, there is a chance to see earthworms crawling out of the surface, and the types of earthworms that appear in the two weathers are different.
On sunny days, most of the earthworms crawl out of the earth cavity, the season is concentrated in October and November, crawling out of the earth because the ground temperature at night is higher than the soil surface temperature, if the humidity is high and easy to condense, the earthworm to the ground is to find a cool or wet place.
There are usually two types of earthworms that crawl out of the ground after rainy days, one is the magnificent far ringworm and the other is the flat earth snake earthworm. According to previous studies, when it rains infiltrate soil pores and the amount of oxygen in the soil decreases, earthworm species with higher oxygen consumption will climb to the surface to facilitate breathing. Another reason may be that the nitrogen-containing waste accumulated in the earthworm's body cannot be discharged after a long drought and no rain, and after the rain, the earthworms eagerly climb to the surface to avoid the large amount of nitrogen-containing waste they have discharged.
In short, at present, there is no relationship between the "earthworm army" and the "earthquake", if you see helpless crawling earthworms on the road, you may wish to move your fingers and put them on the nearby soil to let the earthworms go home smoothly.