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Adding earthworms to flowerbeds to accelerate soil improvement

LucidLucid Posts: 387
in Tools and techniques

Hi everyone,  

I read in a book recently the idea of adding garden worms to your flowerbeds to help speed up the process of breaking down the soil. Has anyone heard of this and is it something worth considering? We do have earthworms in our flowerbeds but the soil seems very bad condition so I'm considering buying in some extras (few hundred) to help get us there quicker - as well as adding lots of manure and compost etc.   

I've got a lot of plants that I want to try to plant but at the moment I don't think the soil is good enough so thought this could be an option if it is something that can really work well.

Thanks for any help, 

Lucid image  

Posts

  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445

    Improve the soil and earthworms will turn op on their own. They need something to eat, you have to add that to the soil if it's not there already. Otherwise they'll starve or move to somewhere they like betterimage



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • LucidLucid Posts: 387

    Thanks nutcutlet. I was reading 'Bringing a Garden to Life' by Jenny Steel about the creation of the Wiggly Wigglers' garden and they mentioned adding about 1000 earthworms to their dug over ground to get the soil in better shape, so I thought it sounded like it could be a good idea.

    We did add a load of manure and home made compost in the Autumn which seems to have broken down but the soil still looks really bad. We seem to have a fair amount of earthworms already so I wouldn't want to bring any extras in for them to end up starving. I guess it's a case of continuing to mulch with compost and manure then.

    Lucid image

  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,445

    Keep throwing on the organic, bulky stuff, it will improveimage



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • StevedaylillyStevedaylilly Posts: 1,102
    I'm a a bit of a perfectionist around the garden and come Autumn time I always vacumn all the leafs off the lawn and compost them. But I have an area under a damson tree that has ferns and hostas planted where I leave most of the leaves that gave fallen. By early spring all them leaves have been removed from the surface by earth worm.The area under that particular tree should be a dry area but it is possibly the best top soil in the garden due to the action of the worms
  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546

    Earlier this year I moved a pile of sheep manure which had been stacked up for a while as it was too wet to cart it away safely - the route gets very slippy. I had then bagged it ready for use on my borders. When I tipped it out, it looked like the contents of a can of spaghetti, there were so many worms! So just keep adding the good stuff, the worms will comeimage

  • Hostafan1Hostafan1 Posts: 34,888

    I used to do grass cutting at a " stud farm" ( no tittering ) and the muck heap was stacked on concrete as it made it easier to lift onto a lorry when it needed to be cleared. The nearest soil was tens of metres away yet it always had worms in it, millions of them.

    Devon.
  • LucidLucid Posts: 387

    Yes we had loads of worms in our home made compost which was added to the beds along with the worms. I will mulch asap though as with all the compost broken down it sounds like they could be out of food now.

    Thanks for the tip on egg shells aym280.

    Lucid image

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