A slime pile of worms
It rained all day right into the night. Someone told me last night it dropped to -8 C. I find that hard to believe as I didn't see any ice in the morning. Early this morning (around 1am) while doing my taxes I decided to take a break and get outside. Holy cow! It had gotten cold. The misty rain didn't help.
I ended up at the nearby park gathering worms for the backyard garden. There were hundreds of worms on the ground. I didn't see them at first walked very slowly in order to not step on any of them. While most of the worms were relatively small, maybe 10 cm in length, there were the huge worms that were about twice the length.
I'm storing them in two large ice cream buckets with soil, corn husks, and water in the basement sink. I plan to release them into the backyard once it gets warmer.
2 comments:
Why do you have to keep them before releasing them? DO worms freeze in winter? If so how have they survived without becoming extinct?
Hey I like the new bear icon. I really wasn't sure what the other icon was... laundry?
Any hoo... the worms
I have read that worms can survive freezing if they are frozen over a slow period of time (and warmed up over a slow period of time). The article I read did not state how long a period of time that would be.
For the most part worms survive by digging deeper into the ground past the point where the earth freezes.
I decided to put them in a bucket because...
- the ground or soil in my backyard is hard
- I'm not sure if my backyard has soil that's deep enough. The ground is raised on two levels. My garden being on the higher one. There might be concrete under it for all I know.
- it's still cold at night
- I have not added anything to the soil as of yet for the worms to eat (ie. peat moss, compost)
As a side note... There exists a worm that lives in glaciers called an Ice Worm (how appropriate). I was reading about it on the Worm Digest site.
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