Worming through spring

My friend Liam studies soil megafauna.

In a word: worms. A soil scientist from Dublin, Liam studies the way that worms interact with various soil microorganisms. I’ve learned a bit about worms from Liam, most interestingly that all Midwestern worms are immigrants, having arrived here (slowly, one imagines) after the last glacial period, some 10,000 years ago.

The Driftless Area in which Brigit Rest is located was not glaciated during that period, nor during the previous three eras of glaciation, hence the regional name that refers to the absence of the ground-down rocks or “glacial drift” found in other Midwestern soils. Liam had a theory that there might be worms of ancient lineage, too, on the land. So we conducted a science experiment one summer afternoon. Liam brought the equipment: a bottle of formaldehyde, a box made of thin but heavy metal, and some dry mustard. With his young sons watching gleefully, we mixed the mustard with water, pushed the wood into the soil, and poured the mustard-water over it.
Within a few moments, worms writhed forth from the soil, unfortunate little mustard-gassed soldiers. Liam grabbed them with a long tweezers and popped them into bottle of formaldehyde, where their writing instantly ceased. “Martyrs to science,” he called them.

We tested a few locations—in the woods, in the grass, under a big oak—but always with the same results. We caught the same immigrant worms found in Illinois and other glaciated Midwestern states. Perhaps those pre-glaciation species are there, squirming around making soil beneath our feet, but we can’t prove it.

I have been thinking about worms a lot this spring, because I have been gardening a lot. We are establishing a new vegetable patch, which entailed plowing up a huge stretch of lawn. Mulch paths are helping keep down the weeds that erupt from the newly-exposed soil, but in the vegetable beds themselves, I’m on my knees every weekend with my little trowel, digging.

I have been reading about no-till gardening, and it sounds a worthy aim. I’ve always wondered whether tearing apart the soil fabric was really conducive to soil health, and the idea of using mulch and hand-pulling to keep down weeds (rather than the yearly rototilling) seems sensible. I was especially interested in the question of whether tilling disturbs the soil microfauna, especially the fungi that live in mycorrhizal relationship with plants, helping their large green friends absorb nutrients from the soil.

But I didn’t start reading about the no-till approach until the plowing was already done and the fungal colonies thoroughly dislodged. I have no doubt that many worms died in the preparation of the new garden. This year, such disruption of the land bothers me, because I have been following the frightening progress of the colony collapse disorder that has stricken American honeybees. Thinking of bees and worms, I ponder the importance of the small beings of our world.

Bees, worms—the “eek” and “ish” factors come into play when we think of these insects. They are not cute like pandas or awesome like polar bears. But they weave the web of our world. And they feed us: worms creating the soil in which our food plants grow, bees pollinating them to bring us fruit and seeds. Unless something happens to them, we ignore them. We never, for instance, give thanks to the worms when we pray over dinner.

Perhaps we should. As I’ve been gardening this spring, I’ve sent grateful thoughts to the worms that build our soil. I've kept my eyes open for them in my digging and move them to another part of the row rather than risking plunging my trowel through their muscleless bodies. I think of how human life is held together by these seemingly simple and unevolved creatures who have occupied our soil since the time of the dinosaurs.

Humble things, worms. Yet without them, our soil would become rock-hard. Corn would wither, trying to grow from the stony soil. Forests would fall, and erosion would gouge great canyons through the land. In the new and sterile world, who would know that it was the loss of the humble earthworm that wreaked such a catastrophe?