Earthworm Information: Earthworm Facts & How to Get Them Into Your Garden

Earthworms are one of the surest non-technical ways to tell how healthy your soil is: the more there are, the healthier your soil.

But which comes first, the earthworm or the healthy soil? Actually, it’s up to you…

• Benefits of earthworms
• “Will Work for Food” - Fostering healthy soil to entice the earthworms
• Raising or buying earthworms for healthier soil

Benefits of Earthworms

Before we dive into how to get them into your garden, let’s review why earthworms are so beneficial…

• Loosen and aerate your soil, causing it to:
  • Absorb, retain and drain water more effectively
  • Retain nutrients more effectively
  • Allow roots to extend further to collect more nutrients. This includes the very delicate root hairs which drastically increase the root’s surface area and ability to absorb nutrients.
• Excrete small pellets called “castings” that further improve soil structure and add nutrients to your soil

While you’ll read many ways to accomplish the above throughout GrowingAnything.com, rest assured that no tool or technique exists that can improve soil structure as well as an abundance of earthworms.

“Will Work for Food” - Fostering Healthy Soil to Entice Earthworms

Earthworms or their cocoons lurk around almost every garden’s corner. If your garden doesn’t have many, chances are there are live ones waiting in the wings in or around your yard. Their eggs can also lay dormant deep within the soil for over 15 years and, once hatched, each cocoon can produce up to 7 worms.

The surest way to attract and retain a happy and healthy earthworm workforce is through healthy organically-rich soil. And after they’ve accepted your offer, you’ll have a long-term employee… the average earthworm can live up to 8 years!

So how can you attract them? In short, give them compost and they will come.

Well, it’s almost that simple. Here are the soil qualities earthworms need to thrive:

• Organic matter
• Loose, moist soil
• Moderate soil temperature (between 50 and 70 degrees F/10 and 21 C)
• Garden soil pH level between 6 and 7

Whether through well-composted soil or compost mulch that keeps soil temperatures consistent and prevents moisture loss, compost goes a long way towards bringing about each of these, but you may have to do some tweaking to bring your soil conditions into earthworm alignment.

Raising or Buying Earthworms for Healthier Soil

Earthworms dumped on unhealthy soil will not stick around, so you’ll need at least moderately healthy and organically rich soil to maintain an artificially introduced earthworm population.

Assuming your soil’s of average quality, there are two ways to go about getting the benefits of earthworms into your garden (follow links for more info):

• Worm composting bins
• Purchase worms for sale
  

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