I have worms

8 April 2009

In an effort to suppress the uninvited slug population of my vegetable patch I bought worms online. Not the kind that infect PCs, but nematode worms. Magic microscopic worms that, I don’t know, eat slugs from the inside or something gross. But they do this below the surface of the soil, so I need never know about it.

The worms arrived through the post in a little carton that needed refrigerating. Note to the manufacturers: if you want someone to put your produce in the fridge, maybe you should rethink the packet illustration of a GIANT SLIMY SLUG COMING TO GET YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN WHILE YOU SLEEP. But I don’t work in marketing, so what do I know?

There were apparently twelve million worms in the packet, but as I didn’t have a microscope to hand I was unable to check the veracity of the claim. I may well have just paid £12 for a small tray of sawdust. I divided the dry, but slightly spongey material into five portions, one portion per 6 litres of water in my watering can. The instructions said that I needed to use the coarse rose. I looked at the rose on my can. Pfft, I dunno, they’re holes, what are you calling coarse? Answer: bigger than the holes I had. The water started off sprinkling out of the can just fine, but then slowed to a dribble as 2.4 million nematode worms settled inside the rose and refused to come any further. So I took the rose off and swung the can as I watered to try and scatter the water somewhat.

With four cans of water and worms I’d pretty much covered my patch and so with the fifth I was standing on soggy ground here and there, the mud sticking to my boots. Having emptied the fifth and final can I then had to be sure to clean off my boots as much as I could. Otherwise several thousand nematode worms were going to be crawling around my boots wondering where all the slugs were. And that would have been weird.

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Posted in: garden, photos

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One Response to “I have worms”

dreamdust » Running out of titles for harvest posts
19th October 2009 @ 12:22 pm

[...] hopping off under the hedge to explore and later returning to check on my progress. Between the nematode worms and the frog and his friends, the slug population has been kept pretty low this year, so I’ll [...]