Attack of the earthworms?

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

The recent wet weather has exposed a slithering mass of organisms in my backyard that do not appear to be living up to their reputation as wriggling garden helpers: Earthworms. Thousands of them.

A scientist holds an earthworm (Victoria Arocho/Globe photo)

My once weedy, but flat, lawn has turned lumpy from their burrowing. My garden soil is so saturated with worms I can’t pull a weed without unearthing a huge fat one. This weekend, I began sweeping up small piles of dirt on my sunken patio that turned out to be worm castings. And in these piles? More worms. Apparently there are so many in the ground they told their relatives to build skyward.

Can there be too many?

At the risk of incurring gardeners' wrath, I say yes. First, let me dispel for you of any belief they are native: Virtually all of the worms north and west of New Jersey were wiped out during the ice age that ended about 10,000 years ago.

European earthworms -- or their cocoons -- first hitched rides to the New World on the root balls of colonists' plants or in dirt that was used as ballast in ships to steady them on the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. In the 1800s, much of the region's vast forests were cut down for farmland, and worms -- clinging to plants or even plows' wheels -- were introduced to more areas of New England.

Researchers estimate that today New England could have as many as 15 species of European and Asian earthworms – the latter tend to live close to the surface. Among the most common are nightcrawlers, which can burrow down as deep as six feet into the earth. The worms can colonize an acre in numbers ranging from the tens of thousands to more than 1 million.

Sure, they can do good, naturally plowing dirt and depositing nutrient rich beads of soil that feed plants.

But my plants are being buried in soil beads.

Despite this, I have taken no action.

But yesterday, barefoot, I stepped on a pile of seven. They lived. But neither I – nor they – were happy.