As above. Sorry if this is a silly question!
I realise there is no ‘point’ to any particular animal or plant, but you often find that various species provide some sort of benefit (e.g. plants giving out oxygen, those birds that clean crocodiles’ teeth, spiders eat a lot of flies).
I just wondered if worms are particularly ‘useful’, because they don’t seem to do much from what I can tell
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They are part of the process of breaking organic waste down into soil. They also break up the topsoil and prevent it from becoming compacted and unsuitable for root formation.
They are one of the most important macroscopic creatures to topsoil formation and health. If earthworms died out tomorrow, most other terrestrial species on earth would also die out within 50 years due to mass famine.
If you try to produce some compost from organic material, you realize immediately how important small critters in the top soil are.
Leaves in a bin with a bit of soil from your plants? That thing takes forever.
Throw in some soil from the garden (probably with some worms in it)? That heap turns into nice black fertile soil so fast!
Spoiler: there’s a lot of worm poop in there.
Worm eats tiny bits of plant/animal.
Worm poops.
Plant eats worm poop.
Plant puts nitrogen from worm poop into leaves.
PHOTOSYNTHESIS!
Human eats plant, discards inedible bits.
Return to start.
We have a box with worms in our apartment. They eat all our vegetable waste and every few months you can remove fresh soil from the bottom of the box.
When you open the box it also smells like a fresh forest as they eat everything before it goes bad.
They tremendously help to maintain the ecosystem by enabling better and deeper water penetration in the soil.
How so? Simply by digging all these tunnels underground, which help the water to evenly spread and to reach deeper, which in turn is vital for the vast majority of plants (including trees of course).
So essential that you need major work to run a garden without either earthworms or fertilisers.
Our intensive veg garden runs three worm farms, 2 are repurposed bath tubs. These really get a mass of garden waste and food scraps broken down faster. They also do the same with buried waste in the soil, as well as airating it. Without their holes, our thick heavy clay soil would be the death of most plants in the wet season here.
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