T wrote:
....
I keep wondering if I can buy worms and toss them in
all my holes. So far the only thing I can find are
fishing worms.

you can, but it would likely be a waste of $.

adult worms generally don't transplant well as
they are acclimated to the soil they were raised
in.

some fishing worms may do better than others.
do not, however, release worms into the wild or
wooded areas unless you know for a fact that
they are already there. night-crawlers from
North America, no, don't buy those as any type
of worm for raising or using in a garden as
they likely won't make it without special care
and they also may not be right for the area
anyways.

one worm you may find in a bait store will be
called either an european night crawler or a
belgian night crawler. these make excellent
compost worms but will likely not survive
extreme heat or cold so you might raise them
in buckets like i do and then put the worm
compost outside without too much worry that
they will be a problem to any native species.
yet, it is a good idea to ask your local
environmental type people what they'd think of
using them.

if you want any tips on raising worms in
buckets in the non-conventional way you can
check out my webpages for those:

http://www.anthive.com/project/worms/
http://www.anthive.com/project/taters/

the reason i call it non-conventional is
that many people do worm composting but they
don't use any dirt from the gardens in their
system so they are not recharging their garden
soil and also they usually aren't using a mix
of worms where i usually have at least three
to six worm species in the buckets here.

if you can find organic matter out and
around that is kept fairly wet/moist there
is a good chance it already has a population
of compost worms there. you can take a few
dozen from various place and that will often
work just fine to start with.

as you get deeper garden soil you can then
look for gardners around your area who would
likely be happy to share some other species
of worms with you to use.


songbird