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Home: The conqueror worms
It's time we gave our squirmy little friends the proper respect...

by Annie Spiegelman

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"We are the worms...We are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day...so let's start giving." Isn't that a Lionel Richie hit from the '80s? All together now! "We are the worms."

Isn't it time we started showing some respect and gratitude for the underappreciated earthworm, the night crawlers and their back-up band, fungi and bacteria? They are the true heroes and workhorses who do all the necessary dirty work to keep our soil full of nutrients. It's said that in the late 19th-century, British scientist and brainiac Charles Darwin spent nearly 40 years studying earthworms. Obviously, this respected scholar and naturalist had way too much time on his hands. He so would have benefited from Wikipedia. Maybe then he wouldn't have bored his friends to tears for 40 years with his controversial theories of evolution and signed copies of his painstakingly detailed (but endearing) tome, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations of their Habits. I'm certain that was a real page turner...

Dirt Diva's Darwin factoids:

• Worms help air and water enter and circulate through soil.

• They break down organic matter, such as leaves, into nutrients plants can use.

• Worms secrete slime, which contains nitrogen, one of the most important elements for healthy plants.

• One pound of red wigglers in a compost pile can eat nearly 65 pounds of food scraps in three to four months!

• They eat and dump and leave behind those precious worm castings, or pure fertilizer. Soil scientists and worm-geeks alike know earthworm castings can contain even more nutrients than regular compost.

I have good news for those of you who don't have the time, space or guts to build and maintain your own worm bin. Who needs more work, anyway? Allow me then to proudly introduce to you an organic gardener's—and diva's—best friend. Drum roll please...ta-da! TerraCycle worm poop! Yup, you read that right. Worm poop in a recycled bottle. Now that's American ingenuity.

It all began back in 2001 in a Princeton University dorm room, after former students and future CEOs Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer witnessed a classmate feeding food scraps to a box of worms. They learned their classmate fed the worms in exchange for their castings, which were loaded with the abundant nutrients he required to support the special plants he was furtively growing in his basement. (I'll let you take a guess.)

Anyway, Szaky and Beyer's idea was simple and brilliant: Take waste, process it and turn it into a useful product. The next summer Szaky and Beyer took all of the Princeton Dining Services waste and processed it in their prototype "worm gin." By the end of the summer, they had perfected their processing and found their first investor. The company grew quickly and by 2005, Home Depot, Whole Foods, Home Depot Canada, Wal-Mart Canada, Wild Oats, Do-It-Best and many more plant nurseries and home stores began carrying the TerraCycle line.

Most recently, TerraCycle has been named one of the 100 most innovative companies by Red Herring magazine and has been awarded the Environmental Stewardship Award from Home Depot Canada. In 2006, an Inc. magazine cover story called TerraCycle "the coolest little start-up in America."

And just this month TerraCycle deservedly earned the "Sparkly Green Tiara Award" bestowed by "The Dirt Diva Royal Horticultural Society"! As you know, I don't hand out eco-endorsements all willy-nilly, like some pathetic commoner grabbing polka-dotted bikini bottoms at a bargain basement sale. (Just stay out of my way at Filene's Basement...I once found a cashmere pashmina for 5 bucks.)

I chose to crown the worm poop people for three reasons:

• Fertilizing your yard with worm poop is fun to do and to talk about. Try it!

• After using it, my flowers stayed healthy even in the summer heat.

• TerraCycle not only produces an all-natural, eco-friendly plant food made from organic garbage, but it is the first mass-produced product in the world to be packaged in "used plastic soda bottles." TerraCycle boasts its products leave no negative environmental footprint. And if one good turn deserves another, TerraCycle has recycled and reused more than 2 million soda bottles. That act alone deserves a tiara. And a cocktail!

Alas, I've been lawn bashing all summer, trying to convince you, my loyal readers, to replace some if not all of your politically incorrect lawn with natives and drought-tolerant plants. But you pay no heed. If you're procrastinating and still have that vain plot of insipid turf lying around demanding attention, the fall is a great time to fertilize it. This will help the grass recover from the summer heat, and grow dense, deep roots for a healthy spring lawn. Each single-liter reused bottle of TerraCycle lawn fertilizer comes with a hose attachment that meters out dosages properly. It won't burn your lawn, but will feed a 2,500-square-foot lawn with NPK of 5-1-1 organically without polluting your neighborhood and local waterways with synthetic fertilizers.

Why do I disapprove of synthetic fertilizers? Because of the unnaturally high levels of nitrogen and salts. Most synthetic fertilizers kill earthworms by drying them to a crisp. Worms don't want to see any neon-colored manmade crystals. Remember, earthworms thrive in moisture and dark. All they require is some good ol' fungi, bacteria, a banana peel or two and yesterday's sports page.

A Dirt Diva "Did You Know?"

Every year over 30 billion kids' drink containers are thrown out in North America. A large portion of these containers are juice pouches, which are non-recyclable and are not biodegradable. Therefore, they are sent to a landfill. Ouchie!

A Dirt Diva "C'mon Already!"

The Drink Pouch Brigade: Honest Tea and TerraCycle have joined together to launch a recycling program to collect and reuse drink pouches. These two innovative companies have created a program called the Drink Pouch Brigade. Schools, houses of worship and other organizations can help the environment while raising money for charities by joining and sending in any brand of used juice pouches—for free, baby!

Even better, if it's an Honest Tea juice drink, which is a new, less-sugary and organic juice option now available at Target and Whole Foods, your school will receive 2 cents for each recycled juice pouch sent in. To sign up your school or organization and to receive prepaid shipping labels, go to www.terracycle.net/dpb.

Kinsey Smith, a second-grade teacher at Crocker Riverside Elementary School in Sacramento, shares this about the program:

"I keep a TerraCycle box in my classroom and the students bring drink containers in throughout the year. This program is easy to implement—the boxes are sent just for asking, the postage is prepaid for you. It is such an easy way to do something beneficial. The students bring in their used containers, count them and when the box gets full, we seal it up and start a new box—it couldn't be more simple."

For more on vermiculture, read the worm manifesto by Amy Stewart titled The Earth Moved.

A Dirt Diva live rude worms! Final Factoid: Worms are hermaphrodites. Each worm has both male and female organs. Worms reproduce by joining their clitella (swollen area near the head of a mature worm) and exchanging sperm, sometimes for four hours. Some worms can self-fertilize or just produce all females.

Break out the sparkly green worm tiaras! (Everybody! "We are the worms...We are the childre...")

Visit Annie at dirtdiva.com and bring your friends!