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WORM
CASTINGS
add enzymes to the soil
By
KK Fowlkes
Plants
cannot be strong without the soil medium in which they grow. I was
made aware of this some years ago when I worked for about a year
at a sprouting company. While there we sprouted some sunflower
seeds. The sprouts grew tall and pretty and we tried to market
them to restaurants that had salad bars. As it turned out, the
sprouts would go bad and become slimy in the refrigerator in a 3
or 4 days. At the same time, I was traveling back and forth to a
large city and noticed sunflower greens in a local health food
store. They were white stemmed, had dark green leaves amd were
much healthier than the sprouts I had grown. I found that they
were grown in soil rather than in a hydroponics solution. I was
amazed to take them home and find that they lasted as much as 2
weeks in the refrigerator.
Later
when I studied with Ann Wigmore, I learned her method of growing
in soil. She had a worm bin and let her worms compost all of the
used wheatgrass, sunflower, and buckwheat mats. In all her
simplicity, Ann Wigmore had great knowledge about nature and soil
and its importance in supplying plants with the correct 'food' for
them to build enzyme rich substances that would sustain their life
as a healthy plant.
Last
fall, a vermicomposter from Louisiana was trying to get me to
introduce castings and worms to our customers who grow wheatgrass.
He sent me samples to try and told me to use 1 cup of castings
mixed in with my growing soil, which I did. [I was amazed to
find that I got about 20 to 25 percent more grass from the same
tray.] I was growing barley and had been getting 36 ounces of
grass per flat. After using the worm castings, I harvested 44
ounces of grass and the same amount of soil, sprinkled with
azomite, and 3 cups barley seed). Actually, I did this same
experiment about 3 times and got the same result each time. We are
excited to finally be able to introduce these products to our
website.
I
went back to my stand-by, Edward Howell, to find out what he had
to say about enzymes in the soil and how they relate to enzymes in
the plant. I am quoting him directly here as he says it so much
better that I ever could: (Enzyme Nutrition, by Edward
Howell pp.157-159.
Scientists
are now measuring the value of a soil by the amount of enzymes it
contains. These enzyme values have a direct relationship to the
quality of our nutrition and health. It is known that the
operation of microorganisms in the soil is very important to the
growth of plants. The world is commencing to awaken to the
importance of enzymes in the life of the soil, that is to say, the
biological activity of the soil. A plant, like an animal, needs
enzymes to prosper.
In
connection with the enrichment of the soil, the enzyme
contributions of earthworms should not be ignored. Charles Darwin
realized the part worms have played in building soil and wrote a
treatise on the subject. In the act of burrowing through the
earth, worms engulf the soil, and extract usable materials as
food. After passing through the length of the worm, the remainder
is expelled in the form of casts which contain a valuable
contribution of worm enzyme excretions. The earthworms, like all
other animals, continually take in enzymes and eliminate them in
their excretions, giving the soil an endowment of free enzymes.
Soil rich in worm casts is sought after by some horticulturists
for the cultivation of favored plants. It makes high-grade plant
food.
Worms
not only add enzymes to the soil but also loosen it, permitting
water and air deeper access.
We
must consume the best quality foods grown from healthy soils. As
pointed out, use of castings increased yield up to 25 percent. Dr.
Howell points out that the nutritional value of the entire crop is
improved if grown in soil where there is significant worm
activity.
Remember,
worm castings are biologically safe and contain no pathogens.
Answers about earthworms from the New Farm Answer Team:
1.
Does the "manure" from earthworms have to meet the same
criteria as other
manures?
No.
According to the NOSB Compost Task Force, earthworm castings are
'finely divided organic material produced non-thermophilically due
to interactions between aerobic microorganisms and earthworms, as
organic material passes through the earthworm gut.' It makes no
sense that earthworm castings would have to meet the same
requirements as manure.
LETTERS FROM
READERS:
Hi,
Recently looking at your site for information about wheatgrass and
we went to the "medical references" page. It struck us that none
of the articles cited are more recent than 1959!!! In medical terms these articles
are outdated and virtually irrelevant. Can you direct us to more
recent research?
(An answer
from one of our contributing authors:)
Thank you for
your e-mail. We are glad you visited the site, and took the
time to contact us. You make an interesting and provocative
observation about the timeliness of the articles posted. In reply to your
comments, there is a short answer, and a long one.
The long one is food for an article or even book, and we will pass
your question along to one of our contributing authors, as the story
about chlorophyll is closely tied with big business, the pharmaceutical,
and the medical establishment.
For the short, first of all, we do not claim that the list
provided on the site is exhaustive, but it does give quite a bit of background
material of importance. In fact, a great deal of that work is still
quite relevant in our opinion, and becoming more so by the day.
Second, as you well know, in this day and age research dollars are
provided usually with the motive to find ways to make more money.
Large
pharmaceutical or medical companies, and often the universities or laboratories associated
with them, are funded based on the evaluation of the applicability of the work to make new products for new markets.
Generally now, the direction is ever more towards the 'genetic manipulation'
model, huge budgets, expensive technology, and other accoutrements of big
business. Chlorophyll, wheatgrass, raw foods, etc. are not 'big ticket'
items, and people are not dependent on an outside entity to supply them.
Not much of a market in that.
As you noted by the dates of the research articles, they cluster
in the 1930's to 1950's. During those years there was a tremendous push,
accelerated by the advent of world war two, to find a suitable,
inexpensive, effective antibiotic. Molds, sulphas, and in
fact chlorophylls were widely researched via formal funding streams as the motive
then was more basic to the problems of infection since penicillin was not
yet developed, or in its very early stages. Once penicillin
showed such remarkable properties, other research fell off.
I think now there is a resurgence of real, formal investigation in
the area of chlorophyll and enzymes, and we only have to go to the works of
Pines, or Hagiwara, or Howell. However, giving people MORE control
over their lives and health at minimal expense and dependency is not really in the
interest of most of the large pharmaceutical or medical entities. as
you know, the 'Terminator' grain seed (does not reproduce) is the direction
large seed companies are going, not really the reverse.
For us, there is optimism that somehow people are becoming
researchers themselves, and our site gives people tools and information they
need to participate actively in this. For example, Optimum West
Health Center has had many thousands of people pass through their doors who have
taken an active role in research and put themselves on the line to do it.
This is very exciting, humbling, and can give us hope that we ourselves
can participate in this life adventure as effectively and productively
as a scientist doing 'research'.
Results of efforts made by participants at Optimum, for example,
are at the least edifying, and in many cases extraordinary. The formal
medical establishment, however, views many of these results as
incompatible with modern medicine, and sometimes goes to no small effort to quash
certain findings.
Given the above, each person studying in an area such as enzyme
nutrition or use of chlorophyllins can in fact become a 'researcher of one' and
add to a small, but growing body of knowledge.
The book 'One Straw Revolution' by Matsunobu Fukuoka is highly
recommended as a viewpoint that, like 'Be Your Own Doctor' by Ann Wigmore,
puts the responsibility on each of us to pursue and investigate life in the
ways that intrigue us, not necessarily look to others.
We hope you continue your investigations and research in this
area, and hope you will share with us findings you would like others to know
about.
Kind regards,
Chuck Juhn
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