IF you ever thought about an earthworm at all, it would most probably be as an s-shaped wriggler on the end of a fishing line. The Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town has other ideas. They see earthworms as their most valuable guests, although they don’t exactly wheel out the Chateaubriand and paper hats whenever earthworms drop in. But the worms are there, in the backyard, busily getting behind the concept of ‘mink and manure’ in a big way. I thought of the Mount Nelson’s earthworms this week when they (the hotel, not the earthworms) announced their new series of oh-so-select teas. When is a cuppa not a cuppa? When it is High Tea at the Nellie. The hotel has appointed its very own tea specialist, who crooks his little finger on your behalf if you can’t be bothered to do it yourself. Anyone who wants to submerge themselves in the fragrant mysteries of tea, the most romantic of beverages, can get into hot water (delicately flavoured) every afternoon in the Salon. And the chef at the hotel has come up with a range of tea-themed confectionaries. Ah, just so pukka, what? Everything the Mount Nelson does always carries the unmistakeable ting of 24-carat class. But I cannot ever think of this gracious Pink Lady hostelry without being reminded of their earthworms. The hotel, quite a long time ago, established an earthworm farm on their premises in order to process the leftover food. The table scraps from those five-star meals are sorted and fed to teams of eager earthworms for turning into five-star fertiliser. Thousands of worms are munching on top-notch nosh to create haute manure. And as I have said before, this says much more about the hotel than any number of glossy Agatha Christie-type magazine articles. Vermiculture (earthworm farming) is not a glamorous subject, yet the hotel is quite happy to get down and dirty in the cause of environmental health. Unmanaged refuse, according to the experts, is such a huge problem worldwide that it has the potential to cause environmental meltdown. Earthworms, on the other hand, are little stringy superheroes that are busy averting catastrophe as we speak. Earthworms are such amazing creatures that I don’t know why more people don’t keep them as pets. Which brings me to my topic for today. Whenever worms get busy eating their little hearts out though your leftovers, they produce, er, a liquid, which has the delicate name of ‘worm tea’. Eat your heart out, you tea specialist at the Mount Nelson: you can only bow your head respectfully in the presence of this tea. It is the Earl Grey of fertilisers, the Ceylon of compost and the Lapsang Soochong of top-dressing. Apply this to your garden and stand back. Now just think if all guesthouses and hotels in South Africa grew their own veggies with the help of Lumbricus terrestris (earthworms). I have already stayed in some establishments that grow their own food, and this is always a selling point. It is proudly pointed out at the dinner table by my hosts that the pumpkin in the tureen, until recently, lived in the back garden and was called Mabel. So last week, in the interest of research for the hotel industry, I contacted someone who supplied worm farms to potential agriculturalists, to find out more about worms. The first thing I discovered is that you cannot just sling some slimeys in a box and call it a worm farm. You need to get a special red worm called a composting worm. These are quite delicate and they need to be specially bred for worm farms. Earthworms are made entirely of two long tubes: an inner one that deals with food and an outer one that holds it together. The worm has five hearts but no lungs – it breathes through its skin. There’s a digestive system that does everything a worm needs to do. And that’s it. The worm farm itself is a discreet box on a stand outside your back door in which you throw all your kitchen peelings. The worm expert does not recommend orange peels (it makes the worms sneeze. And when you consist of nothing but an entire olfactory system, a sneeze can have severe side effects). Worms also do not like onion skins very much, they tend to think that a box with an onion in it is too small for worms as well. Otherwise they tuck in to any plant matter at all and reward you with this ‘black gold’ that makes your garden do cartwheels. So what about it, all you hotel and guesthouse owners? What about investing in a worm farm, planting your own herb and vegetable garden, and presenting your very own homegrown fare on your dining-room tables? I am even prepared to offer a prize – impress me with your efforts and I will organise lunch with the earthworms at the Mount Nelson Hotel!