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applestar
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Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Pondering the relationship between earthworms & grass roots

I was enlarging a border bed to plant garlic and shallots. I was having one of those lazy days when I didn't feel up to getting the proper tools out of the shed, and was ending up making the job harder by using inadequate tool -- namely a hand trowel and a hand fork.

Although this border HAD been edged and trenched earlier in the season, lawn grass rhizomes had crept across the trench and required a lot of digging down with the hand tools.

But the flip side of this was that I was up close and personal with each trowelful of dirt and I discovered earthworms of various sizes in each clump, whereas, I was not finding as many in the holes I dug to plant the garlic and shallots IN the bed. :?

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I decided that the hilled celery experiment was a big success and I should hill the celery and leeks in the Sunflower & House bed, too. Only problem is that unlike the Kitchen Garden in the middle of which I made compost this entire season, I didn't have a ready source of loose hilling material, and I'd planted the leeks close along the inside of the rabbit fence (thinking they might have some repelling properties), which meant I didn't have the room to dig between the fence and the leeks.

...so I had the brilliant idea to dig a trench outside the fence. I try to keep about three inches free of weeds/grass, so I enlarged that and dug a little way out, flipping the sod and top soil at the fence which made the soil fly through while the sod and roots stayed out (exactly like screening compost :() )

Well, pretty soon, I realized I was flipping earthworms -- some were getting caught on the fence and dangling, while tiny ones were flying right between the wire grid. They were ALL congregated in the region between the 3" cleared border and where the grass was trying to grow into that area.

8) 8) 8) I'm thinking the earthworms like the exudate from the growing root tip zone 8) 8) 8)

:idea: This is very similar to the way I always find earthworms in the roots of spring prolific weeds like chickweed and dead nettle....

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rainbowgardener
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Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Interesting ... I had noticed a similar thing, but it wasn't about grass. I have two long narrow flower beds (the butterfly/ hummingbird garden) with a path down the middle. The path has stepping stones, but just dirt around the edges and it gets weedy. I was digging out the weeds with a hand trowel and noticed that there were lots more earthworms under/ around them than in the flower bed right next to it. It's just some landscape timbers between the bed and the path, nothing that goes down in to the ground. Maybe just that the ground doesn't get disturbed as much? Or maybe they the weeds better than the flowers? It's a whole variety of "weeds" there, including actual weeds and some that are just escapees from the flower beds



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