Sorry, internetiot, ur thread on EW was hijacked but there only so much one can say about them. My suggestion is treat any area u want EWs like one of those EW farms u can purchase to raise worms in, 1) add organic matter (kitchen waste, veggy peelings etc., shredded paper, leaves, grass clippings, etc. 2) if worms don't show up fast enough for u buy some worms. Territorial Seed Co. and other seed companies sell them. "Seed" the area u chose with them. TaDa worms in ur garden. spedigrees, good sites thank u. kimmq, GM, GE, GMO is a process that you and I can't do, unless u have an elaborate lab tucked in ur garage - I don't. I love Gerbera Daisys, my budget only allowed for the purchase of 6 light pink. One of those plants was a lighter pink, yes yes, I will protect it with my life (not totally nuts just budget limitations). That said I needed/wanted more lite pink plants so I stuck my finger in the lightest pink ones every time I passed by, when it produced seed I planted them. It took 2 tries before I had results, 14 plants, will they be like the mother plant? Since I did not "bag" those blooms some other little "helper" could have had a go at the same lite blooms. When these new plants bloom I will know if I succeeded in producing more lite pink Gerbera Daisys huh. If a pollinator, wind, or me caused the resulting lite pink blooms I consider it all a Natural way, if me or nature produces something that, like me taking the bloom from a white Gerbera and rubbing it on the pink one, it is nothing more than what a bee could have done. Still a natural process. GM, GE, GMO, requires manipulation of the DNA with elaborate equipment in a lab. :)

Yup... Nightcrawlers have been decimating my carrot seedlings for a couple of years now. I have ruled out other things such as slugs, damping off, earwigs etc. I mulch my garden pretty heavily, but the carrot beds were intentionally left clean to avoid competition for the emerging seedlings.. The poor worms were just hungry. They came up, looked around - nothing to eat except carrot seedlings - oh well, better Garth's carrots than nothing... chomp - chomp - replant - chomp - chomp... So I started mulching the bed with grass clippings and more seedlings survived. Ready to do war again this year. Perhaps I will string bright lights over the carrot bed. I simply have too many worms in my ultra rich organic soil. They know a good thing when they find it. I have photos of the stockpiles of debris over their holes. Amazing critters.

I have a solution for you! My problem was similar to yours. I have a small patio for a large lawn swing underneath 2 large Norway maple trees. It was left undisturbed for 25 years and by now the cracks between the 2 ft. square pavers were about 4 inches high with dirt, plus grass and weeds growing rambunctiously thereon. I cleaned off 2 squares. On one, I dug out an extra 3/4 inch of ground and filled it with used cat litter. (clumping, therefore sodium bentonite kind) On both, I planted moss which I had scraped out of my grass. The very next day the square with just the moss was completely uplifted with worm castings! For the first time I looked closely at the soil and realized it was all worm castings. For 5 days I watched and although the moss turned brown and seemed to die on the cat litter, not a single worm casting appeared! I've been experimenting with used cat litter and used it here to try to prevent weeds from sprouting in the cracks. Eureka! Preventing the worm castings was MUCH better. So now I've re-done that entire patio with 3/4 inch of cat litter in the cracks. I really like the look of moss there so I went to the woods and brought home 3 kinds of moss. Some have a thin layer of roots and soil. Some have a thin layer of roots and bark; so we'll see if any kind survives. The original moss I tried had no roots or soil and it survived on the bare ground but got heaved out with the worm castings.

Years ago i had a pet store and also my own private collection of reptiles. I used to raise mealworms so i could have freshly hatched mealworms to feed baby herps that were just too small to handle the ones from the commercial growers. The castings went into my houseplants and they did great. So if you get them for free, go for it. Now as far as which is better, mealworm or earthworm castings, my intuition says earthworm. My reasoning goes like this: The digestive process is different. The mealworms eat 'meal' a mixture of grains etc. They convert the sugars and protein pretty much directly into their own protein and fat. With the earthworm, they can do the same to some degree if the particulate size is small enough. However they mainly rely on microbes to break down the cellulose and macrostarches of their foods into sugars and amino acids in a form they can absorb. The resultant feces is filled with microbes that seem to have an extra beneficial effect in garden soil. You can look up some studies on this and comments of mucous-like compounds that offer surfactant effects, etc.