It's so icky and they are already in my yard! I already knew it was nonnative and a bad thing to have, but haven't known how best to kill it.
http://www.dirtdoctor.com/view_question.php?id=1995
Land Planarian
Wow! Linda I didn't know that, I guess you could always drop the in boiling hot water.
I will be looking out for them.
Josephine.
Yuck! Looks like a land based leech. I agree that the best way to kill it is to drop it into something. Rubbing alchohol usually kills anything or you could try the old bowl of beer trick to see if that would work.
I haven't found any in my garden soil, but found a few in pots I had bought from a nursery. I have a habit of soaking plants in superthrive before transplanting. The worms didn't like sitting in the water and crawled to the outside of the pots. I just hope some of them didn't make it to the ground.
I have seen a few babies in a pot I got in a trade (no they are not on Daves... but they live close to me..) So now I am a little worried about them here too...
I found one once, in my yard..can't remember the details...it was creepy..especially that hammer head. Mitch..in all that digging yesterday, did you see any earth worms?
Not one.. in fact me and TJ mentioned it, the soil was nice and light but no earthworms to be found.
That is odd..I see them in the pots, all the time....and they used to be found whenever I would dig anywhere.
May be the time of day we dug - you could tell they are there from the loose soil - great loose soil I might add - but we did not see one.
ugh..I've seen a few of those as well around my gardens...especially after all of those rains that we had. yuckers..!
Melanie
Yes, they are found in pots and under pots and rocks and other objects on the top of the ground. The very thought that they kill my earthworms makes me want to burn the darn things, and I'm not ususally one who kills creatures in my yard. I'm all organic and usually encourage wildlife by maintaining a habitat for it.
I don't like to kill critters either, but I'd kill anything that threatened to wipe out all my earthworms!
I haven't seen any of these guys in my yard--yet. Eww. I'm already so grossed out by all the webworms (and the deposits they have spread EVERYWHERE) that I haven't been looking for other things. I hope I don't see any of these. They look just incredibly icky.
What's up with you guys not seeing earthworms lately? I've been digging a lot in the last month, and I've seen more than I've ever seen before. A lot of baby ones in my yard. I've found some really humongous ones down in the bottom of some pots.
Patio
Well, there is hope for the earthworms, because in spite of the planariums, I still have some. I just wonder if I'd have more if the planariums weren't around. I'm trying a jar of insecticidal soap solution and just throw the icky things into it and close the lids. Mainly, because I couldn't find anything else this weekend. As far as being in pots that have plants, I've found if you can put enough water into a bucket or container, then put the pots in there to soak...if there are planarians in the pot, they should come out and I pick them off the parts of the pot above the water line. At least, a couple of them came out when I soaked some pots like that today...hope that was all of them that was in the pots. One was on the bottom of one of those pots, so I got it off before the soak.