Earthworm Types

There are 3 main types of earthworm; the compost worm, the earthworker worm and the root dwelling worm.

Important - composting worms are not the same as common garden worms that you dig up in the soil in your garden.

The Compost Worm

There are 4 species of compost worm. They live in the first 12 cm of topsoil on a rich diet of rotting vegetable matter, but don't eat soil. They can be found in manure heaps and leaf piles, but you won't find them in normal garden soil.

To a compost worm protozoa, bacteria and fungi are like salt and vinegar on fish and chips – delicious.

They do not build permanent burrows in their habitats, but prefer to burrow randomly through the topsoil and rotting matter.

When it's cold or really hot they will burrow deeper down and ball up, covering themselves with slime to protect themselves from drying out and hibernate to conserve energy.

There are four main species of compost worms available:

Eisenia fetida

• Common Names - Tiger worm, manure worm, brandling worm
• Colour - Rust brown with yellow stripes around it's body- just like a Tiger!
• Length - Up to 130mm
• Ideal Working Temperature Range - 15-25°

Dendrobaena venta

• Common Names - Dendras, blue noses
• Colour - Violet, purple or olive brown and sometime striped
• Length - Up to 155mm
• Ideal Working Temperature Range - 18-25°

Lumbricus rubellus

• Common Names - Redworm, bloodworm, red wiggler
• Colour - Dark red to maroon, no strips and light yellow underneath
• Length - Up to 105mm
• Ideal Working Temperature Range - 18-23°

Eisenia andrei

• Common Names - Reg tiger worm
• Colour - Dark red to purple with maybe some stripes
• Length - Up to 130mm
• Ideal Working Temperature Range - 18-23°

The Earthworker Worm

This type and the Lumbricus terrestris in particular, is the earthworm your are most likely see in your garden, busy at work tilling the soil making it more airy and nice for plants to grow in. They make long vertical burrows of up to a few feet deep, leaving their poo, known as worm casts at their entrances. They eat some soil and are particularly partial to leaves, even preferring some varies over others.

They come up to to search for food at night and Darwin, whose studies were mainly carried out on these worms found that they can even find the best shaped leaves for bunging up their burrows with.

The Root Dwelling Worm

Most of these worms are deep burrowers, inhabiting the areas around plant roots, rich with decaying roots and fungi and are widespread in farmlands. You won't see these worms, as they never venture above ground.

The squirting worm Didymogaster sylvaticus  and the huge gurgling Austrailan Megascolides australis covered in the About Worms section are the more freaky examples of this type of worms. These two are extremely rare and hard to track down.