The good composting worms are the red wigglers (Eisenia fetida), the European Nightcrawler (Eisenia hortensis) and the African Nightcrawler (Eudrilus eugeniae). The Canadian Nightcrawler (Lumbricus terrestris)is not a composting worm. It lives deep in the soil and has a permanent burrow. It comes to the surface to mate and to get food. It brings the food back into it's burrow. A good worm to help with your soil is the Alabama Jumper (Amynthas gracilus). Good luck with your "trap"!
Beth

beth monsterworm:
once I purchase and release the Alabama Jumpers in my garden, how do I prevent them from crossing the property boundary and move to my neighbour's?
Hope my neighbours won't be setting up traps, LOL.
Any idea where I can get Alabama Jumpers from? I am in BC, Canada.

Night crawlers are best for garden soil because they burrow. This aerates the soil, improves deep irrigation as they pump water through as they move, and results in deeper penetration of organic matter as they pull organic matter down for a later meal. However, they are slow to reproduce. The absolute best thing to do is try to attract them or buy some and make your garden an ideal environment. I always say my garden beds are really worm bins with plants. I feed the worms rather than feed the plants and provide lots of insulating organic matter to keep them around through light frost times. Once it's too cold, they burrow deep.

If you don't have a lot of worms in your soil, then chances are that you won't keep a lot of worms in your soil. Worms have been in this country a long time and have had every opportunity to get established in just about every nook and cranny. If you don't have worms, it's often because you don't have hospitable conditions. Improve conditions first, if possible, or your worms will die or leave to find better conditions.

Good explanations from all! Thank you. It seems that worm populations are just like all othe life in the soil such as the bacteria, insects and other organisms. I have also heard that you can spray your soils with various forms of starters with all manner of soil life forms and introduce every possible kind of predatory insect, but if the soil itself doesn't have the proper elements to sustain and feed them they will be quickly gone and you will have wasted your money. Most of the southern land such as mine here in north Georgia has been farmed for hundreds of years. Combine the basic heavy, non-draining, very fine clay soils with past agricultural practices of the past and the soil left today is a sad thing. Initially, they just planted and planted until the nutrients were gone and then moved to other field. Then came the idea of rotating the fields, when one crop had depleted its needed minerals they moved to another. Later came use of animal manures wood ash. Someone came along with the moldnoard plaow and deep tillage, so the life in the soil was turned under even if loosened for a season. After WWII came the use of chemical and petroleum derived fertilizers along with constant poisons of every kind. Ammonium nitrate only further drove out the humates and hardened the hardpan. Small gardeners with tillers frequently worsened the conditions with small scale versions of the commercial approach..burying that critical top six inches. I tried tilling under cover crops with negligible results and growing in rows for years. I think that now I want to find a deeply rooted winter cover crop with a large root mass for those areas that will not yet have the raised beds, but have also created what is essentially square-foot beds from straw bales that I have filled with composts and composted manure. For the rest, I have gone above ground for winter potatoes and onions..covering the ground with large beds of deep straw and compost. Now to try to find those nightcrawler egg cases/cocoons in large quantity and at affordable prices...whether from Canada or Alabama. Please point any sources this way! I will need a lot...and try to input enough organic material to keep them home! My Wigglers are doing just great in their rubbermade bins, but I need to introduce some therapists to get them interested. Maybe some music to set the mood,a movie, a "kicked up dinner" with a lttle wine, chocolate, and VIAGRA, or better yet, Xtend! Those commercials are just TOO MUCH. On the side, I am trying, for the first time, a bokashi bin just out of curiousity and for research. Wonder what would happen if I sprayed the whole garden with some molasses and sprinkled some corn meal! I always LOVED cornbread, butter, and sorghum syrup. They say it attracts worms and other life forms.

I agree that the best way to get worms and to keep them is to have good soil. We had hard clay soil when I bought my house 18 years ago. I made raised beds and added all of my composted material to it and now we have very rich soil. Canadian nightcrawlers are fine for your lawn but if you really want to help break up your soil, the Alabama Jumper is the worm for that. It is also a soil dwelling worm but it doesn't go as deep as the Canadian nightcrawler. The Canadian has borrows that are as deep as four feet, sometimes more! Also, I wouldn't buy cocoons, I would buy the worms. That way while they are making babies, they would also be helping your soil.

http://www.thewormdude.com/tag/alabama-jumpers/

Ok....next?

Thanks for the tip, steamyb.

Hi Otis,
We can ship Alabama Jumpers to you, however since it is probably getting cold in your neck of the woods this time of year, I wouldn't recommend that you get them now. Not unless you have a bunch of little coats for them. LOL As for keeping them in your yard, just make sure that you have composted material for them to munch on and they'll never want to leave. Here is a link: http://www.monsterworms.com/Alabama-Jumpers-Amynthas-gracilus.html
Beth

Blast from the past. Did you ever get you AJs Otis?

My EHs are partying away even with the cool temps. Did a little prodding through the feed buckets on Fort Verm and there are many youngsters in there among the fat breeders with swollen citellem and cocoons indicating more on the way.

The Hens after encountering the new abutments from the upgrades to Fort Verm have changed tactics and are now working on a system of tunnels. This is becoming a quid pro quo between us where each action on ones part is countered by the other. Not sure where this will end but the one thing they dont know is that I have a stock pot so end game is mine regardless.

The jumpers sound like they might be a good addition for soil borers though from what has presented itself so far the EHs appear to be doing well in our soil as long as it is well amended or has ongoing organic matter being introduced such as in the lawn.

While in the greenhouse this afternoon I pulled a small clump of grass that was growing among some carrots. After shaking off the small amount of dirt there was a pleasant surprise of seeing three worms. A few hundred were released in that bed at the beginning of summer and while they have been spotted at times while planting the soil is pretty much undisturbed so there hasnt been much indication as to how well they faired. Seeing three in such a small disturbance was very nice indeed.

Came across this thread while googling for some light reading which I found and linked below for any other diehard verdsmen and verdsvemen who might be interested. This is an old text from the late 40s so there is sure to be refuted information but I have found it entertaining reading old texts on subjects of interest none the less. It is about 10MB so be forewarned if you have a slow connection.

Here is a link that might be useful: Harnessing The Earthworm

No, I never ordered AJ. It doesn't make sense for us north of the border to order worms from US. Too many problems and $$$ just to discover they like it better at the neigbour's
I often find wild worms while weeding. Mostly just below the spread of dandelions leaves..

Mensplace - I suggest you take the tact of improving your soil and attracting worms. I have a raised bed shown in the picture. It was built using the "lasagna" method with the 1st layer being cardboard (to attract worms and prevent grass growth). I have added humus and manure to improve the organic mix. at each end near my 2 goji berry bushes I have sunk a worm station (made from a plastic coffee can) where I put worm food and shredded paper. In the spring I intend to put up a worm highrise in the center (similar to the worm stations, but taller and deeper). In other parts of my garden, I bury vegetable refuse to attact worms.

Nexev,

It's good to see someone who's reading through the archives. With the winter days now so short, and me not very fond of cleaning the house or watching TV, I spend many evenings lurking through old threads round here too, and thought I was some sort of a mentally or socially disabled woman.

I get nice surprises. Sometimes on very short threads there are great lessons by people who don't write here any longer, like Kelly Slocum or Buckstarchaser (sorry if I misspelled, I write from memory).

And it's great to read those of you who've been for ages here, and to read your questions or your stories from when you began.

I wish older archives were accessible too !

Thanks for the link, Nexev, great reading for next week end after Sunset !

Otis, being Z8 you still dont think they would acclimate? I can understand not wanting to spend on a maybe but it sure seems that in five years since this thread was written someone with AJs might have deported a sampler to you just to see how they work out.

The EHs from my reading seem to be quite hardy in terms of both temperatures and in handling disturbances. Have not come across enough on the AJs to form any idea on how well they fare in these areas.

Charlie, I dont know if mensplace is still around. Certainly good advice on attracting worms though not all have that option. Pretty sure that even here the odd cocoon is deposited from passing birds and there must be some remote pockets of activity any real levels of verm activity is surely some miles away so simply putting out bait would not work here.

Francoise, Had a couple of your countrymen stop in here recently as they were on their way to the big trees. We are some distance from gas stations and they had none, fortunately I keep some here and over the years have been able to help a number of folks.

Anyhow, they tried to give me some money which I always refuse asking that they pay it forward and if they want to send me a card when they get home as it is always fun to get a note from far flung places. Once we were sent a crock of maple syrup :) along with a beautiful thank you note.

On scouring the archives. Well this time I really wasnt though I have been known to choose a random page of posts from the number links at the bottom of the page. This thread came up on google during a search so naturally I read it.

The book I linked so far has been entertaining. I really like the premise of 'water seeks its own level' and all that it entails and the comparison of that simple phase to 'earthworms make humus'.

Nexev I'm so not surprised that those guys offered you money ! Here people would have let them die in the desert or would have sold the precious gas at a real high price.

Guess that's one of the reasons why my daughter fell in love with your country. So did I, but she got a visa because she's young and scientifically educated when I'm, well, old and ignorant ;-)

The desert where you live, is it the one between Utah and california ? Beautiful place there.

Otis, I've also noticed worms entangled in the wirry roots of bermuda grass that I try to pull here and there. I've been thinking that they might feed on the exudates of the roots, or the bacteria living around. I've hated bermuda grass a little less since I found the rhizomes feed the worms. But just a tiny little less.

Francoise, we are in CA towards Nevada. I think you are possibly referring to Death Valley, that is east of us. We are not quite so inhospitable as there.

I consider this High Desert because we have sage, joshua and various other cactus as the predominate natural vegetation. Our soil is also very sandy though we do have some variation in most of it as this is an alluvial plain shed from the rocky mountains all around us.

Nexev, not sure if you have looked around at this site, but it has some GOOD FREE info about vermicomposting in the high desert of Reno. I love their cinderblock windrows. They have other "dug-in" bin how-to videos. BTW they use hardware cloth below. This is not an endorsement, but a friend made a large worm purchase there and was pleased.

Here is a link that might be useful: sierrawormsolutions

Yes I have poked around there Pete. I am certainly not opposed to the hardware cloth and if I went through the effort to make such a nice bed would probably use it too but if you look at these pictures linked below I would say they wasted hardware cloth rather than installed it unless what appears to be wide gaps along the edges and large holes in the middle are some trick of the eye.

They get considerably colder then we do here being farther north and higher (we are 3100' but we have 6 and 7000' mountains all around us so the cold air falls off them) though the landscape is very similar with sage and juniper, lots of juniper just a little higher up.

Those beds are very similar to Harvey Ussery's bed he put in the floor of his greenhouse though I think he put a divider wall every 4' and he harvests half of that at a time then refills with new horse manure. His bed is 16' long 4' wide so there are 4 pairs of 2' x 4' areas of interest. This means the new and working area in each bed are touching along the long 4' side and the worms left are never more than 2' from the fresh bedding. Plenty of room to escape composting heat yet close enough to easily find once its ready and the current bedding is depleted of food. I dont recall any mention from him on heating benefit to the greenhouse though it would almost have to add a few degrees to the ambient in there.

With enough of these the harvest time could be far enough from the new bedding time to allow for most of the worms to move and cocoons to have hatched and the little ones to migrate.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cinder Block Wormbed

"the odd cocoon is deposited from passing birds" first time I have heard of this. Does this explain how worms get into house gutters? I know how marbles get there.

How do marbles get there?

cb2

Thomas Barret in Harnessing the Earthworm
_____________________________________________
They are sometimes swallowed by birds and fail to digest and are
then dropped in a new location, perhaps on a high mountain
or on an island of the sea, or some other out-of-the-way place
where it would have been impossible for a mature worm to find
its way.
_____________________________________________

Funny I just got to that part and when I had wrote it before it was more just intuition rather than gained from reading or experience.

Something else that might fit into this thread well that has been gnawing at me a little is the remarks from Pete regarding the reduction of material on its way to becoming castings to the extent that maybe 10% is realized in the form of castings from a given amount of material.

This has had me thinking and is somewhat confirmed in the above mentioned book though not really spelled out clearly, at least I have not gleaned it as of yet.

My thoughts are that if we say an earthworm consumes its own weight in soil every day then the resultant excrement will much depend on how well the worm is able to reduce it on its fast path from one end to the other.

A worm in rich material such as finely prepared scraps or manure would not need to consume as much material to get the nutrients it needs, eating dirt means very little nutrient so much more needs to be pass through the factory to support the same high standard of livin.

So a fine dining worm can subsist with a lesser daily volume then one scraping along on inferior fare and would subsequently produce a smaller volume of castings where one that is choking down a large percentage of dirt is going to be passing more of that material and needing to run ever more through the mill to get the same nutritional value.

Since a worm will homogenize mineral content from the soil along with the organic output the dirt part is a good thing as it adds these minerals to the litter in a water soluble form ready to be taken up by plant roots and they in turn bulk up the VC daily take (or I suppose that would be leave).

Just some thoughts and not very organized at this point so take it all with a grain of salt or soil if your digestive tract can handle it.