I will forever be grossed out by the horsehair worm but it shocks me to see an expanded discussion of roundworms as nematodes.I knew there were beneficial and not so beneficial nematodes in the soil and I knew there were roundworm eggs in the soil from feces of infected animals and I have seen roundworms being expelled from an infected puppy back when it was not common to treat pets automatically for the parasite. Somehow I never thought of them as related. Cathy, don't even joke about having the parasite yourself. While it mostly lives in the gut of animals it can migrate through the bloodstream into the lungs, liver, heart and brain where it can kill you if it doesn't make you blind or crazy first. The Feds say that trichinosis is gone so we can eat our pork pink now but I remember the horror stories too well to ever eat it any way but well done. I was taught that it was the basis for the prohibition from eating pork for Jews and Muslims. Most of those dietary laws were there for good reason. I also remember my parents being very reluctant to allow me to swim in a public pool when they were first becoming popular. They knew parasites could enter through any mucous membrane and the combination of intestinal worms and Polio made the super saturation with chlorine quite popular for hot, sweaty kids. If my swim suit didn't fade drastically and start coming apart then there must not have been enough chlorine to their thinking. Would you believe that it was once common for women who wanted to be fashionably thin to deliberately infect themselves with roundworms?!? That goes along with the arsenic in the face powder to make them fashionably pale and other horrors of the history of womanly beauty. Now I have made myself paranoid and I will be wearing latex gloves 24/7. Sandy

I'd like to see the other picture. But this looks to be the larvae of one of the Tortoise Beetles. Tortoise beetles love plants in the Brassicaceae family.....such as your radishes.

looks like a lot of cut worms gathered together. that is so wierd looking. never seen them congregate that close together.

My lady was having a bad day, and I brought home a live potted mini-rose in an effort to cheer her up. She decided she wanted to plant it, and we ended up starting to garden... in summer... on thoroughly compacted, sometimes poisoned, tool-breaking Georgia red clay... with nearly no money, spare time to labor, or energy. I knew compost is an excellent soil ammendment because my grandmother's been making it for decades (and it's a pity she's about 2,500 miles away, or I'd ask for a sample from her ancient, worm-infested compost bin), and I started doing my research to see if I could figure it out and bring that unmanageable clay to cooperative life. I discovered vermicomposting while educating myself about other kinds of composting (which is still ongoing), and found plans for a DIY stacking bin system from five gallon buckets. I had a couple of cat litter buckets, one with an intact lid, and plenty of paper waste and a small power drill, so I made one for myself. There's not much worm presence on my property (though there must be SOME worms, else the worm predator planarians wouldn't be here), so I went to a fishing supply shop and spent about $7 on two cups of roughly two dozen red wigglers apiece, and put them in the bin. This was about two months ago. So far, my worms are still alive... maybe I'll be one of the few that actually doesn't kill their first set of worms by accident. Because of the tiny population I started with, right now my project is more vermiculture than vermicomposting. I've seen some cocoons, and a few baby worms now and then, they're most definitely breeding in there. There is a lot more soil in there than I started with, and it looks a heck of a lot better than what I put in at the beginning. I feed them now and then, knowing they can just eat their bedding, but wanting the food to be plentiful enough to encourage lots of meeting and breeding. I do keep an eye (and my nose) on things to make sure the bin doesn't go too nasty and maybe harm the worms by overfeeding. I figure by the time the worms have expanded their population enough to be ideal for the size of the bucket they live in, most of the bedding will be converted to casts, hopefully with many cocoons waiting to hatch. I'll prep and set the second bucket, give the worms time to migrate upwards to new bedding and food, then take the vermicompost from the bottom bucket. I'll take a few handfuls to seed my outdoor composting areas with microbes, cocoons, and any straggler worms, and give the rest to my lady for her existing plot and container gardens. I hope to eventually have rich, fluffy black loam in place of this hard, sticky red clay (to the one who implied it couldn't be done: Challenge Accepted), a thick carpet of living mulch that continuously breaks down to nourish the plants while it insulates the soil and keeps it moist, bumper crops of fruit and veggies to supplement the household diet with cheaper, healthier fare, drastically reduced trash output, and unlimited free bait for fishing when those rare opportunities arise. If I can arrange to sell some surplus at the farmer's market, or engineer a self-cleaning cat litter box, or find any other ways to put the worms to work, that'll be a nice bonus. But, life is dynamic and ever-changing. Don't try too hard to predict it, just go with it and see what happens.