Using Earthworms to Improve Soil

Learn all about using earthworms to improve soil in your garden.

By Melinda R. Cordell
Updated on September 11, 2023
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by Janet Horton
Worms break down food scraps and other materials and leave behind nutrient-dense castings.

Learn all about using earthworms to improve soil in your garden.

Charles Darwin, who was fascinated with earthworms, wrote, “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.”

Worms have made the soil of many nations fertile, and they will do the same for your soil. Having thousands of earthworms in your garden is like having a thousand tiny tillers running day and night, and each tiller is pulling a compost spreader behind it.

Earthworms mix the soil as they eat their way through it, and their tunnels help loosen compacted clay or silt, allowing water to seep through. This also helps increase aeration of the soil, sometimes up to 75 percent, which in turn allows the tiny organisms around your plants’ roots to thrive. (However, earthworms are not good for some northern gardens; more on that in a minute.) Earthworms recycle nutrients and disperse them through their castings, making them more available to plants. Earthworms will do this work for you all day and even while you sleep. What’s not to like?

Black Gold

Earthworm castings are as good as gold to a plant. As worms eat their way through the soil, they devour organic material and soil, and inside the worm’s crop and stomachs, the organic material is broken down into nutrients while the soil is ground into extremely fine particles. This “soil soup” in the worm’s gut mixes with beneficial microorganisms from inside the worm, and nutrients that would otherwise be difficult for plants to absorb are made more readily available when excreted.

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