I agree, more and larger worms this year. I can't imagine any reason to disturb them - I haven't read anything that indicates there's anything wrong with them (as long as you don't live in an undisturbed woodland where there is duff on the native soil).

Your compost definitely has a lot to do with it! They DO love the stuff.

I would not bother with the castings, they work just as well on the surface, as far as I know. Then again, I'd never have thought about turning them under - sounds like a lot of work!

That's kind of the take I got from checking online; one NYTimes article indicating some concern that non-native worms are taking over in the Northeast and destroying that woodland duff layer, but mostly, just singing praise. (Wish I knew some fishermen, though ... I could make some serious money with these!) Today I tried digging a pitchfork into a small area where there were several large piles of castings... about a dozen worms emerged within a roughly square foot area of soil (and each one at least 6 inches long!) It's positively teeming out there! It really is most disconcerting.

This particular garden does border an undisturbed woodlands plus a wetlands and I'm a little worried to see these guys slither off into the woodlands when I try to pull weeds. (They're just trying to get away as fast as they can, I assume!) Also makes me less than enthused about the garden renovation I was planning for this fall (moving tons of things) -- I wonder if there's any realistic way to keep them IN the garden and out of the woodlands surrounding it since I have to think digging up whole plants will aggravate them no end and I'll be working in a sea of slimy bodies...!

Aw, they're not really slimy! They're cute. Sort of.

Maybe years of watching Sesame Street with my kids made me like them more, because I agree normal instinct says they're revolting and scary. Maybe it's just being aware of how helpful they are, but I really do try to convince myself that they're not at all creepy.

If your woods is truly undisturbed, with native plants and salamanders, then you should worry about ruining that. If you have land that, like most of NE, has been farmed and has recently reverted to forest, then you probably already have earthworms in the soil there. You can tell by looking, I think!

The real problem seems to be with fishermen going to remote areas and dumping night crawlers near streams and lakes. Since I don't live near any remote virgin forests (by a long shot) I'm not really keeping up with this issue. The local Audubon Society should be able to advise you, or maybe someone else here will know more.

Here is a link that might be useful: globe article

Slimy worms is right. I have two small dogs, and after a rainy day when worms are on the surface of the lawn, the two dogs (a white maltese and a blacktan doxie) go out and ROLL on the worms AND the slugs. EWWWWWWWEEEEWWW...

Not being long a gardener at the z5b latitudes, I cannot say there are more now than there were. But in Mobile, I
would put a pile of shredded leaves in a spot where I wanted a new flower bed, go off to work in the Gulf of Mexico for about 3-4 months, and when I came home, the compost worms had turned it into a nice flower bed that barely needed any digging. The compost worms were sort of skinny and the very largest maybe 5 inches long, not like these humongous things I'm seeing up here.

We did have a lot of really fat robins in our yard this year.

I thought I would post a followup to my original post, having just today spoken with someone at the CT Agricultural Experiment Station, who in turn consulted their "worm researcher" (who knew?!) Here's the deal:

It turns out that NO, you cannot have "too many" worms. Even though the earth/garden worms we have in New England are in virtually every instance foreigners, non-natives, they are still working wonders for your garden. The reason I have them spilling onto my shoes every time I pull up a dandelion is because in a fit of organic-gardening-cum-practicality, I decided when creating these new beds to forgo "amending" the existing soil and go straight to pure compost for the planting areas. So my worms are living in Nirvana -- 100 percent organic compost. So they are scarfing down composting material (this is REALLY good organic compost that we've had delivered by the truck load for the past few years) as fast as they can, and growing by leaps and bounds accordingly. According to the Ag Station, their population will spike as they chow down, then as they complete foraging and the amount of rotting/composting substances in the beds declines ('cause they've eaten it!), their numbers will decline as well.

In the meantime, they are aerating, creating nitrogen and potassium in prodigious quantities and otherwise working wonders for my plants. So I will live with having them swarm across my feet like something out of a horror flick ... but maybe, no more truckloads of compost for a year or two!

Note: They are also wonderful for your lawn, and they do not pose any significant threat to my adjoining woodlands, apparently, which was the primary reason for my official inquiry to the Ag Station.

So WHEW! (or EW! depending on your perspective... :)