Gardening for Worms

Why garden for earthworms?

They are the hardworking recyclers; they work away under our feet everyday ensuring that gardens have rich healthy soil to grow glorious flowers and large juicy vegetables.These small forgotten heroes need a bit of love and care to allow them to thrive, so below are the top tips for making your garden a worm-friendly zone

A Wildlife Friendly Garden © Roger Key

Earthworm Top Gardening Tips

• Make a mess! Worms love a messy garden with lots of dead leaves and wood, so don’t tidy it too much let your worms recycle it. Dead plant material is an important food source for earthworms
• Having a diverse range of native plant species in your garden. This will encourage a range of different earthworms and nematodes which will create a healthier more diverse soil
• Avoid using pesticides as earthworms are soft bodied animals and are vulnerable to toxic chemicals, heavy use will quickly reduce their numbers.
• Avoid compacting your soil with heavy machine, compaction makes soil dense and less accessible to earthworms.
• Avoid using acidic fertilisers most earthworm species prefer alkaline conditions.
• Have a compost heap and/or a wormery, an efficient and environmentally friendly way of the disposing of kitchen and garden waste.
• Have damp and marshy areas wet conditions are favoured by earthworms this will help maintain numbers even in dry conditions.
• If you have a garden with no room for worm-friendly patch of untidiness, why not make a bug hotel out of a 'tidy' leaf pile? All you need is some plastic mesh, some garden string, a flat piece of wood and a pile of leaves click here to find out more.