Dung worms help grow lettuce

They will work on the harvest in greenhouse conditions.

A method for creating an agronomic ecosystem with the help of… dung worms was developed by Tomsk scientists. Recently, the Siberian Federal Scientific Center for Agrobiotechnologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences received a patent for a new method of growing lettuce in such a system.

As it became known to MK, attempts to improve the properties of the soil with the help of worms have been made before, but before that ordinary earthworms were used for this, which, as it turned out, was not very effective. Cocoons and young immature worms are planted in the soil, and the compost obtained as a result of their work is not as fertile as farmers would like. The Siberians decided to take a different path and used dung (compost) worms of the species Eisenia fetida in their experiment. They reach puberty much earlier than rain and begin to multiply, and therefore begin to benefit much earlier.

As the experiment showed, to achieve the best result, 12 to 36 worms should be used per kilogram of “soil” or substrate. This is how much substrate is required to fill the container. “Soil” consists of manure and peat in a ratio of 1:9. This mixture is laid out in two-liter polyethylene containers and infused for a week, and only then worms are populated in it. As a result of their vital activity, organic residues are decomposed into elements that are more accessible for plant nutrition, so a salad can be planted in a week. As a result, leaves grow much faster than under normal conditions, and their surface area is one and a half times greater than the area of ​​leaves growing on soil without worms.