How do I get more worms?

My sis and I were planting bulbs in my garden. We noticed in all our digging we saw very few worms. My sis has a ton of worms in her gardens and can bring me some in the spring but i am wondering what do I need in my dirt so that the worms will want to stay?

Living in a drought area and planting a new garden, I noticed that we had no worms either. We added lots of compost and moisture and now we have worms galore! They're there but they are probably pretty far down where the moisture and organic matter are the richest. Hope this helps, k

The best way to encourage worms is to add as much well rotted compostings from your household waste like veg peelings, garden foliage and leaves, dont add garden foliage IF there are any seed heads, just cut them off, start a compost bin/pile etc and keep adding to it till it is full and let it rot down, there are books and forums on this site to get you started, books from the library will help. add any household food scraps like coffee grounds/tea bags, crumpled up egg shells even shredded newspaper but not coloured mags as there are chemicals in the coloured inks used to print, anything that is NOT man made, Banana skins and seaweed is excellent for adding nutrients needed by plants, but instantly, if you can get hold of some well rotted horse/cow manure, if it smells it is not rotted enough so store it till it is odourless, the best way to add this to your garden soil is to gig a trench about a spade deep and add the manure to the bottom of the trench and cover with soil, you wont attract worms unless your soil has enough decaying matter, even winter fall leaves added to the top of the soil as a mulch will bring the worms to the surface and they will drag it down into the soil as they feed off this, they then toilet it out as waste products and this enriches your soil, come spring, you can then dig the rest into your soil, your plants will thank you for all this good nutrient rich stuff and as it feeds the roots of plants as they grow, they get stronger, colour better and are far healthier too. hope this helps you get started, believe me, doing your own compost becomes addictive and you will be amazed at all the stuff you compost in your bin/pile that you would normally throw in the garbage. good luck. WeeNel.

When i am doing kitchen clean up-I rinse my greasy pans and I don't put the grease/ water down the drain because i don't want a clog. I was putting the grease water in a certain corner of the house where no one will step in it. Well we found that if we want to dig fishing worms--that spot is totally loaded with worms and they are huge!!! They must love grease.

could be that the container is offering the damp warm conditions that the worms like, cant see it being the grease, however, dont add the grease to any compost pile or bin as you will attract all sorts of creatures like mice etc as they will surely love this as it will give them lots of fur and good bone structure for winter hibernation, if it goes solid, the make bird cakes with it and set it out in winter for feeding the birds, they are also really good for the garden as they eat all the bugs and snails that eat your plants come spring/summer. My late Dad used to save all the hard dripping fat from the household waste and when it was solid, in winter when he was planting his Roses, he added it to the bottom of the deep planting hole along with animal manure, he swore It kept greenfly etc off his Roses as the plants took up the grease and formed an invisible screen on the plants that the bugs dont like, he did have show stopping Roses, but whether that was the reason, who knows, but the grease was buried deep enough so no wildlife could reach it. good luck with attracting your worms. WeeNel.

Thanks to you all for your helpful advice!! I was thinking my dirt looked pretty healthy but it must be lacking. I have a farm down the street I can probably get some manure from. I was thinking about starting a compost pile. Is there a forum on DG for composting? I looked but didn't see one. $$ is tight and the comercial bins you can get online seem awefully expensive.

Yes, there is a forum--I think it's called Soil & Composting or something along those lines.

cheap compost bin idea: buy or find a plastic garbage can and cut the bottom out. Or just pile all waste including fallen leaves, grass cuttings, food scraps in an unseen part of the garden and churn it up every few days or so.

Thanks again!!! I was looking through the forums for "composting" not soils and...... LOL

Hi again sjweld, I would pass you on to Ecrane for advice on all the forums, I know there is one for composting as I have read some other gardeners mention it, Ecrane knows her way around the site, I am not that computer smart yet, so maybe she will pick up on this thread and answer your question. As for compost bins etc, yes your right, they can be really expensive, however, you dont have to buy one, you can do a home made one easily, either find some chicken wire, put 3 or 4 good stakes in the soil and wrap the wire mesh around it and fasten the wire with a few nails to secure it and stop it falling over as you fill it, some folks add an old carpet as a lid to keep too much rain water out and heat in as the heat speeds up the composting, but if you dont want to do that, then no matter, it will just take a couple months longer for the composting to work. you need a container that has no bottom in it and a small amount of air flow for it to work or you will end up with a smelly mess, once you start to compost, you will notice that the worms will find this and help to rot the stuff down also, if you make a large compost pile, you will need to empty it out say every few month and turn the pile, that is, you put what was on the top of the pile into the bottom so this also helps speed up the composting, I throw everything I can from the garden into the pile, grass cutting, but only a small amount at a time as they are so rich, they can stop the pile from rotting by smothering it from air, but if I have a large amount of grass cuttings, I add layer of shredded up newspaper between the grass layer and this helps split the grass up and warms the pile also to speed thing up, all my winter clear up from the garden goes into the pile but not weed seed-heads as they will go back into the garden when you use your compost, but tiny weeds can go in roots as well, shrub pruning go in as does any old compost from pots, from the house you can use veg peelings, fruit waist, even the fluff from your tumble clothes drier can be added as can the dust from your carpet cleaner if you use one, you will soon learn what you can get rid of using your compost pile and get very protective of it, add anything so long as it is NOT man made like plastics etc, never add cooked food either or you will attract mice or worse, I have a friend who has a knitting machine and she adds all her bits of wool, that is pure wool without any nylon added, it all breaks down in time, if you have the compost ready to add to your beds etc and you find little bits of say cabbage stalks that are thick and tough, they wont harm the garden soil if added so long as you dig them well below the surface of the soil and nature will soon rot it down in the soil, the chicken wire is only one suggestion, you can also make a box from old bits of wood like flooring, again stick four good strong wooden stakes in the ground and nail the lengths of wood to these to form a square box, leave a small gap about in inch or two between the wooden slats as you build it so air can circulate the pile, easy as pie, hope this helps you get going, it is the best soil conditioner you can get, no chemicals added and you know what you are adding back into your soil. Good luck. WeeNel.