When it comes to Colorado’s looming fight with the Asian jumping worm, there’s no good news/bad news.
There’s only bad news.
They’re really long. They spread as easily as mud from your shoes. Their larvae are the size of a mustard seed, so good luck finding that on the back 40.
Oh, and they jump. Did we already mention that part? Touch a full-grown one — twice as long as an earthworm and decidedly, um, stouter — and it moves faster than Cocaine Bear.
At a time in the season when green thumbs are cleaning out fall leaves and welcoming early snapdragons and peonies, the Colorado Department of Agriculture has sounded the alarm about the jumping worm. They are not friendly, beneficial earthworms. They are, in the pointedly indelicate warnings from state Ag, “aggressive,” “invasive,” “a significant ecological and economic threat” and “hyperactive.”
“They are long, red-to-brown colored worms that thrash and move erratically with a violent snake-like motion when disturbed,” agriculture officials say, and that’s just in the identification section.
Unlike ordinary earthworms, whose castings and tunnels enrich soil and ease water flow, the Asian jumping worm eats everything on the surface and leaves it barren. They devour nutrients and leave them locked up and dried out, while the hardened soil exacerbates drought damage.
“Preventing any spread of the jumping worm in Colorado is critical to protecting our state’s healthy soil and native plants,” said Wondirad Gebru, director of the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s plants division. “Since there are no effective eradication methods, we are asking gardeners and landscapers to be vigilant, inspect their materials, and report any possible sightings to our agency.”
This new horror show started in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood, the department says, but may have already wriggled across parts of the metro area. The seed-sized larvae can be spread unnoticed in a bucket of debris, a bag of mulch or a landscaper’s truck loads.
In advising gardeners what to look for, plant experts say the Asian jumping worms leave behind a uniform, granular soil texture that looks like coffee grounds. That coffee grounds in turn look pretty much like soil goes unsaid.
The state’s tips, such as they are, include:
Do not move soil that you think is infected with the invasive worm.
Carefully inspect potted plants and root balls before sharing them with other gardeners or bringing them into your own garden. The jumping worm, in addition to being bigger, has a body band that is gray to white compared to that in earthworms.
When buying compost, make sure it’s made by a legitimate producer who has kept the material above 130 degrees for three days to kill larvae.
Report. If your worms are jumping instead of moseying around, please, immediately, fill out the Jumping Worm Reporting Form. The capitalization is all theirs, we swear.
We also pledge to find out who did this.
“We don’t know exactly how they arrived in Colorado,” said Ag department spokesperson Olga Robak. “But we expect they were introduced through plant material imported into the state.”