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Jan 28, 2024

Ask the Gardener: How to spot the invasive Asian jumping worm

By Carol Stocker What to do this month Heavy rains have made gardens lush and, with hope, saved the lives of many trees stressed by last summer’s drought. Adding another layer to garden mulch will

By Carol Stocker

What to do this month Heavy rains have made gardens lush and, with hope, saved the lives of many trees stressed by last summer’s drought. Adding another layer to garden mulch will help absorb this summer’s torrential rains and conserve moisture on hot days. Use cooler morning and evening hours to pull fast-growing weeds, harvest berries and vegetables, and trim off spent flowers and foliage. Keep mowing lawns. Stop fertilizing and pruning roses and other bushes after mid-August. They need to start preparing for winter dormancy already! Stake dahlias, delphiniums, and other tall-but-spindly wobblers to protect them from windstorms. Be on alert for pests such as spider mites, scale, chinch bugs, thrips, tomato fruitworms, tomato hornworms, snails, and slugs. Remove diseased foliage and disinfect your pruners between each plant. For example, cut mildewed perennials like phlox and monarda to the ground, and do not compost the infected leaves and stems. Weed out self-sown phlox seedlings, or they will revert to less attractive colors than their parent varieties. Order spring bulbs from catalogs before the favorites sell out. Extreme weather from climate change makes gardening even more of a gambler’s game. Plant a fall crop of cool-weather vegetables such as broccoli, kale, bok choy, and radishes on the chance that we may have a long, warm fall, but knowing a sudden, early frost could be just as likely.

Q. How can I tell whether I have Asian jumping worms, and how do I get rid of them? I have seen only one so far — several months ago — in my compost pile. I’m on the lookout. To be sure that all of the plants donated to our community sale last spring were worm-free, we accepted only bare-root ones.

L.C., Maynard

A. Several species of Asian jumping worms are rapidly spreading across the United States, displacing European nightcrawlers because they grow twice as fast, reaching 6 inches. They devour the top layer of organic matter critical for seedlings, threatening native plants and animals. They spread through brown cocoons the size of a mustard seed, and are almost impossible to spot. The texture of heavily infected soil is granular and uniform like coffee grounds. They are called jumping worms because they thrash around much more than other worms. (There are actually at least three invading species of jumping worms: Amynthas agrestis, Amynthas tokioensis, and Metaphire hilgendorfi.)

You can check for jumping worms by slowly pouring a gallon of water mixed with a third of a cup of ground yellow mustard seed into your soil. This will drive the worms to the surface, where you can remove them by throwing them in the trash or in a bag you leave in the sun for at least 10 minutes, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. You can also kill the heat-sensitive cocoons by covering the moistened soil with a sheet of transparent polyethylene for three weeks in spring or summer. Try not to move plants and soil into or out of your yard. Buy bare-root plants and bagged mulch when possible. For more information, visit the Cornell Cooperative Extension at warren.cce.cornell.edu/gardening-landscape/warren-county-master-gardener-articles/invasive-asian-jumping-earthworms.

Q. We have four raised beds in which we plant cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, using wire with small openings mounted to stakes and buried in the soil, but we still had an issue with critters. Any suggestions?

N.C., Weymouth

A. The bunny baby boom is this year’s biggest garden problem. The smaller the wire openings, the better, so that even those cute, tiny ones can’t squeeze through. I would use 60-inch-wide lengths of chicken wire. To bury your fence, dig a trench a foot deep and 8 inches wide. Lay the bottom of the chicken wire in the trench, forming an outward-facing L shape, and then fill in the trench. The aboveground part of the fence should be at least 3 feet tall. Fasten it to steel fence posts no more than 10 feet apart with five fence clips per post. For extra effectiveness, you could add a garden electric fence charger with two hot wires or electric fence strands. String one at 2 inches and the other at 4 inches above the ground. When the bunny is squeezing through, it completes the circuit between the two wires and gets a shock. This won’t kill the rabbit, but it will certainly send it hopping in a different direction.

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