"Corral" earthworms for your garden

**llama momma** 3/2/2012, 10:23 am

If you have a shoebox or similar size, scissors, and a shovel to bury the small box, you can corral backyard worms to add to your sfg box. Springtime is a great time to do this as the temperatures encourage breeding and birthing of babies.

Get your small cardboard box, cut 3 inch windows in the sides, bury the box (or boxes), fill with fresh food scraps and rough compost. Close the lids or cover the Box Lunches with cloth to keep them dark and damp. Check back periodically and spread them throughout your garden or into your worm tube. Eventually worms will find your sfg boxes anyway, but this is a neat way to get a whole bunch of little garden buddies working for you right away. Also a pretty cool way to get ourselves outside playing again.

curio 3/2/2012, 10:29 am

Sounds pretty simple and straightforward to me. Thanks for sharing. I wonder how long those boxes will hold up with our wet weather?

**llama momma** 3/2/2012, 10:33 am

Who knows? In time the worms would eat the microbes decaying cardboard box too.
$BB\'s happy face$

jkahn2eb 3/2/2012, 12:51 pm

That's brilliant!

**gwennifer** 3/2/2012, 1:04 pm

This sounds like a great idea! I was not wanting to buy worms because I worry about disrupting native populations. I shall try to corral them! Wonder what other bugs will want the free lunch? Guess I'll find out!

**llama momma** 3/2/2012, 1:54 pm

Jkahn,
I got part of the idea from a book that was trying to save worms from getting chopped up from tilling. So I thought Hey why not corral them instead to put in our sf boxes where they could continue the composting cycle right where we want them.

Gwennifer
Right, I'm with you! Down the road I don't want to put all those non-native red worms in my garden either. So I'll keep the red guys indoors to make vermicompost. The boxed up/corraled natives can get right to work as square foot helpers.

ETNRedClay 5/9/2013, 10:41 pm

We've had a wet spring. So I've been 'collecting' worms once a week... I just move my 5-gallon water buckets, scoop up all the worms I find hiding there, and drop them in my SFGs. Then put the bucket right back where it was. Usually 5 or so big fat ones living under each bucket.

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