The company, Mehearty. It's always nice to know we're not alone in the garden. :-)

The more worms you have, the more castings you have, and the more "worm manure" you have in your soil. Keep adding organic matter to your soil and you can eventually get so many worms you don't even need Rose Tone.

Awesome! Company and worm poop. =) So I've finally done something right. woo hoo!

Veilchen, how are your roses doing with all this rain? Many of mine are rotting as soon as they open. Grrrr

Mehearty, we're getting all the rain in MA also (and more to come today)!! My lovely Fairy rose that was just coming into full bloom with well over 1000 buds, is flattened to the ground. The branches are so weighted with wet blooms that I can't even lift them. Sigh.

start dumping your coffee grounds there if you haven't already and it will be a party before you know it.

Joanne, I am so sorry. =( My Carefree Wonder & Henry Kelsey did that too. *sob* Yesterday I had to go out and cut off moldy, rotten flowers.

triple_b oh these guys are partying. =)

Just don't dump those earthworms in the Maine woods, state parks, and such. They're aliens and seriously disrupt the native forest habitat by heavily accelerating the rate of decomposition of leaf litter. In the North Woods there's a whole community living in that slowly decomposing leaf litter and when you introduce earthworms you wipe all of that out. Whatever earthworms were native to those areas were eliminated during the last ice age and when the glaciers retreated the earthworms didn't migrate in. Instead healthy forests with no earthworms developed. Those forests are seriously disrupted by earthworms.

mehearty, my roses don't look so good either. We did the initial deadheading of the first flush, now I am ready to go in and cut back some of them as the blooms that are left are mostly ugly.

Surprisingly, my delphiniums are still standing. I am being a rebel this year and not staking them.

Thank you York Rose, but these guys must have crawled over from the woods near my garden. I can promise I'll never scoop them up and chuck them back. =)

VC, I'm sorry about your roses. We needed the rain, but not like that. Good luck with your delphs!

In the end, are earth worms good or bad for the plants? I have a troubled backyard that I started this year, and I do find lots of long fat gross looking worms every time I dig a hole. Sometimes I cut them by mistake, but they don't seem to be dying... should I do something about them? ( don't know what)

Adiro, earthworms are good for your garden. Like veilchen said "The more worms you have, the more castings you have, and the more "worm manure" you have in your soil. Keep adding organic matter to your soil and you can eventually get so many worms you don't even need Rose Tone."

You must have very good soil if you're finding so many worms in it, Adiro.

Thank you York Rose, but these guys must have crawled over from the woods near my garden. I can promise I'll never scoop them up and chuck them back. =)

I was thinking more of fishermen dropping their worms in the woods of Aroostook Co., I think.... :-)

York Rose, did you know that there are more than 4400 species of earthworms? The invasive species that you are referring to is an Asian worm called Amynthas. They're not the nightcrawlers (Lumbricus terrestris) that we typically see in our gardens. They are very active worms and are able to process the soil so quickly and thoroughly that they leave it very finely processed with no structure. Plants cannot live in soil like that.

So if the worms in your soil are not doing that, it is unlikely that they are Amynthas worms. But if the worms in your soil ARE doing that, put them in your bird feeder! Don't condemn all earthworms as the destructive type, because the vast majority are not.

Deanna

Adiro, if your soil is already full of earthworms don't worry about it. What's done is done.