Want an abundant vegetable garden? Lush lawn? Healthy and beautiful flowers?
Then the lowly earthworm can help you. They’re hard workers, and can help you transform your soil into a rich, fertile oasis for your plants.
There are two kinds of earthworms that are important for gardeners—nightcrawlers and red wigglers.
Benefits of earthworms
- They enhance soil structure and help incorporate fertilizer into the soil.
- Earthworms eat organic matter and soil, and their rich castings provide nutrients that plants need.
- They help soil drainage.
- Earthworms help clean up contaminated soil by spreading microorganisms that in turn break down pollutants.
- They are apart of the food chain for birds, frogs and other animals.
- They help plants grow by improving soil structure , water capture, and nutrient availability. A good population of worms can increase production of vegetables by between 5 to 46 percent.
- Earthworms contribute to over 6 percent of global grain production.
Nightcrawler earthworms (Genus Lubricus) are natural composters. These reddish-brown nightcrawlers are generally 4-8 inches long, but they can grow much larger—sometimes as long as 14 inches.
These creatures eat decaying matter, soil, and microbes. They eat their weight every day., passing the debris through their gut, digesting it and , at the same time, inoculating the soil with the microbes in their gut. They delve deep in the soil, but come to the surface at night to drag debris down into their tunnels.
Nightcrawlers develop these vertical tunnels in the soil. These shafts can be over 6 feet long, allowing air and water to penetrate easily into the ground.
In good soil , 25 nightcrawlers can populate a square foot of soil. In an acre (about the size of a football field) , there might be 1 million nightcrawlers, constantly turning the soil and turning it into rich humus.
But even if you only have half that amount in an acre, 500,000 nightcrawlers can make 50 tons of castings. That’s 100,000 cubic yards!
Red Wigglers (Eisenia fetida) are much smaller than nightcrawlers. Unlike nightcrawlers, they do not make vertical shafts and live deep in the earth. They live close to the surface and, they eat food scraps and other organic waste. Red wigglers work extraordinarily well in compost, if you place food scraps and cover them with soil.
The castings they produce are extraordinarily rich. A pound of wiggler castings can actually save damaged soil and rejuvenate ailing plants.
You can purchase worms online, from big box stores and from local producers.. If you don’t want to mess with the worms, you can buy worm castings from local producers. Worm castings can add substantial nutrients, to soil.
One such producer is the Magic Worm Ranch in Plantersville, Texas. The castings are extraordinarily rich and even have worm eggs in them which will hatch when the temperature is just right.
I always look for the OMRI label, and Magic Worm Ranch castings are 100% certified organic and do bear the OMRI label.