Earthworms are good, yes?

I believe that's what I've heard. I don't know if they eat any bad bugs, but I've heard that they aerate the soil and provide instant compost with their "poop."

I hope so, because I sure have a lot of them. The ground in my veggie patch is still wet from the rains we've had. I went out there with a small flashlight tonight just to check on my seedlings and startled a good dozen at least of big, fat earthworms.

I remember when I was a kid we'd spread coffee grounds in the back yard to attract them, then go out after dark with a flashlight and grab them before they zip back down their holes. My great uncle would use them as bait for fishing, and he'd come back with the most delicious Mississippi cat(fish).

Yes, earthworms are great.

http://www.dndwormranch.com/

This message was edited Jul 7, 2006 12:22 AM

White Hydrangea, I will just add that it's a double edge sword. I've worked hard for years to make my own compost (teeming with worms) to use in and above the garden beds. The problem is, where there's worms come the moles to devour them. One compost area has about 10 mole hills by it. Garden peripheries are awash with new mole hills. I hate those suckers with the white hot heat of 1000 suns, as someone on DG said! LOL.

So, yes, worms are generally a very good thing for all the reasons you stated. But there is always a down side to everything. Yin and Yan I guess.

I have Shake-Away on order. Maybe it'll work on moles, too.

When I bid on this house, we had a strip of green belt over the fence. Then they dug it up and planted houses there. So any critters enjoying the green belt are now over the fence in our yards.

At least it's not prairie dogs.

White_Hydrangea questioned whether earthworms were good. I suspect he/she read something that suggested they might not be good for all types of gardens. Earthworms are actually great for many gardens for the very reasons mentioned however they are not so great for forests or woodland gardens.

Here are some links to the flip side of the coin as pertains to the existence of some earthworms in our soil. This is merely another point of view to consider as there are mounting concerns out there associated with introduced earthworms. Here are some of the issues North American woodland gardeners may be facing-
http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/sustainable/2004su_worms.html
http://magazine.audubon.org/exotics/exotics0403.html
http://www.wvnps.org/earthworms.html
http://darc.cms.udel.edu/ansr/factsheet.doc
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/earthworms/index.html
http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=26633
http://www.icangarden.com/document.cfm?task=viewdetail&itemid=4931&categoryid=0
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0102_030102_earthworms.html
Excerpt from National Geographic’s site-

This following sums up the situation with earth worms. Excerpt from here-
http://www.uark.edu/misc/ents/invasives/european_earthworms.htm

Any worm that I find in my woodlands is going to be European or Asian as there are no earthworms that are indigenous to my area. Keeps it simple for me as I don’t need to learn to identify which worms belong and which don’t because all are introduced. All worms I come across in my woodland gardens end up tossed on a plant ledge in a preform pond I have specifically installed for raccoons with the lowest level of the pond that is filled with a little bit of water being reserved for Rusty Crayfish which is another species that is not indigenous to my area. This helps me keep the raccoons out of other areas on my property by providing them with their own personal buffet and also provides me with a place to dispose of the earthworms and the rusty crayfish that I come across when I garden. The raccoons will eat them and they will bring their young to the area to teach them how to “hunt”. They like the water being in the little perform because they seem to like to dip everything they eat. This is how I do my best to address the earthworms that are here in my woodland areas. Earthworms that I find in my perennial gardens I leave alone unless they are leaf worms or the unmistakable big nightcrawlers and those I will toss in to the raccoon pond because they are a little bit too good at doing what worms do best. For what it is worth, I was able to grow White Trout Lilies (Erythronium albidum) here for the very first time this year by removing the worms from the area where I planted them. Ferns planted in areas of my woodland gardens where I have removed earthworms are performing remarkably better than ferns planted in areas that I never got to. People who garden in woodland areas might be experiencing difficulty establishing some types of plants because of the existence of earthworms.

Wow! TMI. Now please don't tell me that ladybugs are evil. I've always loved ladybugs.

There's a park nearby, but the nearest forest is a hundred miles away in the mountains.

I was a little taken back by the information myself. I ran across it in a seminar about 3 years ago and thought no way! Think about it, we all grow up being told worms are our friends and worms are wonderful. How does one go about undoing that line of thought? I pushed the information to the back of my mind until last year when I realized there might be a reason as to why so many of my ferns were failing. Exactly why were my ferns failing? And then I started thinking back and wham! I started remembering bits and pieces of what she had said at that seminar and a light went off in my head being as how I'm gardening in a woodland area. I started mechanically removing them by waiting for heavy rains. I stood out there in my bare feet and just waited for them to surface and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of them. I then learned a little trick. They don't seem to like vinegar. I got a watering can and added a half a cup of vinegar. Oh la la! Up they came. I had buckets of them. The raccoons must have thought I was a worm goddess. I waited for another good rain to sort of cleanse the vinegar from the soil and replanted more ferns and planted back newly purchased Trout Lilies and voila! The Trout Lilies lived. I am a believer. Now I make it a point to go out to those areas in heavy rains. Interestingly enough, several other species are flourishing in and around the areas that I de-wormed yet limping along as in subsequent years in other areas that weren't de-wormed.

Ladybugs (Hippodamia convergens) are no problem. These beetles are our friends. They're beneficials. I order a couple thousand every year to release here. They chow down on soft bodied insects.

If you fish, night crawlers make great bait. I'm in the middle of the city, though. It's residential, but definitely urban. And I've only seen them in my garden patch. Since when I cultivated the area it was basically just sand and dust, I was glad to see them.

Colorado is very concerned about invasive species, though. Some of the plants I always thought were just pretty flowers are officially listed as "noxious weeds."

Another nice thing about this wet weather we're having is that it makes it much easier to pull up weeds.

This family fishes. We always have a decent supply of night crawlers.

I have a friend who works for the State of Colorado and she is actively involved with Invasive Species. You gotta admit that some of these Invasive Species and Noxious Weeds are very beautiful.

Equi, where do you buy the ladybugs from?

http://www.biconet.com/biocontrol/ladybug.html