Knowledgebase
hammer head worms #799949
Asked July 07, 2022, 6:30 PM EDT
Franklin County Ohio
Expert Response
The best information on hammerhead worms in Ohio can be found in the Buckeye Yard and Garden onLine (BYGL) posting below. There is no easy control of this invasive pest.
https://bygl.osu.edu/node/1977
An excerpt:
If you do encounter one, you can carefully kill it with salt, rubbing alcohol, or vinegar applied directly to the flatworm. Use these methods carefully as they are more likely to damage your plants than the flatworm itself. There are no products or home remedies that you can apply to your entire yard to kill them all that won’t kill everything else, so our advice is to not worry about them until you see one. When that happens, then take action with the aforementioned methods and report sightings through the Great Lakes Early Detection Network App, available at https://apps.bugwood.org/apps/gledn/
Other references on hammerhead worms:
https://extension.missouri.edu/news/hitchhiking-hammerhead-worm-kills-native-earthworms-4632
An excerpt:
No known treatments exist, but gardeners can rid the soil of these predators by heating the soil to 93 degrees for five minutes. They survive freezing temperatures.
An excerpt:
Because of their cryptic habits, ability to reproduce by fragmenting and their lack of natural enemies in North America, hammerhead worms will likely prove impossible to control.
Zawislak said that if a gardener spots a hammerhead worm, he or she shouldn’t hesitate to kill it.
“But you don’t want to chop it in half with your garden trowel,” he said. “Using gloves, place it into a plastic bag or other container with salt and vinegar, then freeze it overnight before disposing of it.”
