Do Worm Towers Work?

As a second installment from my original post where I began my journey to improve my garden soil. I took a leap of faith in building some worm towers into my garden. It's been one year since I've put them in and here's what I have to say about it.

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: For the purpose of composting, worm towers do work, all year long I've been able to throw in kitchen scraps into my towers and it composts away. The majority of the time however it may have only been a small percentage of worms actually were doing the eating, most of the time it was Black Soldier Fly larvae. I'm ok with that because they make quick work of it in the summer and they're inert bugs that don't have ill effect on my garden and I don't have to stay on top of carbon addition to the towers. Which means I can be lazy and still enjoy good results.

I did not "prime" my towers with any species of worms hoping they'd multiply and inhabit the dirt. I built on the premise of If-you-build-it-they-will-come. While planting my spring garden this past week, it became a common sight to shovel a spade or two full of dirt and have 1 to 3 worms in the dirt I removed. Two observations: populations were larger near the towers, most of the worms were small babies or juveniles. I didn't find many large adults, but they did show up occasionally. the fact that there were babies, the adult had to be around somewhere.

See, worms!

Was the new populations a direct result of the worm towers? I would say they helped, but they were not the sole reason worms came. Last year I had also trucked in and added about 3 inches of humus and manure composts to each bed. Then a few weeks later I added another 2-3 inches of wood mulch. I think all things combined provided for my success in creating habitable environment for native earth worms. Many eggs may have come to me in the compost to begin with that could have jump started my populations. In any case, they are here now and I am totally thrilled. The overall texture of my dirt is much improved from last year, it is moist and at least 50% more loamy than last year. Some beds are still a little dense, but I think they'll only continue to improve. All critter activity (meaning I found plenty of other bug and larvae types in the dirt in addition to the worms) is also up quite a bit from last year. I hope many of the others aren't pests, but they're sightings were only a 1/4 or less of those of the worms, so they're a minority.

To keep my populations happy, I did not till or turn my dirt this year. I've decided to add a nice layer of organic fertilizer and then another layer of mulch, about 3 inches. Last year's mulch and compost had decomposed and sunk down to the level of my beds, as I expected.

So that's how it has worked out for me. I plan to keep all my towers. Next year when I'm not 7 months pregnant, I'll probably move the towers to the corners of the beds instead of centered on the ends, I feel like there's wasted space trying to plant around them. The kids still love "feeding the worms"