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Tonight's Worm Moon
Jenny_Aster
Posts: 945
It's that time of year again, the last full moon of winter. It's a clear night over the Fens with temperatures set to plummet to -1, not the promised -5 thank goodness.
No doubt practical forum members will know why tonight's moon is named the 'Worm Moon', but I've only just read that Native American tribes named the last moon of winter after the worms who are now on the move due to the warming of the earth.
There's something quite comforting about 'listening' to nature, after all 'She' knows best
No doubt practical forum members will know why tonight's moon is named the 'Worm Moon', but I've only just read that Native American tribes named the last moon of winter after the worms who are now on the move due to the warming of the earth.
There's something quite comforting about 'listening' to nature, after all 'She' knows best
Trying to be the person my dog thinks I am!
Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border.
Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border.
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and OH says it's crunchy out there (he had to get a few more logs in)
In the sticks near Peterborough
As for the worm moon, the name has several possible origins including earthworm activity but also beetle larvae getting busy but that only applies if it occurs before the spring equinox. After that it's called a Paschal (Easter) moon. There are other American Indian names for it too.
https://www.almanac.com/content/full-moon-march
I never knew
Reading the comments at the end of the linked webpage, there was one comment that said worms are an invasive species in America, carried there through plant root balls and ships ballast. For a creature that doesn't move very fast they've certainly been busy over the past 500 years. Surely is that even possible that such an important species didn't evolve there?
It does look like the 'science' isn't settled from the little research I did. Though I was under the impression that worms were extremely important to soil structure and its fertility, and that worms are as important as pollinators.
Maybe it's the nightcrawler type of worms that have invaded America, and that there had always been other types of worms on that continent? I think perhaps there is genuine concern about ancient forests in the Americas as the 'invaders' appear to have changed the forest's environment from a fungi driven system to a bacterial one. The 'science' is way above my head
My wormery is in it's 2nd year so I'm fascinated by them, though I still don't like to touch them
Last summer I lost about 90% of my worms (they must have escaped as I didn't see many dead ones) but there was a huge amount of worms in the surrounding soil. During the searing hot weather we had; I started adding ice cubes on top of their scraps/food in an attempt to cool the wormery down. I didn't realise until it was too late that the wormery had become sodden and not happy. The poor creatures packed their bags and did a flit! I cleaned out the wormery, added new bedding with a good measure of their 'old' bedding. There must have been loads of eggs in the old bedding as in no time the wormery had repopulated itself with masses of tiny worms. Those tiny worms are now a fair size. I still need to watch the moisture levels as those little fellas certainly like to wee a lot! I'm more vigilant about draining the fluid off now, mixing it with a couple gallons of water, it looks to make a good liquid feed (the roses love it) though on the internet I've read it's advisable to discard it as it's anaerobic.
Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border.
Interesting hearing about your wormery @Jenny-Aster.
I daresay the north American content had worms and fungae, as do Europe including the UK, but the balance will change according to human activity and,more recently, climate change.