JACKSONVILLE, Fla – Fertilizer is known for greening up your yard, but did you know lightning and earthworms also provide vital nutrients.
If you have a wormy yard, skip the spreader especially during the summer lightning season.
Recommended Videos
Nitrogen is an essential plant nutrient and it is found in fertilizer listed as the first number on the bags.
It is also the most abundant molecule in the atmosphere but plants can’t make use of it until it’s turned into a usable form called nitrogen dioxide.
Lightning accomplishes this change by splitting the molecule apart into two atoms. Once broken, the nitrogen atoms quickly bond to oxygen in the atmosphere, forming nitrogen dioxide.
Both cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightning produce about the same amount of this gas which is dissolved into raindrops.
Rain works into the ground feeding plants with water loaded by fertilized nitrates.
The Earthworm Effect does a better job in the chemical transformation called nitrogen fixing.
The outcome of a study showed, on average, earthworm presence increases crop yield by 25 percent.
The positive effect disappeared when nitrogen fertilizer was applied, or when legumes (which can fix nitrogen from the air) were present. "This suggests that earthworms boost crop yield by increasing the amount of nitrogen that is available to plants," says Kees Jan van Groenigen, postdoctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University and co-author of the study.
Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients that plants need to grow. "Through their burrowing and feeding, earthworms release nitrogen that is otherwise locked away in soil organic matter or plant residue."