What's going on - this lawn looks like it has measles – how come there are some areas where the snow has melted, and other areas where the snow hasn’t melted? I took this shot yesterday AM. Salt has nothing to do with the melted areas...
Norm, you’re right in your comment below, Worms it is. The worms in the NEO clay top soils are real WORKHORSES. They move tons of soil around nightly. And they live on organics – So that raises the question WHAT HAVE YOU FED YOUR WORMS TODAY?
All those leaves that fell last fall will soon be gone, dragged one by one down into the worms’ middens [1] . Look at the photo on the LH above – the lawn looks like a praire dog colony – except the “dogs” are worms. There is a worm casting pile in every direction - evenly spaced about a foot apart. That adds up to thousands of worms in your average lawn. Look at the photo on the RH side – see the woody stick like things in the center? Those stick-like things are the central skeletal parts of last fall’s oak leaves. The worms – while there is snow on the ground and the temperature is below freezing at night – come to the surface, discharge the soil/organic mix they ingest, and then physically drag leaves stem first down into the midden pile. Go out yourself and look around in the leaves – you will see what I’m talking about.
But there are problems:
1. In Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, and many, many communities the fallen leaves which feed worms are removed – un-aware citizens PAY gardeners to use gas powered blowers to remove every single leaf – the ground is stripped right down to the dirt. (and when it rains hard the dirt is put into solution by the agitation of the rain drops – all this erosion goes into Lake Erie. Million of tons of soil annually) The leaves are piled on the curb – where residents then pay tax money to have the leaves hauled away.
2. Result – Worm populations are reduced because there is less food for them. This means fewer worms and fewer worm holes in the clay. I have excavated in lawns and followed the quarter inch diameter worm holes down 3 feet – and the holes were still going.
3. Fewer worms results in fewer holes meaning less porous soil surfaces and thus increased runoff of precipitation.
4. More runoff means more flood infrastructure – pipes, culverts, storage, treatment needs to be built - requiring spending of millions of dollars of precious tax money - when worms will handle the water for free.
Now if I were Cleveland’s sustainability guy, Andrew Watterson, I would conduct an education program on worms in NEO schools for a year. Simultaneously I would meet with the NEO municipal eco-reps and encourage the communities upstream from Cleveland to stop providing free leaf pick up. If those upstream communities refused to cooperate, I would consider legal action against the upstream communities to recover the costs of the added infrastructure that Cleveland has build and will have to build to handle the additional runoff caused by the failure of the upstream communities to feed their worms. You think I’m kidding? WORMS SAVE TAX DOLLARS!
So do you think NEORSD [2] – our regional sewer and storm water management authority – who are about to raise our sewer rates to the moon - has any thing about cultivating (and not starving them out) worms on its web site? NADA. Do you think there is anything about disconnecting your downspout from the sewer – as Susan Miller has been encouraging in the “water cycle” discussion [3] on REALNEO? NADA.
Worms are already living that underground Utopian lifestyle [4] Sudhir recommends - let's work in harmony with them!
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