Night crawlers?

We had leftover night crawlers from a science observation in the class room. Are they good for the garden, or should I keep them out? What species is normally found in the garden?
Thanks!

madrid2000, for what it's worth I knew a guy in Newton Kansas who tossed his left over Canadian night crawlers into his back yard for nearly twenty years and eventually established them in his lawn. I thought he was crazy so I tried it for a few years and I established a colony of night crawlers in my back yard.

Here in Montana there were zero earthworms in the area where I established my garden, and I have been trying to establish some type of worm in my garden for several years. Even purchased 5,000 European night crawlers to see if I could get them established. The only worm so far is the red wiggler which I use in my compost piles, but they are not the best suited for garden soil. I have been adding my leftover Canadian nightcrawlers from fishing to an outdoor compost pile made of well rotted cow manure and hay. This pile contains and asortment of worms including the Euros, some borrowed earthworms, and red wigglers. Will see what happens. It just takes time.

morgan

Thanks! Here in Houston they are a little easier to establish.

Whatever kind of earthworm will grow in your soil is good for the soil. As they said in that movie "If you build it, they will come" so just keep adding vegetative scraps to the soil and, in your case, they will stay and multiply and improve the soil.

This message was edited Sep 12, 2010 11:44 PM

I never knew that there were different kinds of earth worms. How can you tell what kind of worm it is? My daughter bought me some worms at Target or Walmart and I just put them in my garden. It seems like I read something about earthworms actually eating the plants?? Every worm I ever saw looked the same to me.
Eleanor

I wouldn't worry about worms eating your plants. Grub worms will, but they are really beetle larva and not worms at all. Keep reading on Dave's Garden and you will learn all sorts of things.

mableruth, I have been holding back from commenting here because I really don't have anything new to add to this discussion. I have struggled with various ways to add some kind of earthworm to my garden here and have yet to come up with a solution. My garden is approximately two feet of workable ground which sets on a glacial rock bed and winter frosts here can go fourteen inches or more making it difficult to say the least to establish garden worms. I have indoor vermiculture bins, and outdoor compost bins which work fine, however few of the worms which get transferred to the garden will survive the winter. I see a few in the spring in areas where I have dug down more than a foot and filled the hole with composte containing some overwinter worms, but that's the extent of it.

If you Google Wikipedia encyclopedia on earthworms you will see there are over 6,000 species, but only about 120 which are widely distributed around the world for various purposes. What you buy at Target or Walmart are probably Canadian nightcrawlers which I have been trying to establish in my garden for some time. No luck yet. I fish regularly and use only the tail section of the Canadian nightcrawlers, returning the head and heart (ring) to one of the outdoor compost bins. These worms have gegenerative powers and my raised bed which has been dug down an additional four feet has a good supply of these regenerative night crawlers and lots of new worms comming on as well. I also have European nightcrawlers and red wigglers in this bin, and honestly it's difficult if not impossible at certaina stagest to tell them apart. If the worm is over five inches in length it is obviously a nightcrawler. I even wonder if the Euro's will cross breed with the Canadian.

Hope you get some more feed back on this question mableruth. I don't recall any discussions in the past several years in this forum about means of identifying various species of worms.

Mraider3, thanks for the information. I did look it up and am truly amazed that there really are thousands of different kinds of worms. The 12 foot long one is Africa gave me the willies!! My dirt is actually mostly clay so I use a pick axe to dig holes then I fill it back up with my improved dirt. It took me three weeks to dig one for the peony I bought this year! It sounds really cold there where you live. I will send warm wormy thoughts your way.

Mraider3, thanks for the information. I did look it up and am truly amazed that there really are thousands of different kinds of worms. The 12 foot long one is Africa gave me the willies!! My dirt is actually mostly clay so I use a pick axe to dig holes then I fill it back up with my improved dirt. It took me three weeks to dig one for the peony I bought this year! It sounds really cold there where you live. I will send warm wormy thoughts your way.

Four successive nights now with temps around 30F or less and every things is about ready to be shut down. Tomatoes in wrapped cages still lingering but that's the extent of it. I have several pails of squash, cucumbers, and corn which will go into the two outdoor worm bins. One bin (4'w x 8'l x 4'd) sets next to the house under my deck. The other is a raised bed which has been dug down 4 ft into the ground. I cover these bins in the winter with old window pains and can water with warm water as necessary to break up the frost on top of the bins. Worms have managed to survive the harsh winters here and next spring I hope to harvest the night crawlers from the raised bed for fishing purposes. Besides composting and fishing I also use the indoor red wigglers as food for my aquarium fish. The aquariums in turn provide gravel syphoned water for watering plants which are germianted and raised in the spent worm media. Is this what you call an ecocycle???

Hello fellow worm growers!
I used to work for a company that sold worm products, so I ended up knowing a thing or two about them. If you want a worm species that will survive in a cold environment the common nightcrawler is your best bet. They are originally from Europe anyway--being brought over by settlers. There are differances and sub-species. But lets not get carried away with that. Nightcrawlers are deep burrowers, and can go down as deep as 6 ft. They feed from the surface and carry their food into their burrows to feed. They will help break up the soil, but if they cannot get down below the frost line they will die. They have many predators, such as moles, birds, and snakes.
I have heard some very poor reports about some worms from Walmart. We used to ship lots of worms. They get really stressed when in transet. Dehydration is the most common issue. Those ones at Walmart cannot be very happy, Flourescent lights?
Red worms of various species are shallow dwellers and do not do well in the garden. However, I have a surviving population in my outdoor compost pile in my temperate climate. Theres a new book that has some good current info about worms- Compost Tea Making by Remillard. Also the classic The Worm Book, or Worms Eat My Garbage by Apelhof.

Marc7, good info there. I purchased 5,000 European night crawlers which came in one of those plastic gravel bags filled with dried out peat moss. The worms were all in a ball and pretty dehydrated.I immediately hydrated them by placing them in a tub of peat moss which had been soaked overnight and the excess water removed. I added the worms and as much water as I thought necessary. I later split the worms into two tubs and they looked fine for a while, but I noticed their numbers decreasing and every time I disturbed the peat moss to feed the worms, a number of them came to the surface and died. Eventually I just gave up and placed them in an outdoor raised bed (4' x 8' x 16"), which had been dug down another 4 feet. The bed is filled with well composted cow manure and straw. I have been feeding the worms with spoils from the garden and they seem to be doing much better. I have a 2' x 4' piece of plywood placed on the surface of the bed. When I feed, I dig a hole with a potato fork under the plywood, place in a five gallon bucket of rotted veggies, water it well and recover. Each time I feed there are hundreds of worms present. I covered the top of the raised bed with some old window panes from a local restore before going south for a couple of weeks. Heard we had snow the night after leaving..

When I return home I have a larger piece of thin plywood which fits nicely inside of the raised bed which I will paint black to add extra heat to the bed. On nice days I can uncover the bed and water with warm water to knock off the surface frost. I then dig down a coupe of feet to feed the worms. Our frost line can go as much as 18 inches or more, but with the combination of the black board and the window panes, I doubt that it will go much more than 6 or 8 inches even on the coldest days. I have around eight five gallon buckets of garden refuse I keep in an unheated shed to feed the worms as necessary, about once a month. The contents of the bucket get mushy and freeze, but I simply add some hot water to the bucket and dump it in the pit. Chop with a sharp shovel for several minutes, add some warm water, and recover the pit.

Thanks for the feedback Marc7, this is a fascinating hobby or business. I too have learned much from commercial growers. Let's here more...

Here in zone five or the lower edge of four I have a large wash tub sunk in the ground and filled with various mosses from our mountains. In the fall I top it off with leaves. Kitchen trimmings but no protein go in that tub with an occasinal hand full of finely ground chicken scratch feed. That tub likely has no bottom since it has been along our warm side house foundation for over thirty years.
.....We seeded nightcrawlers, or nightwalkers some thirty or more years ago. It has provided us and the grandchildren with all the fishing worms we can use. I know it is spring when the kids come for the worms. I never bought a worm except when we have gone to Canada and can not take their worms back in with us. Ha.
Same story when returning to the States. That's our fine department of agriculture doing another fine job for us. Ha Ha