Slug Control

When we find damage in our yards and gardens that resembles the poor rhubarb on the right, careful eyes are very likely to discover that the slugs are out of control.  

Organic slug control begins with nurturing the soil.  Soil may seem like an odd place to start a discussion on slug control, but the easiest way to control slugs over the long term is to invite slug predators to do the job for you.  Slugs are at their most vulnerable to predation as eggs in the soil and as tiny hatchlings that live for months beneath the soil surface.  To permanently reduce slug populations we need to think about our garden soil as a living and complex ecosystem.

 

E.O. Wilson, in the Nova DVD, Lord of the Ants,  waxes poetic about the soil beneath our feet.  He mentions that most people think of the surface they walk on as two dimensional.  However, he goes on to explain that soil is one of the most complex and most diverse environments on the planet.  In most natural undisturbed ecosystems this is still absolutely true.  But it may not be true in your garden, which Wilson was not considering.  

The soils were we garden have often been compacted, leveled, and groomed to death.  In addition, our gardening habits may work against the soil ecosystem.   Baring the soil to the sun causes oxidation of humus and death to most soil organisms.  Further, chemical fertilizers are toxic to most soil organisms and beneficial insects, and if your soil has ever been treated with pesticides or herbicides the soil environment has been further compromised, or possibly completely massacred. 

We can, however, turn the soil around.  This is important to slug control.  A complex living soil environment will nurture and protect the beneficial predatory insects which will happily devour slug eggs and young slugs.  By improving the soil environment, we also improve the productivity of our gardens.  That’s a double win, more productivity and less damage!

In building and nurturing living soil, we may find we need to expand our ideas of what appropriate soil care is, what we might want to dig in and bury, as well as what we think is appropriate to use as mulch.  To encourage a diverse soil environment, a diversity of organic matter needs to be incorporated into the soil.  This feeds and creates habitat for a self supporting web of life, which will help keep pests in balance and protect our gardens.

This photo is from a hole I dug in a bed in my Hoopa garden, to remove mature parsnips, garlic, potatoes, and giant snow drop bulbs.  It was about 12 inches deep, possibly a little more.  I didn’t work the soil after digging.  That's just what the bottom of the hole looked like.  And, by the way, I didn’t need a shovel, I just used my hands.  The important things to note are that there are different types and different sizes of organic matter present.  And the soil, even though it is moist, is a loose assortment of various sized crumbs.  This is your goal!  Soil that is crumbly, full of air spaces and organic matter of different types and sizes is exactly what plant roots need, exactly what the soil nutrient cycle needs, and exactly what the predatory insects that dine on slug eggs and slug hatchlings need as well.

You can achieve soil like this, easily, and without spending any money.  Everything you need is probably already produced in your garden and kitchen!   This technique is a variation on an old fashioned and little known British technique.  It is variously called garbage gardening or trash gardening, and it utilizes all kinds of organic matter.  In this technique, the garden row is prepared by trenching,  the trench is then filled with organic matter including kitchen waste, weeds, and other garden debris,  which is them buried under at least six inches of soil, and the resulting mini berm is then planted.  My modified version has been named “The Compost Hole Method” by my friends, and just uses planting holes instead of trenches.  Some of my friends have further adapted the technique to their gardens, environments, and resources.  At the community garden where I am now the coordinator, we have re-adapted the technique once again; using wide trenches and probably a full ton of weeds buried under eight inches of soil.  The two photos below show two different groups of tomato plants grown in the same garden, one over the trenched and buried weeds, and the other of tomatoes that were planted in our soil in an area that was tilled, top dressed, and then had finished compost worked into the planting holes.  The tomatoes on the left were grown over the buried weeds, the ones on the right by more traditional organic methods. The difference is amazing!

Burying your compostables including weeds, garden debris, and kitchen waste pays dividends, the very first season!

"Soil both craves life and wants to produce more life, even a hundred fold."  Fred Bahson, Soil and Sacrament, page 3.

Before we get going on the Compost Hole Method, which you can modify back as a method to prepare whole rows or to prepare wide beds, I want to share a little secret with you.  Amongst all the other organic matter you will utilize in building your living soil environment, you will want to include short sections of sticks and stalks. They are the secret ingredient for super powering organic slug control in your garden.  

Many of our garden plants produce strong stalks when we allow them to flower and begin the process of setting seed.  Clip the excess stalks into sections from about 2 – 4 inches long.  These carbon rich sticks provide plenty of surface area for beneficial bacteria, protozoa, mycelium, and other beneficial soil organisms to colonize, and the green plant matter that forms the skin and pith of the sticks (as well as the other organic matter you will be burying) provide the beneficial microorganisms with food.  As the sticks and stalks are colonized and broken down, they often become hollow.  

The combination of this hollow structure and the presence of beneficial organisms creates the perfect home and food source for the tiny soil living creatures that devour slug eggs and young slugs before they emerge from the soil.  These predators will arrive in your garden as eggs laid by their mothers.  They do not come out of their eggs big enough to slay slug eggs.  They need other smaller organisms to devour while they grow.  The hollow sticks, in addition to offering them an excellent food source, also provide them with shelter from larger predatory soil creatures.  Your soil is definitely going to be a jungle of tiny creatures.  But that’s the way it should be, and it will make your work so much easier!

In the post on Slimy Slugs, I mention creating a coarse mulch of clipped sticks.  This mulch of clipped sticks is important to mature slug predators, but now you also know how important it is to include some of these sticks in the soil itself.  An abundant garden will produce enough of this material to provide for both needs, however, it may take a few years of soil building to get to the point that you have enough sticks in production to do both.  If you don’t have a source of fresh sticks and stalks to clip, check out the straw offered for mulching and bedding at your local feed store.  Most straw is actually the leftover stalks from a variety of grain crops.  Look close at a bale, and you should see that it contains hollow tubular stems.  While these stems will decompose faster than most garden stalks will, they will serve you very well until you get an ample production of stalks from your own garden.    

Check the straw out before buying, to make sure it has fairly sturdy hollow stems.  You don’t want hay.  Hay decomposes too quickly, it has very few hollow stalks, and it is full of grain and weed seed that will sprout in your garden.  Be sure to clearly ask for straw and check it out before you purchase it.  Yes, yes, I know I did say that you could do this without spending money, and you can.  It will just take a little longer if you don’t now have fresh sticks and stalks to clip.  The fresh sticks and stalks are actually superior to straw, because they still have lots of juicy plant material that will feed beneficial microorganisms, and those microorganisms will be right inside the hollow tubes where the baby slug predators can eat them while they take shelter and grow.  Sticks and stalks are better.  Straw will help if you don’t have them.  If you don’t have money for straw, just plant extra of whatever you are growing, and let it bolt and flower—your garden can easily produce plenty of stalks in a season or two.  (Weed stalks work too!)

A couple of other sources of hollow sticks you might already have around your yard are butterfly bush and elderberry shrubs.  They both attract pollinators and beneficial insects, and elderberry has the additional benefit of producing berries that are edible and medicinal.  Once well established, both of these shrubs can withstand being cut back severely, and will generally regrow vigorously.  Once you’ve clipped your sticks, you might want to allow them to dry before burying them and using them or using them as a coarse mulch.  Sometimes those short clippings will sprout and root if you utilize them fresh.  That has never happened in my gardens, but I know of other gardens where it has happened.  Another alternative is to take your chances, and then pot any up that start to grow and share them with your gardening friends.  Fresh sticks are better than dried, but dried are better than none at all.  Meanwhile, you may have other plants that produce hollow stems, twigs, or sticks in your garden.  Give them your love, they deserve it!

Ok, let’s quit talking and get to work!  The first thing to do is build soil. We’ll start with The Compost Hole Method, and build some really fabulous living soil. Once your soil will provided a comfy nursery and larder for your slug eating predators, you will want to  attract their parents to your garden.  All you need to know is covered in the post on Slimy Slugs.

You are also going to want some help cleaning up the slugs the beneficial insects miss before they emerge from the soil.  Those mature slugs are the ones we hate the most after all.  Unless you live in the desert, toads and other amphibians are probably your best bet.  You will find lots of information here on creating amphibian habitat in your garden:  http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/2010/11/hedging-for-amphibians.html 

If on the other hand, you live in a warm dry environment, you will want to create habitat for lizards and snakes.  Piles of rocks and downed wood, that have lots of protected and hidden spaces for hibernation, egg laying, and escape from predators are the ticket.  If you have a large garden, you will want to include this sort of reptile habitat in strategically located spots around your yard or garden.  Snakes prefer to enter their lair at the ground level.  Lizards generally like an elevated look out, say two to two and a half feet about ground level, with safe hidey holes directly below their look out. And since snakes will eat lizards, you might want to choose which creatures you want to attract to your garden and design with them in mind. In addition, all reptiles prefer their dens to be located in the sun, and to have flat areas for basking.   Think in terms of creating garden art as you create their habitat.  It doesn’t have to be a messy pile of unsightly rocks and downed wood.  It can totally be attractive, and it can include the odd whimsical element to make it fun for other sorts of garden visitors as well.

Speaking of other garden visitors, many species of birds also have a reputation for eating slugs.  While I have not ever personally found them particularly helpful in this regard, they do provide a wide range of pest reduction services.  Attracting birds for the purpose of getting them to eat pests is a little different than simply attracting them to feeders.  Learn more here: http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/2012/01/mystery-in-garden.html

It is going to take a little time to get your garden environment productive and diverse enough to keep the slugs from over populating.  In the meantime I suspect you will be hand picking, just like me.  I am gardening in a new location and still have lots of work and planning to do!  I use a plastic bag as a glove when hand hunting slugs, and I stash them in a jar with a tight lid. While I forgot to leave any head room in the half gallon jar pictured below (don’t forget!),  I filled it with slugs in about a half hour.  Ugh!  Left in the sun for the day, the slugs were dead the next morning.  I promptly buried them for their nitrogen boost to the soil and to garden plants.  When you do this, don’t let them age in the jar, they create a terrible stink; but when buried the soil forms a filter and the microorganisms make quick work of the rest, there’s no smell at all once they are buried.  (Quick tip, dig your hole before you open the jar!)   

Beware!  Slugs can carry disease.  Before you try this, contact your health department or cooperative agricultural extension and ask if slug borne meningitis is a problem in your area.  If it is, just get yourself a couple of plastic bags that have no holes, use one as a glove to collect the slugs, and the other as a receptacle.  When you’re done, knot the bag closed with the slugs inside, and stash it and the ‘glove’ in the trash.  And be sure to wash your hands!  Slug slime is gross!  Oh, but slug slim is actually good for the soil.  It helps the soil form that very desirable crumb texture and the beneficial soil microorganisms love it.  Slugs are not all bad.  But an over population of slugs is terrible. 

We are beginning to learn to think of the garden as an ecosystem, where all things exist in balance.  The role of the gardener is to steward that balance and in return to be deeply nourished . . .

Questions?  Additional organic slug control tips?  Please leave a comment!

~~~

Text and photos copyright Harvest McCampbell, 2015.  Updated 11.20.2016 with a quote and minor edits.   Please feel free to use the buttons below to e-mail, re-blog, tweet, share, or pin this post.  All other rights reserved.

Waxing Poetic about Garden Volunteers

This is a little note I was sharing with the community garden members where I currently garden, and I thought I would share it with you all as well . . . .


In the garden, wherever I (and others) have used the compost produced by our garden, there have been a bunch of interesting seedlings. At first I thought, hoped really, that they were chives. They had that grass like look of young Allium seedlings.

But, no, what looked like a single seed leaf, divided into two long narrow seed leaves, very typical of the Umbelliferae family, but other than that I had no idea what they were. They didn't really look like carrot seedlings, and I was hoping they were not hedge parsley, often called 'stick tights' or 'miners lice,' which spreads like wild fire. It is totally edible and choice, by the way, but not many people know it or know how to use it.

Meanwhile, the seedlings have been coming in thicker and thicker.

Today I noticed a seed coat still posed on the end of one of the seed leaves. I have been watching to see what the first true leaves look like in an attempt to identify it. That seed coat looked amazingly like a fennel seed, so picked it off and tasted it. Yep, fennel. And it is coming in, in some places, as thick as turf grass.

The good news, is that fennel seedlings are totally edible in soup or salad. They don't taste like much now, and they don't amount to much either. But if you can tolerate them a few weeks, they will be yummy and tender.
 
I can tell you exactly why we have it in our compost. Last year, I was waiting for the fennel seeds to become mature, and I was going to collect them for tea and flavoring--for myself and to possibly share with the food bank if people were interested. But then right before they were mature, someone cut the fennel down. And honestly, I did not investigate further.  But apparently they were put in the compost.

Fennel normally does not have this rampant kind of germination rate, at least not in California where most of my garden experience comes from. Many kinds of seeds, especially but not exclusively those of the Umbelliferae family, have built in dormancy, so that only a few will germinate at any one time, staggering the germination of the seeds over days, months, and even years. It is a built in survival mechanism, which allows at least some of the plants' off spring to survive all kinds of quirky weather changes. Dormancy, however, is built into the seeds at the end of their development. So, if you time it just right, by picking the seeds after they have developed viability, but before they have developed dormancy, you can end up with perfect germination as soon as everything else is in line--such as day length, moisture, and temperature. Apparently, someone caught the fennel, in the exact perfect zone.

For future reference, never ever put fully mature or nearly mature seed heads of any kind in the compost--unless you either want volunteers or you know for a fact that the compost is going to get hot enough to sterilize them. Making truly hot sterilizing compost is an art and a science and it takes a careful blend of materials and attention and work. Yes, it does sometimes happen by accident. But don't count on it.

All gardens get volunteers. Plants that show up, because the seed bearing parts rotted in place or in the compost. Some times the wind blows them in, or they arrive by birds, or perhaps even fairies.  Volunteers are one of the delights of gardening, as far as I am concerned. I love surprises in the garden, and they are often superior to hybrids in taste and color, and nearly always superior to hybrids in vigor and hardiness. Volunteers rock. But not necessarily when they are coming in like turf grass . . . .

Gardening, of course, is a learning experience.  Community gardening is even more so.  We learn together in community.  We learn about gardening and garden materials management not just from our own experience, but from the experience of other gardeners as well.  We learn also, grace; to take the good with the bad and to turn sow's ears into silk purses, to turn a plethora of fennel seedlings into beautiful food.  

Nature abhors bare soil.  Sun light degrades soil nutrients in bare soil, and rain water dissolves them and washes them away.  In nature, if there is enough light, enough warmth, enough soil, enough moisture--the ground is always covered with either green growing things or with a deep natural mulch.  Nature attempts to do the same thing in the garden.  Nature gives us weeds and volunteers to save our soil.  It's our job, in the garden, to accept nature's innate system  and manage it to work in our favor . . .

I've Got Worms!

Here they are, fresh out of their shipping package and on their way to their new home!

One of the first things I did upon moving in to my new apartment was to save one of my smaller moving boxes to start a little worm bin.  I choose a box that a regular plastic grocery bag will easily line.  I filled the bag/box about 1/3 full of organic potting soil, and then I collected a handful of clay and loam rich soil to add to the potting soil.  (That was a gift from a gopher who makes his home along the local river.)

Worms need some fine mineral soil--they ingest it and it helps their digestion.  The clay particles they ingest also supper-charge the worm castings.  It seems that the clay-humus combination excreted by worms provides many plants with exactly what they need as far as nutrition is concerned, and also as far as the delivery method.  Clay also contains cation exchange sites--which hold on to the nutrients until the microorganisms involved with the soil nutrient cycle present them with something in exchange.

There are microorganisms in the soil whose sole business is to trade nutrients they obtain from cation exchange sites with plant root hairs.  What they get in the bargain are the carbohydrates that fuel their lives.  The only source of carbohydrates, of course, are plants.  They make them from sunlight and water using nutrients they exchange with microorganism in their root hairs.

In most natural environments here in North America, this all proceeds without the help of earthworms.  There are very few earthworms indigenous to North America and they inhabit very small environmental niches.  All most all the worms we encounter here were originally from Europe. And in fact, worms are not always a welcome part of natural environments. They can disrupt indigenous soil nutrient cycles and in some areas this is threatening native plant species and the organisms that depend on them.  Just something to think about before you toss out worms leftover from fishing or before you introduce worms to your garden if you live adjacent to natural areas that do not already harbor earthworms. 

Soil nutrient cycles can do what they need to do without earthworms, but where appropriate, worms supper-charge the process!  They do their best work right in the soil of your garden, rather than in a worm bin or box.  If you haven't already, check out my article on gardening with worms here: 

Let Worms do Your Work!   You might also want to check out my related photo album on facebook: 
The Compost Hole Method.

Alas,  having recently moved into an apartment, I am no longer in a position to bury my compostables on a regular basis. Not to worry though, I do have a community garden plot in the next town, I will still be gardening and tending soil!  The only worms available locally  are night crawlers, which I really enjoy in the garden, but I have never raised them in a box before, and I wanted to stick with something familiar.  So I ordered 1/2 pound of red compost worms on-line. 

Before they arrived I made sure that their organic potting-soil-bedding was evenly moist, but not soggy.  Using a soil thermometer, I found a good spot for them in the apartment.  Sixty degrees Fahrenheit up to the high seventies is ideal.  Colder and they become sluggish, hotter and they suffer.  I found the perfect spot in my water heater closet!  Next I buried about a pint of kitchen waste in the potting soil and waited for my worms to arrive.  

Most people use shredded paper for worm bedding, and I do add some paper to my worm boxes if they start getting too damp.  However, I have found that my worms are happier, healthier, and more vigorous if their bedding is mostly chemical free natural materials, like organic potting soil and fallen leaves.  All paper has been through chemical processes and retains traces of these chemicals.  I have seen with my own eyes the difference between raising worms on paper bedding and on natural bedding.  I will stick with using a preponderance of natural material.

My current worms take about a week and a half to processes about a half a weeks worth of my kitchen waste.  I figure that eventually I will want about four times as many worms.  Living in a small apartment, this will take some creativity on my part . . .  but I am sure it can be done!

A word about smells.  A properly managed, maintained, and cared for worm box or bin has hardly any smell at all.  If I put my nose right down in the box, it has a very slight forest earth kind of scent.  If your worm box smells unpleasant, it may be too moist, too hot or cold, you may need a higher ratio of bedding to kitchen scraps, or you may need more worms or less scraps.  It is a learning process.  However there are lots of books and blogs and articles devoted to indoor "vermiposting."   Vermiposting is what composting with worms is called! Almost anyone can use this technique to recycle kitchen waste into supper-charged soil!

If you would like to leave tips, ask questions, or share useful web sites or books, please feel free to leave a comment.  I don't think Blogger will let you put a URL in comments, but you can give the names of useful websites and we can search them out!

Eight Reasons to Think Twice Before Pulling Your Weeds

Copyright 2010, Harvest McCampbell

1. The weed roots form beneficial relationships with the microorganisms in the soil, and in relationship with these roots they flourish and propagate--as the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you reduce the weed population, the microorganisms will partner with your crop plants and increase their ability to uptake nutrients.

2. Weeds scavenge water soluble nutrients and prevent them from leaching from the soil and polluting our ground water and streams, rivers, and lakes. As the plants you are intentionally growing get larger and you clip or pull the weeds and add them to the compost or your mulch, you have saved those nutrients in a slow release organic from that increases soil life and nutrient cycling.

3. Nutrient cycling microorganisms need protection from sunlight, weed leaves are great parasols.

4. Healthy soil life does not thrive on compaction. Weed leaves soften the blows of rain and irrigation, and the weed roots, when pulled gently - a very few at a time-- lift and aerate the soil. The roots that remain in the soil; will either grow new weeds prolonging their benefits, or they will decay, leaving behind humus and space for oxygen and for soil microorganisms to flourish.

5. Most weeds are edible and far more nutritious than anything we are trying to grow on purpose.

6. Many weeds provide habitat and food for beneficial creatures that will help control pests in the garden.

7. Weeds produce oxygen, which is currently in decline in our atmosphere--primarily because of human activity. See my article on Carbon Production = Oxygen Consumption (PS Oxygen Supplies are Limited): http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/06/24/18651816.php

8. Denuding the soil leads to erosion, nutrient loss, heat gain, water runoff, and much more. This is true on both micro and macro levels. To change how we think in the world, we must first change how we think in the garden. On the macro level denuding the soil of plant life (or even reducing plant life) leads to dust and sand storms, desertification, deforestation, massive top soil loss, and flooding. This in turn leads to destruction of the life in water ways and our oceans. Laying bare the soil may be our undoing.

Weeds are not the enemy. They are nature’s way of healing a damaged micro and macro environments. We can learn to work with them to the betterment of our gardens and our nutrient cycles.

For a little more information on my work, please see my info on facebook http://www.facebook.com/harvest.mccampbell?sk=info, and my website: http://www.BioDiverseGardens.com

Let Worms do Your Work!

The lowly earthworm is really a knight in shinning armor when it comes to garden soil. They tirelessly work to improve water retention and drainage, decrease run off and erosion, aerate the soil, and improve tilth and structure. They also increase nitrogen and the bio-availability of other plant nutrients. They do all this for free and with very little help. All they ask is a safe place to live and plenty of organic matter. You can encourage worms in your garden and let them work for you. Here’s how:


Throw away your rotor-tiller:

I know this might sound sacrilegious to many gardeners, but tillers kill worms. And worms turn soil. While you are out there tilling that soil – risking injury, straining your back, and burning up expensive fossil fuel, you are killing the very creatures that will do the work for you, for free. Tilling soil encourages erosion, topsoil loss through oxidation; and the formation of hard pans. While you are loosening the top layers of the soil by tilling, you are also compacting the subsoil. Repeated tilling on the same plots eventually causes the subsoil to become impervious to water and roots. Worms on the other hand will gradually loosen and aerate all levels of the soil, recycling nutrients that have leached into the subsoil back into plants active root zones.

OK, you ask, if I can’t use my tiller, what do I do? There are many options available to home gardeners. These methods generally involve mulching with plenty of organic matter, or building raised beds. “No Till Gardening” was first made famous in 1959 by Ruth Stout in her book How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. Fortunately for us, there is a new edition: Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent, published by Lyon Press (1998). A more scientific look at no till gardening can be found in Weedless Gardening, by Lee Reich, published by Workman Publishing (2001).

Feed the Worms:

Worms like organic matter, and plenty of it. They are living creatures; they need to eat. They don’t actually live on dirt, however they do ingest plenty of common garden soil. That soil is used as grit in their digestive process, which also involves beneficial bacteria. (These bacteria fix nitrogen, improving your soil for free!) What fuels a worms metabolism is the organic matter that we burry, mix in to the soil, or use for mulch. As that organic matter begins to decompose worms work their magic.

Worms prefer freshly decomposing organic matter. That organic matter gets mixed with the grit from garden soil, beneficial bacteria, and, well, worm slime inside the worm’s gut. The worm extracts its energy and nutrition and out the other end comes what is referred to as “worm castings.” Lots of research has been done on this substance. Worm castings are high in nitrogen and nitrogen fixing bacteria, which continue to improve the soil after they have been cast. Their digestive process reduces or eliminates harmful bacteria and soil born disease organisms. The castings are also a unique chemically bound composition of mineral soil, worm slime, and organic matter. They have very beneficial effects on plant health and nutrition.

Worms deposit their castings through out the soil and at the soil surface as they go about their business tunneling and searching for food. I find that by the end of summer, any organic matter that I buried in spring has become pure worm castings. When I make my fall planting holes I use those worm castings to top dress my garden. Then I burry more organic matter for the hungry worms and plant broccoli or kale for my own dinner. Fall buried organic matter is usually not completely devoured until the following fall, but the spot can be used in summer by tucking in your plants and providing them with plenty of mulch.

"There is an entire ecosystem in a handful of soil: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms.  Through their breeding and dying such creatures vivify the world."   Fred Bahnson, Soil and Sacrament.

Worms, worms, where are the worms?

If you don’t find several worms when sifting through a shovel full of your garden soil, you may want to purchase some to supplement those that may be hiding. The red wigglers and night crawlers available for use as fishing bait make a dynamic garden duo.

Red wigglers work the top few inches of soil, and will happily consume manure, decomposing mulch, and other organic tidbits. When temperatures turn hot, they will burrow deeper into the ground. If you have buried organic matter down where the soil stays cool, they will thrive through the summer months.

Night crawlers, when well fed, can grow to tremendous proportions. They form semi-permanent burrows and feed at the surface and on buried organic matter. They will also pull grass cuttings used as mulch down into their burrows adding more organic matter to your soil.

Between the two squiggly creatures your soil will be thoroughly cared for. Just make sure you have a shady spot with good drainage and plenty of organic matter before you hire them on. They will multiply and spread through out your garden with very little effort on your part.


More Benefits:

Besides saving your back, and improving plant nutrition, worms benefit the soil in many ways. The very slime that glues the organic matter to the mineral soil in worm castings prevents erosion and top soil loss. This glue reduces the ability of the soil to dissolve in water and get washed away by normal irrigation. The granular nature of the castings reduces the soils tendency to turn to dust and get blown away. The physical structure of the castings also benefits plant roots. Worm castings resist compaction (unless you work at it). The spaces between the castings provide room for air and moisture in the soil. And the loose structure of the castings are easily colonized by plant roots.

Worms are wonderful. They improve the soil both nutritionally and structurally. If we let them, they reduce the work of gardening immensely. They are out there right now, waiting to go to work for you.
More info:

For more information see the following articles from my blog:
A Simple Garden Routine - useful for bad backs, no time, short budgets – this article tells in detail exactly how to garden for and with the worms.

If you missed the article on organic matter, Nurture Your Soil for Free, you can read it here: http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/2006/05/nurture-your-soil-for-free.html

You can also use the search function in the upper left corner of this blog to find more information on worms, soil, and organic matter: http://harvestsgardeningsecrets.blogspot.com/

For the low down on the research related to worms and gardens check out this site:
http://mypeoplepc.com/members/arbra/bbb/id19.html




Copyright 2006 Harvest McCampbell, from my column "Digging the Dirt," published in The Hoopa Valley People Newspaper, June 20, 2006. Posted here with permission.


Updated with a book quote and minor editing on 11/17.16.  Text and photo copyright Harvest McCampbell.  Please feel free to use the buttons below to share.  All other rights reserved.