Worms!

My girlfirend ha recently moved into a new house and the soil in the garden isn't great, one of the things I've noticed about it is that there doesn't seem to be any worms in it (perhaps due to the construction).

This means that the soil is very heavy, and not aerated, and I'm afraid that anything that gets planted in it won't get on well.

Does anyone know if you can buy worms to introduce into a garden/flowerbed and if so, where you can get them?


Thanks,

T.

worms

Your garden soil needs the ordinary worms , not the tigers,as you already found out.If you have some time than they will appear by them self.Work in plenty of organic matter and cover with compost or leaves.If you want to enhance the settlement of the willing helpers you can catch them after dusk with a weak torch .In the night (when the birds sleep)they come out of the soil to mate.You have to walk very quired like a heron and pick them very quick and resolute,otherwise they retreat in the fraction of a second back into the soil .
Don't pick to many in one spot. The best nights are damp and warm and don't keep them in the bucket for long,certainly not for a day.
There is also a method to catch them electrically but I won't tell for ethical reasons.And it is dangerous too.
Once your garden is back on recovery don't use weed killers,pesticides and synthetically fertilizer,these would drive them away again.

bad soil

I am told that potatoes do a good job of breaking and aerating the soil; we planted them the first year in our garden, but the soil was so bad that we still ended up lorrying in about 200 tons of top soil this year, so take a second opinion before planting spuds. We got a nice crop , by the way, and we didn't plant until late June!

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What about a garden centre, or maybe a fishing shop?

If you know somebody with an existing compost bin which contains ordinary earthworms then you could take some of the compost and worms to seed your own compost bin. By composting your own kitchen/garden waste you will have a nice crop of compost and worms within a few months. I dug out a patch of our crappy soil - which required the use of a pick axe to remove a load of buried rubble there since the builders finished up years ago! - and then mixed in a bag of home produced compost containing lots of worms and the result is something that actually looks like real fertile soil.