Earth Worm Mass Suicide??? WTF?

[Rons Rightway Lawncare]

Not sure where on the forum is the best place to post this, but what is up with all the dead earth worms in front of some of the lawns I mow? Some yards will have a few dead ones here and there and others it seems there thousands of dead ones on the curb and in the street in front of the lawn.

[MowerMoney]

Worms cannot breathe under water and as they live in the upper 3 - 4" of soil, they would drown from all the rain. So they try to escape by crawling out to hard surfaces where they often can't get back in time and dry out and die. Didn't say they were smart. Not much room for brains in their slimy little bodies.

[MowerMoney]

Worms cannot breathe under water and as they live in the upper 3 - 4" of soil in the summer (in winter they burrow down below the frost line), they would drown from all the rain. So they try to escape by crawling out to hard surfaces where they often can't get back in time and dry out and die. Didn't say they were smart. Not much room for brains in their slimy little bodies.

Oops. Didn't mean to double post. Is there a way to delete a post in the first few minutes?

[noseha]

your earth worm knowledge is impressive.

[Rons Rightway Lawncare]

These worms also seem to be leaving lawns that do not get alot of water.

[Runner]

It is possible that if there is a trichlorfon (Dylox) ap. put down, many worms will die.

[DBL]

worms...no eyes...that freaks me out

[Jason Rose]

Sevin, MSMA, and clearys 3336 are also known earth worm killers... any of these could cause a migration of sorts, if they are still living at the time...

I saw one a few months back, I wish i had a better camera then my phone one with me... I thought it was a brown snake! Swear to god it was 10 inches long!! Night crawlers those are called, and this dude could have baited 10 hooks! LOL!

[TURFLORD]

Not sure where on the forum is the best place to post this, but what is up with all the dead earth worms in front of some of the lawns I mow? Some yards will have a few dead ones here and there and others it seems there thousands of dead ones on the curb and in the street in front of the lawn.
I've seen this happen over the years, but not for some time. The DEP has canceled the registrations on many of the insecticides that were so broad spectrum that they would kill everything, such as Triumph. Products today are engineered to more directly target the pest without harming beneficials.

[mowerman111]

Believe it or not a few years ago I had a customer that had an over abundance of earth worms in one area of his lawn, if that is possible! but they were making a mess out of the lawn where they would push the dirt up, So he wanted me to get rid of them. I tried everything to talk him out of it. When he told me that if I couldn't do it then he would find somebody else, well I didn't want to lose a $500.00 per month account over a few to many worms. So I got on the phone with several of the large chemical companies to find out if there products would kill earth worms, imagine how stupid I felt asking how to kill worms, but they claimed there was nothing that would work. Well I happened to be reading through some old gardening books written in the 1930's, and there was a article on how they had poured ammonia on the ground and how the earth worms just came up by the dozens and died. So I went and bought several gallons of ammonia and mixed it a large trash can with water and dumped in that one spot, I was amazed at the results. It never hurt the grass or anything. Dont think I was proud of doing that but it did work.

[Jason Rose]

The 3 products I listed above also kill them quite well... A couple, or maybe all now carry a warning label "This product highly toxic to earth worms".

There did used to be a couple chemicals LABELD to kill them as well, restricted use stuff, but as far as I know they are gone totally from the market now.

Earth worms DO a lot of damage to a lawn, in that they can make it impossible to safley use the lawn since just walking on the ground can be very difficult with all the mounds (castings). You can imigine the damage they could do to a golf course putting green, hence the need for control methods.