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I wouldn't know one if I saw it and my banty chickens probably take care of any we might have, but just in case I do see one I would like to know what I am looking at. I too love my earthworms, even the huge night crawlers, & don't even let the poultry loose in the mornings until the ncs have had time to go back down into their tunnels for the day. I try to protect the earthworms too by removing them to raised beds or other safe areas when I lift up water and feed pans each day to refill them. There are usually a lot of them under each container.
I see that now. Thanks for pointing it out. Not that I go around looking at the 2 ends of all the worms in the yarden but maybe if I actually see one I'll remember what to do.
Same here, my soil is very hard clay and I live in a new development so theres not alot of earthworms yet so I'll be on the look out for flatworms as they sound quite evil!
Our soil is known as black gumbo. In other words, very rich black CLAY. It may be rich and black, but in all other ways it is like clay. We amend and amend but it seldom seems to help much if at all. Now it is getting dry and hard dispite being almost 5" ahead of normal rainfall at the end of July. I need to get soaker hoses hooked up this afternoon. I do mulch quite a lot to help hold moisture in on the top inch or so of the soil & water deeply once a week when I need to. Green beans however have shallow roots and need more frequent watering.
Ugh, your soil doesn't sound very good either...I keep topping mine up with manure here and there through out the summer because earlier in the spring alot of the perennials were turning yellow so we did a soil test and discovered there is NO nitrogen. So I keep amending and fertilizing. Theres been so much rain here too this year but our soil is far from drying out. If you dig a hole and fill it with some water it does not drain at all! So for future beds we're just going to put the topsoil right on top of the clay and make them slightly raised.
SW,that is about the only way to go. Don't buy topsoil if there is any chance it may be local. We did that once and ended up with raised beds as bad as what we already had at ground level.
Yes, we did that too at our last house, the ground soil wasn't clay but the topsoil we bought was heavy clay. Our plan this time is to order a skid of the nice balck soil that comes in bags. It'll be easy to transpot to the backyard too.
