Mrs. Bernse and I built our home last year. Being new, I am making a garden as well. I got a bunch of topsoil and spread it out, but I noticed there were no earthworms in it.
As a kid, I always remember lots earthworms in my grandparents garden and I was under the impression that they were good.
I asked a part-time farmer I know (and I think I trust) if I should just buy some live bait earthworms and put them in my garden to get them started.
He told me that ideally I shouldn’t have earthworms in my garden at all. That goes against what I’ve always assumed. I thought they were benificial.
Should I put earthworms in or not? If so, is it OK to buy earthworms from a baitshop and use those? (As long as I am sure they are, indeed, earthworms)
Whilst I am no Alan Titchmarsh, I too have always been told that Earthworms = good, this is usually explained due to their ‘aerating the soil’ sp? presumably by virtue of their passing it through their bodies (I believe this is how they move through the soil?)
I believe that earthworms are quite good for your garden.
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As earthworms tunnel through the soil, they ingest the soil and digest any organic matter in it. Organic matter is dragged into their burrows and is broken down. Although they are the most numerous in the top 6 inches, they also work in the subsoil, bringing mineral rich soil from below to the surface. This adds to the supply of nutrients available to the plants. Research shows that in 100 sq ft of garden soil, earthworms may bring from 4-8 lbs of dirt to the soil surface each year.
Besides incorporating organic matter to your soil, earthworms are good manufacturers of fertilizer. Castings have a nutrient level and organic matter level much higher than that of the surrounding soil. Each day they produce nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and many micro nutrients in a form that all plants can use. For example, a 200 sq ft garden with a low worm population of only 5 worms/cubic foot will be provided with over 35 lbs (about 1/3 lb per worm) of top-grade fertilizer by the worms, each garden year.
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Worms make other contributions, such as adding calcium carbonate, a compound which helps moderate soil pH. Overtime earthworms can help change acid or alkaline soils toward a more neutral pH.
Earthworm tunnels help to aerate and loosen the soil. This allows more oxygen in, which not only helps the plant directly, but also improves conditions for certain beneficial soil bacteria. Finally, the tunnelling of the earthworms provide an access to deeper soil levels for the numerous smaller organisms that contribute to the health of the soil.
In summary, earthworm activity in your soil is beneficial and should be encouraged. They help incorporate organic matter, improve the soil structure, improve water movement through the soil, improve plant root growth and minimize thatch build up in lawns.
Earth worms may not survive in your composter. It can get pretty hot in their, and I doubt they can survive that. In the Garden is Grand! I’ve pulled earthworms out of my garden almost a foot long. They really help.
You may also wish to get some Green Spider’s for your garden as well.They will eat all the insects, and never touch your produce.
I should elaborate. One of the links I read mentioned worms that are specifically bred to survive in a composter enviroment. I’ll try to track down some of those!
That’s exactly what the developers did. A real pity too, as it was originally farmland with beautiful jet-black soil. They scraped away feet, all the way down to the clay bottom! No earthworms in there, totally clay and inhospitable… although I guess if I wanted to make pottery it would be great!
The best part of the scam? They sell you the lot for $60K, and get you to buy back the dirt that they took off the land in the first place at the bargin price of $100/load!
Luckilly, I got my soil for free and extra loads of topsoil for my garden from my sisters farm.
If you’ve got straight clay, putting the good dirt on top (and layering mulch each year) is probably all you have to do. You can buy worms, but they quite remarkably show up without help, too. (bait worms being cheap, seeding them into your mix is probably a fine idea).
We have clay to about an inch from the surface. Loaded good dirt on top (50/50 mushroom soil and dirt mix, no worms), and within weeks, I dug up worms by the handful. That was last year, and this year, I’ve got so many worms our sidewalk gets rather disgusting in the rain.
The advice we were given, btw, was to NOT dig in (mix) the good dirt with the clay - just lay it on top, and let the worms mix it at the boundary (especially if there is enough organic material already present). I can already see the layer of clay starting to loosen/spread at the boundary line in some places (especially the ones that stay uniformly damp instead of bone dry in mid-summer). Digging/tilling in clay is bad… you can get yourself a plow sole (compacted layer of damp clay through which water will not pass), which means you are planting in a ‘pond-full-o’-dirt’ instead of soil.
Good luck with the worm seeding! (I’ll have to look into the compost worms, too…)
We had the worst clay soil imaginable when we moved in. Even our flowerbeds had the cheapest, leanest, crappiest layer of topsoile thrown over the top.
I worked very hard to improve the soil with composting, and one of the ways I measure the new-found health of my soil is the presence of earthworms!! I’ve given them a semi-hospitable place to take up residence, and now they’re doing a lot of the remaining soil conditioning work for me.
They just migrated in; I didn’t buy any.
Speaking of migrating, did you know that the buggers DO migrate? Most of the current earthworms you’d find here are non-native. Some were brought over (I can’t remember the details) and those wriggly little bastards have taken over most of the U.S.
Ah yes, I remember the days when the very earth beneath our feet would undulate during the great earthworm migration!
Just joking around, Cranky. Struck me as an amusing image.
What a freaking scam, bernse. You’d think that even if they felt the need to scrape the lot, they could pile up the dirt somewhere on the property. I have heard tales where they scraped and removed beautiful soil, and then later recovered lots with worse soil than they removed. We are fortunate. Our house is a “fill-in.” Our backyard has very deep rich black soil.
I’ve not only heard of it but done it. In Spring you can buy tubs of earthworms in garden shops. These are usually vastly smaller and much cheaper than bait worms: the Spring before last I bought a thousand worms for about two dollars and introduced them to my flower beds.
