Abstract:
This study has been carried out to test the effects of organic and inorganic
supplements on the survival and growth of earthworms in peat substrate. We
simultaneously tested the effects of peat taken from different depths, i.e. 0-10 cm,
30-40 cm and the mixture of both. We used either litter debris or powdered
chicken manure as organic supplement, and wood ash as inorganic supplement in
the experiment with five replications for each treatment combination. Earthworms
used in our experiments were collected from urban homegarden soils (mineral
soils), which were sorted after their morphological similarities and sizes (average
length 11 cm and average weight 0.8 g/individual). Observation was conducted
every 20 days for 120 days. Regardless the treatments, survival rate of
earthworms in peat was invariably very low, thus underlined that peat was not a
suitable substrate for the animals, but supplementing the acidic substrate with
litter debris could prolong the survival rate (40%) up to 120 days.
