Has anyone seen the invasive 'jumping worms' in your area?

I just saw these on the news. They said they are already in 37 states. They ruin and deplete your soil! Have any of you come across them? This website from the University of Maryland  explained a lot.  https://extension.umd.edu/resource/invasive-jumping-worms

Why am I always the last one to learn something?

The Maryland Extension office link you provided says that they have been in the state since 1939. Also they say that the worms deplete the soil of nutrients but I didn't see where they backed that up, and it seems that the jumping worms can digest wood and leaves, while leaving behind castings. Sounds like fertilizer to me. I haven't seen any where I live, but I am on a remote mountain in east Tennessee... So that might not mean much.

Earthworms also were brought from the Old World to the Americas. So the soils here did not have them when the Europeans arrived.

I think Ben makes some good points. It sounds like these worms have all become part of the soil decomposition system.

They're working their way across my state and I'm trying to keep them off my property.  Regular earthworms are invasive as well and have an effect on forest ecosystems but apparently not a terrible one.  The jumping worms sound like they voraciously eat the duff layer and convert it into a crumbly material that isn't as good as what we think of as worm castings.

There are probably many articles and research on them, here's one from WI: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Invasives/fact/jumpingWorm.html

Mike,
Thank you for sharing the info. I know worms are mostly good.... but having said that, one year they turned into a real problem for me once about 7 years ago. And I know these are just 'worms' but they sound very different from what we've gotten used to. When I looked them up I founds dozens of news reports about them from all across the country. And I buy bags of dirt and soil amendments all the time. And I have no idea where they are made/manufactured. That worries me a lot. It's hard enough to grow my own food without encountering more problems. Thanks again.

Today a local in my  village reported their property had an infestation of Asian Jumping Worms.

I'm going to keep a diligent eye but I'm not even sure what my first line of defence is going to be.  I am going to have to do some research on these worms but I hear they can effect fertility.

Anyone have suggestions?

A few months ago I saw one jumping around while I was out taking a walk in a nearby neighborhood. It was surreal to see it in person after hearing so much about it.

I have not noticed any on my property, and I am not really sure what I could do if I did. Probably just hope that they integrate peacefully into the ecology of my garden.

It seems I heard about them a few years ago.

This article by Texas State University has some helpful info:

Preventative: Check the mulch, potting soil, compost, and any potted plants you bring home for worms. If you identify jumping worms, immediately bag up the material and dispose of it. You don’t want to put any of it in your garden!! Remove soil from all plants before transporting them or potting into sterile potting soil. This helps to remove jumping worm cocoons (egg cases). PLAY, CLEAN, GO: Leave no trace and clean equipment (gardening, hiking, etc.) before going to another location.

http://www.tsusinvasives.org/home/database/amynthas-spp-

Something I stumbled on, apparently the water from soaked Black Walnut husks might be used to force them out of the ground.

Perhaps something to do with either the tannins or jugalone?

I am thankful that I have not discovered any on my property, but I might do some foraging to brew up a batch just in case. An experiment if you will.  

Yes, I have jumping worms. They appeared suddenly in my compost heap and quickly proceeded to process all of the mulch and wood chips in my garden. It was an alarming discovery to say the least. My neighbors reported them as well. I don’t know where they came from, but I suspect a big decomposing fiberglass bait pool left on my property by the first owner may have been the source. I never saw worms in it, but it was full of similar castings.

Problems:
1) They DESTROY mulch. I use leaf litter and wood chips as path mulching in my garden. With the worms, this has limited benefit as all mulch is turned into castings within a season.

2) The castings are poor. Unlike night crawlers, jumping worm castings are large and limited to the top organic layers of soil. They do not enable root systems to develop, wash away extremely easily and are not intermixed with the other soil horizons. Whatever nutrient gain is realized is short and offset by a plant’s struggle to establish itself. I have noted tillering, stunted/no growth, uprooting when plucking fruits or leaves, etc. I also suspect the worms eat the young rootlets as they develop, further stunting growth.

To make matters worse, we had enormous amounts of rain this summer, with intense downpours of several inches multiple times over the summer. I have dealt with unprecedented erosion, with literal streams developing and cutting course through my garden - lasting for days. The top inches the soil being jumping worm castings and loss of mulch  
made matters somehow even worse.

3) Chickens do not like them. The birds are fearful of the worms. One bird was enthusiastic at first, but I think she ate so many of them that they continued to writhe inside her and made her feel unwell. After day one she has turned up her beak at them.

In short - they are awful. I can absolutely see why forest ecologists are worried about their spread in northeastern forests. They absolutely will limit seedling regeneration and soil development. I will try solarizing large parts of my garden to reduce populations next summer, which will require some extra planning for planting schedules. Good luck if you become cursed with these freaky varmints.

Discovered the tell-tale sign of jumping worms and they are throughout my gardens.

Interestingly where my wooden raised beds are they seem to prefer the bottom edge of the wooden board towards the mulched garden paths instead of up in the bed itself. For now at least!

I secured a large amount of black walnuts, I am planning on dehulling them this week and into a bucket to soak they will go. I'm attempting this blind as fall is here and I expect the worms to die this winter. I'm planning on spot targeting the areas to see if the juglone might effect the egg sacs and hopefully reduce populations for this upcoming spring.

I unfortunately believe this is something that we will just have to learn to live with. It will just be another factor that consumes organic material and increases the need for compost/mulch/living mulches. I just need to watch the soil tilth and hope it doesn't dramatically change.

Yes, jumping worms are not like any other introduced worm. Just like Charles highlights, the castings are dry and crumbly, degrading the soil structure, leading to erosion, and predators (birds) don't like them.

I don't have them but people all around me do (not so much in the country). There's a cemetery in town that bales leaves, another place that mulches them for sale, and all the plant swaps and divisions- I don't partake in any of it now.  It's just not worth it. The eggs, hardly noticeable, can come in on a myriad of things.


I do have friends with them but they say they proliferate in certain pockets of their yard but not in other areas. We could not make sense of why- no visual clues.

Wonder if some worm-eating critter could help? Something like hedgehogs or moles, perhaps? Or thrushes? There's bound to be something that eats them, especially if they can't escape deep underground. I heard that blackbirds (in the European sense) recently learnt how to eat the feared Spanish slug, by pecking a hole in the slime, wiping their beak on the grass and then eating through the hole...

Otherwise, what of diatomaceous earth? I have no experience with it at all, and don't know if it works on worms, but might be worth a try.

Hmmm, CABI lists a few predators of Amynthas agrestris, among them three species of salamander. And a leech and a crayfish... Also, they say that prescribed burns have shown promise as a countermeasure. (https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/10.1079/cabicompendium.121715)

I adore them.     They are all over Florida they eat leaves and convert that to wonderful worm castings.       Food for chickens and food for my plants.    Please invade me!!!

I have them all around my roots of my plants and they do my plants very good.

I'm in east Texas and have a large population of these jumping worms on my property. My chickens seem to have personal preferences, some love these and others are clearly not interested... I was reading that they can accumulate heavy metals and am now worrying that I've been feeding my family toxic eggs. So frustrating!

Geneva Upchurch wrote:I'm in east Texas and have a large population of these jumping worms on my property. My chickens seem to have personal preferences, some love these and others are clearly not interested... I was reading that they can accumulate heavy metals and am now worrying that I've been feeding my family toxic eggs. So frustrating!

If there is heavy metal in your soil, then it is not the worms it is the chem trails....  or biosolids.   They are just blaming it on the worms

Since the jumping worms live in the top few inches of soil and the adults can't survive harsh winter. I am wondering if the life cycle can be disrupted by eliminating the adults early before they produce cocoons that overwinter? Researchers make mustard slurry and pour on the ground to drive them out. Catching and killing seems feasible this way, at least for a small home garden to me. I have not seen any, luckily, but I will keep my eye out.

Kim Goodwin wrote:Earthworms also were brought from the Old World to the Americas. So the soils here did not have them when the Europeans arrived.

I think Ben makes some good points. It sounds like these worms have all become part of the soil decomposition system.

There are over 100 varieties of earthworms native to North America.  There is a lot of fearmongering and misinformation about animal and plant origins. There is nothing but benefits from the earthworms.  The original  Alabama Jumper , recently discovered to be labled Asian Jumper and now suddenly on the news media and its hyper sensationalising propaganda feed is an old time fishing worm here in USA and has been here called Alabama Jumper when my Grandpa was born in 1918. It's made Alabama a fertile land.

And these are only the worms we can see, what about the microscopic ones..

I'm afraid I have to respectfully disagree with folks that say that these worms improve the soil. This is both my anecdotal experience and what forest ecologists are saying. The latter is easily researched using google scholar or even watching academic presentations on youtube, so I'll focus on my and my friends' experiences. Using permaculture principles, I spent 6 years improving the soil from lawn to garden on my 1/3 acre, and it was developing beautiful tilth and stuff was happy. These worms came in about two years ago and destroyed it in less than one. For example, in one area I had been in the process of mulching a bed when I ran out of time, leaving a pile of arborists about a foot tall that I had been planning on spreading. They ate it. It literally disappeared leaving a pile of clay in its place. This is at the base of a stone wall, so judging the relative height of the ground level is simple. Any castings of organic matter sit on top of the soil beneath the duff layer like ball bearings, and they just flow away with any water. I have a number of areas where they collect, and I've experimented with trying to get the to incorporate with the soil layer, and it just doesn't work.

In my main food producing beds, the story is the same. They eat the organic matter and leave the castings on top. It washes away, and the soil compacts on its own. The mulch disappears leaving bare soil. There's no layer anymore where the distinction between mulch and soil blends. It's just mulch on top of clay. My annuals don't do well anymore, although my established deep-rooted perennials are doing fine. In response, we are re-contouring our beds to direct the castings inward, but I'm not sure how mulch that'll help.

These worms are voracious, as well. Their metabolism is much higher than European earthworms, so they eat far more. In one presentation I watched, the vermologist (yep, that's a worm scientist) was comparing the two types (there are multiple species of each), and he said that your average european earthworm lives about five years and in that time moves no more than 30 feet. The jumping worm lives only a single year, and in that time it can travel 300 feet.

I've tried the mustard water to get them to come to the surface, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Saponin compounds are supposed to be toxic to them, but they are also toxic to amphibians and other soft-bodied animals, so that's out. My plan for this coming year is to use a fungal control that's showing promise. It's very cutting edge, but I'm basically going to follow the lab protocol below, but instead of doing it in a controlled bucket, I'm going to treat half my beds and leave the other half alone. We will see. In short, you inoculate millet with a fungal product that's sold to the greenhouse industry, and it acts as a bait. The fungus is toxic to the worms, but it has to be ingested. I'll definitely be reporting my results here on permies.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8035901/

Some nematode species are specialized predators of earthworms, using their slender bodies to invade and consume their prey.