Importation to Dry Islands
p. 62 · Read in the full issue
Earthworms And Soil
Fertility
Importation to Dry Islands Suggested
From Our Own Correspondent T__ . MANGAIA, Cook Islands.
HE soil of this island, which is highly productive without fertiliser as far as oranges and pineapples are con cerned, falls short when it comes to vege tables. This may be due to extreme acidity, but it is as likely to be traced back to the paucity of earthworms.
One notes in Rarotonga that the most fertile fields seem to be those with the largest number of worms to the square yard. A point of interest is that not only worms but ugly ten-inch centipedes are found in this fertile soil. Perhaps their burrowing propensities may assist their earth-worm neighbours to break up the soil.
Here at Mangaia we rarely see a worm, even after rain, and in many fields the earth, reddish in hue, has a dry and tight appearance ■ even when freshly cultivated.
To suggest importing worms sems like a joke, but one has reason to believe that incalculable good might result. The creatures aerate, moisten and fertilise the soil they live in and the more there are of them the better the harvest that can be expected.
In spite of the cry that there is not enough land for the native population there are large areas on this island that lie idle and unproductive. And the fertile portions have been planted to death—the same crop being taken off each section every year. (Editorial Note: The importation of earth-worms to increase fertility is not unknown. The Dutch have made efforts since the end of World War II to restock their polder land with worms. These polders, reclaimed in the first place from the North Sea and the Zuider Zee, were flooded during the German occupation of Holland. They have been again drained by the Dutch, but the salt water killed the worms. Worms live and breed freely in soil rich in humus and decaying leaves and other vegetable matter. This fact has been utilised by the Dutch in bringing fertility back to their farmlands and by at least one American whose cultivation of worms in compost-heaps turned (it is reported in a recent “Reader’s Digest”) a piece of Pacific coast desert into a garden paradise.