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How Earthworms, microorganisms, insects and animals can help your garden

Sometime gardeners work against nature, spraying their gardens with all sorts of chemicals. However to achieve a beautiful garden it often pays to work with nature. If you want to keep your soil healthy then using earthworms, microorganisms and insects can be your best friends in the garden. Below are three of your best friends when it comes to helping create a healthy soil for your flowers, trees and vegetables.

1. Earthworms: Earthworms are perhaps the most useful of all living creatures when it comes to your garden soil. For a healthy soil you want the ground to be turned over to keep it aerated plus you want fallen leaves and other vegetation to be broken down so that your plants can make use of the nutrients.

The waste products that worms produce are called “casts” and are a wonderfully rich in fertilizer and microorganisms. Some people will go out and buy worms but all you have to do is add humus to your soil and worms will naturally arrive to your garden. If you want to create your own compost heap then placing it on soil is advised so that the worms can work their way into it and help break down the compost contents. You can even buy special “wormeries” which you will with kitchen waste and simply wait for the worms to convert it to fertilizer.

2. Microorganisms: If you knew just home many microorganisms were in just a small handful of soil you would fall off your chair, there can be literally billions of them. Examples of these microorganisms include fungi, lichens, bacteria, molds, actinomycetes, mycorrhizae and protozoa. They spend their time consuming waste products as well as prey upon each other. They especially love warm and moist organic matter.

3. Insects and other large animals: It is not just earth worms which act as underground gardeners; there are also insects such as tillers who create burrows and holes. As they come back up to the surface they bring up lots of soil. Then there are larger animals such as gophers and moles which can be just as beneficial as the smaller insects. Gardeners who want a perfect lawn often use devices to deter moles from their gardens however they are really doing you a great favor by creating holes in the soil which help aerate it. So what sort of gardener are you? Do you want to work with or against nature?

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