Soil is the most precious material on earth. It is over 5000km to the centre of the earth, yet all plant, animal and human life must be sustained from the uppermost 20-40cm of the earth’s crust – the layer we call ‘top soil’.

Healthy fertile soil should be a complex mix of humus and fine rock particles, rich in minerals, teeming with bacteria, worms, insects, fungi, algae, and yeasts.

Adding Worms to the Soil

The most obvious effect of having large numbers of worms in the garden soil is the improved growth of all plants when compared to soil with low populations of worms.

Worms improve the structure and aeration of soil due to their constant burrowing. During the burrowing process they ingest large quantities of soil, small sand particles and organic matter, mixing and blending together these fractions and depositing the mixed materials as ‘worm castings’. Lobworms (Lumbricus Terrestris) deposit their castings on the surface; our Blue Nosed worms deposit their castings just below the surface.

It is burrowing the greatly improves the soils drainage, at the same time increasing the soils aeration and water holding capacity. For deep burrowing and heavy clay soils the best species to use are Lobworms – but it is possible to inoculate the soil and use Blue Nose worms together with Lobworms. Blue Nose worms will worm near to the surface in the area of the plants roots.

Both species of worms remove leaf and grass litter from the surface creating humus and fertility from their castings. But to maintain and increase the number of Blue Nose worms the soil must be top dressed once or twice per year with an organic mulch of composted manure, mushroom compost or any mulch of composted material.

Recommended Inoculation Packs

To dramatically improve the border soils and turfed areas in a garden we have developed a system of inoculating the soil with packs of worms of mixed species based on 10 Lobworms and 20 Blue Nose worms per pack. A special bedding mix is used to support the worms in the first few weeks of after inoculating in the ground.

The inoculation sites should be spaced out in a grid system around the garden at a rate of 1 inoculation pack at the centre of a 2m x 2m grid. The worms will slowly radiate out from the inoculation site to fully populate the whole area depositing castings and capsules (worm eggs) as they go.