How to kill lawn earth worms

[momofdrew]

say what????

 

[OldGuy43]

Refers to the practice of painting lawns green. The pictures are from the Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland. "♫ We're painting the roses red... ♫ "

 

[Just-Moxie]

Wow..all I can say is....wow

 

[ducks4you]

DH's associate has a neighbor in their cul de sac who put astro-turf down in lieu of a lawn. THAT is genius, for somebody who doesn't like to mow. Why can't these folks see that they are OTHER SOLUTIONS?!?!?

 

[skibum]

This subject hasn't been visited for awhile but, I feel compelled to post a reply after reading other posts on this subject. To those of you fortunate enough to NOT have an excess of worms in your lawn, I can attest to the fact that they are undesirable. Worms eat plant matter & leave their castings on the top of the lawn. The castings become hard & are frequently the size of a golf ball with a sharp point. Mowing the yard is difficult, walking barefoot is painful. Every few steps finds another mound. Weeds grow in the mounds. Imagine throwing 100 golf balls in your yard, then trying to mow over them, or play ball. While I agree worms are beneficial and the use of chemicals to reduce the population is undesirable, there are few options. I'm spraying Sevin on the lawn this week to hopefully reduce the population which will allow my family to enjoy playing in the yard.

 

[OldGuy43]

Just so you realize that Sevin Dust (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) is a cholinesterase inhibitor and is toxic to humans. It is classified as a likely human carcinogen by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

 

[Nyboy]

Skibum welcome!! get some chickens mine love eatting worms. Old guy just watched secondhand lions great movie.

 

[OldGuy43]

Yep, one of the great feelgood movies of all time. Now, back to the castings problem. OldGal and I were discussing it this morning, and came up with a couple of ideas;

1. Castings on the surface are not normal behavior for earthworms. Are you sure they are the problem? Could it be something else? Moles come to mind. The roof of their tunnels dry up and get really hard.

2. How often and how much do you water your lawn? If you keep the soil really wet it will drive earthworms to the surface. Moles too for that matter.

No research. Just ideas.

 

[hoodat]

Large piles of castings are usually the work of nightcrawlers when they come up at night to mate on the surface. Night crawlers are usually only found in cooler climates than Texas (or Southern California) The only place I can think of where they would be a problem is on putting greens and the problem is easily solved by running a light weight roller over the green in early morning after the worms have gone back down. One role night crawlers play is to take the nutrients from deep in the soil where they have leached down from the surface and put them back in the top soil layers where they are more easily used by plants.
I can't conceive of spraying the lawn with something known to case cancer (It's right there on the label) and then sending the kids out to play there.