In the Garden: Help keep worms in our gardens and out of the
forests. The Dark Side of Earthworms Ask a gardener what
creature of the earth does the most to enrich our soil and the
answer is most likely to be ... the earthworm. I have a worm-
composting bin in my basement not just for recycling food scraps
but also for the worm manure or castings that I mix into the
soil to benefit my plants. But like many things in life, it
turns out that there's no black or white, no "all good" or "all
bad." Earthworms, it appears, have a destructive streak. The
earthworm's ability to tunnel through the soil and make
passageways for air and water, to decompose organic material and
release its nutrients, and essentially "till" the soil is good
news for farmers and gardeners who are growing crops that are
continually replanted, and where the soil is continually
amended. Earthworms essentially prepare the soil for us. But
forest ecosystems are an entirely different matter. There,
earthworms are rapidly decomposing the spongy la