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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] INVASIVE EARTHWORMS!!!!

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] INVASIVE EARTHWORMS!!!!
  • Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:21:25 -0800 (PST)

Sounds like we've plenty of smarty-pants around here ;>
 
Jokes aside, we've imported a style of gardening (and fishing) from places where terrestrial/manure earthworms are ubiquitous to a place where they are not.  Earthworms like this happen to work very well with the nutrient-intensive feeding schedule of intensive gardening and they do monster amounts of work loosening compacted and damaged soils.
 
Nobody knows, since no study or survey has been made, as to whether they are doing damage to southern forests, but the evidence is certainly difficult to refute in the north.  Fortunately, this was a slow problem until our recent composting methods became popular.  Now it is suddenly not just fishermen but many of *us* as well, spreading the problematic worms about and very few funds or people volunteering to assist with a nation-wide survey of what we have and where, nor of how to use local bugs/fungi/ect to do the monumental work that the imported earthworms are capable of.
 
This is a real shame.   Even a little thought at home and in the few places thinking about it have come up with things to begin working around the situation.  Freezing the castings and worm teas (both of which carry eggs), using BSFs, using fungal suites that Stamens and others from NAMA have pioneered.  Earthworms move slowly through the region, I think the estimate is somewhere around a mile a year from their start points.  They are only spreading so fast because of so many fishermen and transported plants and soils and now deliberately released by gardeners wanting the help to recover damaged soils.
 
Yours, Pego

<<Who knew!!   Oh well I would poison the ground to get rid of worms as some
folks do.. Many year ago I worked for Chemlawn and people would call for
lawn treatments to "kill the worms" in their lawns cause they were leaving
their castings !!!!!???>>




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