wormyculture (research article)

As population increases, the number of bags filled with garbage, may it be inorganic or organic, also increases. Farmers already made innovations on how to reduce biodegradable wastes and at the same time benefiting them for their plant growing. One of these solutions is called Vermicomposting. This is the decomposing of organic wastes through the annelidic consumption. The castings or the organic wastes produced by these earthworms, specifically known as the African Nightcrawlers, are used as a fertilizer, which is five times more effective than the ordinary soil mixture. This is the rationale behind our study.

We wanted to know if the type of feed could affect the growth of the African Nightcrawlers in terms of their length and mass. We also aimed to figure out which type of feed could make the Nighcrawlers produce the greatest amount of worm castings.

We bought the African Nightcrawlers from Cabantan, Barangay Luz. There, the residents sold us the worms and gave us some tips in raising them. We randomly grouped the worms into the four groups by the type of feed that would be consumed by the subjects. One group was fed with 7 grams of paper; the other was fed with decayed vegetables; the third group was fed with the mixture of both paper and vegetables and for the control group, we did not feed them with anything.

Here’s the picture:

Each set-up has 300 g of soil and 235 mL of water. All the groups are of the same conditions except for the feed given to them. The worms were fed weekly. We also measured their lengths and mass weekly for five weeks. We also measured the worm castings while we were measuring the growth of the African Nightcrawlers. Every after measurement, we make renew the whole set-up of each group.

We saw that there was no significant difference between the lengths and masses of the different groups of Nightcrawlers. We yielded the greatest amount of worm castings from the group of worms which consumed vegetables.

After the five observations, we analyzed the data gathered. We found out that the type of feed could not affect the growth of the African Nightcrawlers in terms of their length and mass. Vegetable feed is the most effect feed in terms of the production of worm castings by the African Nightcrawlers.

By feeding African Nightcrawlers with your organic garbage, you do not only help them grow healthy but you also help reduce garbage, saving mother earth and enriching the soil with the nutrients it would need for growing plants without harming the earth. As a domino effect, this would help in the livelihood of farmers, and vermiculturists and somehow give jobs to the unemployed and somehow save many people.