A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Buying worms...

I think I am in desperate need of worms to aerate and fertilize this soil. Our other yard was a dream... lots of worms and very fertile soil. We are amending, amending, amending... but I would like to try some worms. Has anyone ever bought them? Where? What price is reasonable? Do you feel it helped?

I've never bought them KK, but here's a place you could get them...Good luck.

http://www.reptilefood.com/reptilefood/default.asp

If you live near a fishing lake, river, pond, etc. there should be baitshops in the area where you can buy worms by the dozens for very reasonable prices. If you are lucky, they might even have Night Crawlers which are wonderful in the flowerbeds and tons of fun to try to catch.

reptilefood.com's prices are great... but shipping blows the whole thing out! Guess I will try a bait stand if I can find one (we just moved here and not familiar with the city yet)

a better, cheaper way, would be to find some trees with a lot of leaves built up at the bottom, and dig some worms that are native to your area.

They sell a bunch on Ebay if you want to check that out.. If you do just check out the feedback of the person you buy from first!!

Question to all on this idea. Is buying a few dozen worms a realistic way to aerate and fertilze your lawn?

I have a front lawn that could use a lot of help. (100x40?). Would it work, or would the worms simply crawl away? Get eaten by birds or just die? How many would you recommend for the size of my lawn?

For aeriating the lawn quickly, rent a plug machine, and leave the plugs on the lawn.

Depending on how long you have owned the property it may be worth your while to have the soil tested to find out what's in it that isn't allowing a natural worm colony to form in the first place, you shouldn't have to import worms into a lawn, even golf courses with their intensive care program have millions of worms.

Speaking of golf courses, you may be able to pick all you want for free after dark following a rainstorm or watering cycle. You can do that in a public park as well, or ask a neighbor if you can tip-toe through their lawn at night to see if they have worms.

I can find no good reason to buy worms for any outdoor use, they are provided free all over.