I live in the Arizona desert. After having purchased many plants over the past year or two and never repotting them, I epotted about 50 houseplants in past month, most of them in 12" to 14" pots.

When I broke open the clay pot of a particularly healthy plant, a big earthworm fell out. I was shocked but pleased. I think there was more than one worm, but can't be sure. Looking for info about earthworms in plants, I found your forum and read some posts. It sounds like red wigglers (?) might be my best bet? Should I just add a couple of them to each pot?

And here is how I potted the plants. Instead of just using potting soil, I put about 2 inches of rocks in the bottom of each pot, then sand, then potting soil mixed with sand, small rocks, and worm castings, up to the top of the plant. My pots are very heavy, I guess the soil mixture is very heavy. Will the worms be able to handle this?

Also, I typically have been rotating the use a few things in the plants: epsom salts, worm poop tea, worm castings, and neem oil. But the neem oil is so stinky I can't stand it, so I recently purchased neem meal, along with kelp meal and alfalfa meal, so these will also be part of the plants diets. Are these things going to be okay for the worms?

In addition to having rocks in the bottom of each plant pot, each plant pot sits in a bed of rocks, and I (used to) often water from the bottom. I also put a few rocks on top of the soil. Initially, I had thought to have each plant pot sit it's own little Zen Garden of raked rocks, but the rock beds would have had to be too big. As it is, the beds are only about 2 inches bigger in diameter than the bottoms of the pots, on average. I assume it will take a while now for roots to reach the bottom of the pots again, so maybe watering from the rocks will have to wait for a while until the roots make it to the bottom of the pots...? I don't anticipate them being able to drink from the bottom for now, so am hesitantly and rather unhappily watering from the top. It just seems like watering from the bottom give the plant some control, instead of having moisture forced on it from the top.

The reason I bring up the soil mixture, is because one of your posts on a worm thread referenced a successful soil mixture opposite of what I have made, a very light mixture filled with leaves. It sounded awesome. My intention had not been to weigh the plants down, but to use a soil that couldn't clump up. If I did the wrong thing, it is too late to go back. Also, each plant is in it's own rolling caddy, so rotation is easy.

My feeding plans are to alternate between the different types of meals: alfalfa, kelp, neem, and to supplement regularly with the worm castings, worm poop tea, epsom salts, and every once in a while B1. If this will kill the worms, better to know now and just not add them to the soil, or if potting soil/sand/rock mixture will be too heavy for them to get through, I don't want to put them into an environment that they will not be able to thrive in.

While I'm asking questions, what about adding secondary plants to the surface soil of a pot? For instance, I have a Majesty Palm with only one big set of fronds left, instead of several sets of fronds. The top of the plant is still interesting enough, but the bottom is very dull, so I have added some English Ivy that I plan to let climb up the Majesty Palm. Will this intermingling of plants in a single pot work?

If you only address one issue, please talk about the worms, what type I should buy, how many to add to each plant, if my food types are appropriate for them to thrive in, and if they will be okay in the heavy soil mixture that I referenced. These are all indoor houseplants.