Knowledgebase

Asian jumping worms #889536

Asked November 08, 2024, 1:04 PM EST

I believe my yard compost bin is full of Asian jumping worms. What should I do? How do I discard the contents?

Montgomery County Maryland

Expert Response

We can't concretely ID with the worms to species from the photos, as their physical features are not clearly in focus or readily visible, but they do not seem to have the general appearance of a jumping worm. With one generation per year, jumping worms are adults now (if they haven't already died out due to earlier frosts, having left eggs behind that are too small to pick out of soil), so would not be expected to be very small, though small adults might be present in some circumstances. Other ID features are included in the linked page or the additional resources it connects to.

"Cooking" them by heating them up in an active compost pile or solarization setup would work, but that is not as easily achieved this late in the year compared to summer. Worms not in the egg stage could be picked out by hand or screened out using a soil screen, which should trap the worms but allow soil to crumble through the screen. Although screening won't remove eggs because they are so tiny, heat treatment in a hot compost pile or solarization setup would also be effective for them, as per the info. on the web page above. There is no chemical means of getting rid of jumping worms.

If you wanted to get rid of that entire batch of compost anyway, then it can just be thrown out in a sealed trash bag.

Miri

Loading ...