I have a worm question

So I have a small worm question. Here's the situation: I have two patios at my place (I also garden at a few other locations , on one of these there was three inches of leaf drop from a nearby tree. As I've been picking this up slowly, I have seen alot of worms. There is literally nothing but leaves and concrete here. Mi was wondering if these worms were part of the composting process and if so, is there a reason I can't use the locals instead of buying worms for a bin? If not that's cool, just trying to use the resources on hand.

compost worms can be natives especially when you find them in organic matter without soil.

were the worms you are seeing nightcrawlers? I am guessing so.

the composting worms are often called redworms and are suitable for using in containers. They dont burrow deeply like a nightcrawler does. Night crawlers like to burrow deeply, up to 6 feet sometimes. You can use the locals for composting. They may not be as fast as the commercially available "composters", but hey they are free. Any kind of organic matter that contacts the ground will eventually be home to earthworms. Just yesterday I turned the very bottom of a 4 foot pile of shredded leaves. There were t-o-n-s of worms in there doing their thing.

Compost and earthworms like quite different environments. An easy test to find which type of worm I have: if they leap around and do cartwheels when disturbed, they're compost worms and can go in a farm. If they kind of lie there; earthworms-not in a farm.

Leila Rich wrote:Compost and earthworms like quite different environments. An easy test to find which type of worm I have: if they leap around and do cartwheels when disturbed, they're compost worms and can go in a farm. If they kind of lie there; earthworms-not in a farm.

This was very helpful. They were doing gymnastics... I had trouble grabbing them with my gloves, and they had a reddish tint too.