You don't have to add them. They are there somewhere, waiting for you to add organic material to the soil. Add compost, spread out a thin layer of used coffee grounds from Starbucks, mulch with a high quality organic mulch, and earthworms will magically appear. Do this every year and they'll never go away.

Yes, granular insecticide will kill them.

My soil in my community plot was all clay last year, not a worm in sight. I added various things and the other day as I was doing my 'fall' (haha) clean up I found a few.

Keep piling up just like Hoov said. In time they will appear.

Carla

D'you know that earthworms are not native to North America?
They came in soil used as ballast, in some of the first ships to land on the East Coast of North America.
They've spread from the Jamestown area across the continent.

Jeri

Well, wherever they're from, a goodly portion have immigrated to my backyard - any rose contraindications?

Build the soil, add coffee or tea grounds and they will come, like baseball players to the field, bikini purveyors to a beach.

Earthworms are your friend!! I add manure and compost to my soil and they aerate it for me in return.

My only struggle is that to my beloved fish, the occasional earthworm equates to a 'candy bar'. I want to keep the worms and spoil my fish. I guess Ill go to the bait shop--lol.

{{gwi:240624}}

funny how we can get attached to fish isn't it? I am rather fond of mine too. Aquarium though, not pond.

Well Jeri, at least there is an example of an invasive species that did not destroy all it touched! At least 25 non-native species of fish have entered the Great Lakes, including round goby, sea lamprey, Eurasian ruffe and alewife. These fish have had significant impacts on the Great Lakes food web by competing with native fish for food and habitat. Invasive animals have also been responsible for increased degradation of coastal wetlands; further degrading conditions are resulting in loss of plant cover and diversity. Non-native mussels and mollusks have also caused turmoil in the food chain. In 1988, zebra mussels were inadvertently introduced to Lake St. Clair, (hi Seil) and quickly spread throughout the Great Lakes and into many inland lakes, rivers, and canals. Since then, they have caused severe problems at power plants and municipal water supplies, clogging intake screens, pipes, and cooling systems. They have also nearly eliminated the native clam population here in Michigan. The spiny water flea is the most recent species to enter the Great Lakes . This organism, a native of Middle Eastern seas, is a tiny predatory crustacean that can reproduce both sexually and, more commonly, parthenogenically (without fertilization).

That's just some of the animals. The list of plants is twice as long, and just as alarming!

Well, actually, they DID cause profound changes to the forest ecologies. But the changes they caused benefited European settlers, and messed up indigenous people who were used to the ecology they had.
I do get your point, however. Your area has zebra mussels -- the West is trying to fight off quagga mussels, which threaten our water supply.

I've been told that Luther Burbank wrote to Missionaries in far lands, asking them to mail him a handful of local dirt. He would "sow" that, and see what grew. Can you imagine how that would go over in today's world?

Jeri

My backyard was all clay. No dirt whatsoever. As far as I know, there were zero worms there.

My young daughter loves to go out in the rain, so we collect earthworms in a large pail everytime it rains. She "rescues" the worms that we find in puddles, etc. We got hundreds every time it rained. Then I "kept" them interested in staying put by adding lots of coffee grounds, etc.

Now I have more, but still not enough! :)

Carol

They come, they come. I started too with extremely compact clay soil, very poor in organic matter. A few years of heavy amending (digging in) and constant mulching with hay, and I have a fine earthworm population. Now THEY do half the digging around here. Aggierose, I look forward to hearing about your earthworm population in a couple of years, now that you know what it takes to bring them in. They're just about the best thing that can happen to a garden.

Jeri,
That's fascinating. Can you recommend some reading matter on this subject? It never occurred to me that there could be an entire temperate climate continent without an earthworm. What on earth would it have been like before?

Melissa

They love stuff like coffee grounds. They will come from somewhere. Having said that, maybe the quickest results would be by adding them in the soil. Just make sure you feed them. Sort of like frogs- if there is a pond they will come from outta nowhere. I live on a small mountain top outside of Roanoke, and almost ran over a frog (not a toad) at the top of our hill- at least 1/2 mile away from the creek in the valley. Hope the little buddies found somewhere to go- sure isn't anywhere at the top of our place!

It is interesting on how my perceptions of Robins has changed. It must be good hunting grounds at Foghorn's Follies for we sure get more than our share. That is OK.

There is room for all, well most, of God's creatures here.

Usually the worms that are available on line or that nursery's sell are those red worms bred for vermicomposting, but it appears there are all kinds.

I would save your money for roses and feed the worms. They will come, along with moles, robins, and other interesting critters.

We could use a few less invasive species although a few new sports have cropped up locally.

Here is a link that might be useful: The heck with worms!

What on earth would it have been like before?

*** I'm trying to recall what I read -- but I think it had to do with the forest floor, where there were
no earthworms to process fallen leaves and so forth.
The result was a thick, spongy forest floor which had an important role in the ecology of the North American forest.

Here you are -- the link (see below) will take you to an article on the issue.

For a host of other articles, "Google" North America Before Earthworms," and you'll find a ton of material.

Jeri

Here is a link that might be useful: Earthworm Invation Consequences

I just want to mention that I did indeed Google and want to share what I found. I found that there are many native North American earthworm species that existed on the continent before the arrival of the Europeans. However, they did not live in all regions. In particular, regions that were covered by thick ice sheets (e.g. Great Lakes region and Canada) did not have any native earthworms prior to European colonization. That's what Jeri is referring to.

In much of the rest of the country native species did and do exist. California, for instance, has its own native species of earthworm that exist nowhere else in the world. We are not likely to see them in our yards, though, because they are greatly disturbed by tilling and have mostly been displaced by non-native species. However, in the wilderness areas they still exist. They are adapted to our dry climate with a winter rainy season and exotic worms don't much care for that.

The Pacific Northwest has many species of native earthworms, including the Oregon giant and Palouse giant, both of which are rarely seen and may be headed for extinction. The East has its own native species of earthworms, too. A search on this web page shows at least 108 native species:

http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20o?guide=Earthworms

Where earthworms are a non-native species is really the hardwood forests of the Great Lakes region, which probably lost its original earthworm population in the last Ice Age. The rest of the US has many different native species.

Here is a link that might be useful: earthworms and the Great Lakes hardwood forests

Canadian Rose, you probably have more than you know. When it rains, the worms that make it out are percolated out from the soil. It is considered desirable to have 3 different earth worms, the ones who are deeper down and work the soil and are larger and longer, the ones in the mid range who work the middle layer and the smaller guys who work close to the surface. The larger worms are probably down there doing their job but just not percolating out.

My soil is clay-ey, and also when they built the development I live in, they just threw some of the construction debris in the ground, so that when I first started planting, I was constantly pulling out chunks of concrete, nails, metal stuff, etc. Needless to say, there were no earthworms to be found. I have amended my soil with fresh manure (meaning, fresh direct from a horse, then allowed to dry in the sun). The earthworms just appeared after that, as others have said, and are very plentiful now. As others have said, add organic matter to your soil, and you'll get earthworms. If you have a riding academy near you, they will often give you manure for free, although they won't get it for you--you'll have to dig into the manure pile (dig deep for the already-rotted stuff which is "black gold"). Small price to pay for black gold for your soil, IMO, but I'm used to horses.

The birds love the earthworms too, and I have had some really nice birdwatching as a result.

I don't know why, but earthworms do love their morning coffee. I have several compost piles, and a couple years ago, I had run out of grass clippings in the fall due to a drought. But I wanted another compost pile started so I'd have enough compost for spring. So in place of grass clippings, I got loads and loads of Starbucks coffee grounds, and mixed them with leaves, wetting it all down.

When I got into that compost to use it in the spring, I couldn't believe how many worms were in there, and they were big and fat! I've never had that many worms in a compost pile before.

Also, that same year, I wanted to improve the soil in my hosta bed because it was hard clay. So in the fall, instead of mulching with wood chips, I mulched with coffee grounds and shredded leaves. I mixed them into the top layer of soil. I had lots of worms in my hosta bed last summer.

So my advice to you - mulch your rose bed with a mixture of coffee grounds and leaves, and the worms will come running!

Deanna

Does anyone know the effect on fungicides and merit (imidicloripid) on earthworms. I used to have a lot of worms in my garden, but now I see very few. i wonder if I'm killing them.