Why Jumping Worms: Backyard Gardens and Homegrown Conservation
For many of us, our backyard gardens and lawns are our closest, most intimate connection to nature. Eighty percent of American households, and over 60 percent of Canadians do some kind of gardening. And gardening is good for us! It helps reduce blood pressure and stress hormones, builds strength, and improves our moods and mental health.
The backyard garden is also one of the most powerful ways an individual can positively impact their local environment. When gardeners plant native plants and let a little bit of their lawn go natural, they create valuable pockets of habitat that help to support declining insect and bird populations.
Jumping Worms Degrade Gardens
Unfortunately, gardeners are also on the front lines of the jumping worm problem. Jumping worms mostly spread through horticultural material, including soil, mulches, and compost. This puts gardeners at exceptionally high risk of exposure. They are often the first to notice jumping worms in their area and the first to reach out to us for help.
When their properties are infested, gardeners and homeowners see many of the same changes observed in forests:
Organic material, like mulch, compost, and topsoil, is quickly consumed and converted into castings over one or more years.
Castings several inches deep leave shallow-rooting plants poorly tethered to the ground and more vulnerable to drought. Visible root damage can occur in some plant species.
Any slopes may become highly vulnerable to erosion, and gardeners may see dramatic losses in soil cover.
Beth Solie, a Master Gardener in Minnesota, shares what she’s experiencing in her jumping worm affected home garden in a video made for inaugural HSC meeting.
Not all of the damage is to the environment. Many gardeners are also profoundly affected by the appearance of jumping worms in their spaces. Soils that they have tended for years, if not decades, seem to be suddenly under attack and are visibly degraded. A pastime that once brought joy and a sense of identity and community is threatened. Surveys by our researchers find that gardeners and homeowners often experience feelings of sadness, panic, anger, fear, and hopelessness.
There is hope
Our researchers have already identified several promising control agents and methods that we are actively exploring, but much more needs to be done. Gardeners are one of our most important allies in this fight. Their properties are critically important, not only because of the habitat they create, but because many forests first become affected when worms spread from adjacent cultivated spaces.
Gardeners have been and continue to be invaluable community scientists, helping our scientists assess jumping worm populations in larger scales, and observing what ideas work in their yards. We hope that the Healthy Soil Collaborative can be a bridge that connects landowners and gardeners to jumping worm scientists to foster ideas and expand the scope of our science and observations.