Someone wrote today asking:

i recently installed a 16x32 foot garden with 9inches of dirt that came from an old hay field (high clay content, sticks to shoes when wet).  trying to find best worm to place in soil, not in bins.  what kind would you recommend and where to purchase up to a pound of them?  will be out of town for a week but look forward to an answer and getting the right worms to working.  Live in san antonio, tx.

My answer:

Oh yes, the San Antonio garden, it's not too user friendly for happy worms. Great shock to me to find myself living in a place where I could barely turn the soil, much less, once I did, could find not a single worm in it. Back in the DC/MD/VA area, worms are just something that you find in the ground. Not so here. Here you have to work for worms. So, what to do, and what type to get.Read more...

Got my worms today, from www.hallswormery.com/. I bought one pound, because I have no idea how many to buy, and one pound was the smallest. Figure I can always add to it if need be. Beside, from what I hear, they'll be making more worms soon. The worms are in a bed of what looks like... potting soil. Says there's enough food in there to last them a week, but it won't have to, I'll give them a new home tonight.

But, what I didn't count on, was getting Earwigs. So far, 3 have made themselves known, which just creeps me out. There aren't many bugs that i'm adverse to (cockroaches being the main one) but earwigs are one of the few. They just look like nasty little devils with the pincer thing on their tail ends. One of my workmates looked them up and they sound much more benign than they look, but my intellect, which now says, "Oh ok, no big deal", hasn't caught up with my gut yet, which is saying , "Oh Yuck! I don't those in my house!".Read more...