Okay, has anybody here heard of or practiced Worm Grunting?

It's a concept new to me. Supposedly, strumming or rubbing a wooden stake driven in to the ground makes subterranean sounds that cause earthworms to surface, where they can be collected by hand.

Done it. Works!!

I have never done it, but I've talked to many peope who say they have. I had never heard the connection to moles. What I was lead to believe is that the noise made the worms "think" it was raining and they came to the surface, as worms often do, to escape the water. The mole story makes more sense.

Bing

Any guess as to why, would have to be purely a guess. We use those decorative spinning daisy's to get rid of moles because the moles hate the vibrations caused, or they cannot "feel" vibrations of the prey. For whatever reason you want, something makes the stuff work!

When I was a kid, we would keep plywood or black plastic in our "natural" worm harvesting area to charm them more easily. An occasional sprinkle of corn meal for food and the moisture from the covering made a couple minutes of tapping bring up dozens of red wigglers and night crawlers.

We did something similar. Except in the center of our harvest area, My grandfather had driven a steel T-Post deep into the ground. It was at least 4 feet deep. We would peel the tarp or plastic back to "Feed" the worms. When we wanted to go fishing, we would peel back the plactic and tale turns tapping the post with a small hammer. Then we got smarter and would take a short piece of pipe and run it up and down the side of the post (rough side). Unless the ground was really dry for a extended time, this usually worked. If that didn't work we would break out 2 copper rods, drive them into the ground and hook them up to a old telephone crank, and start "Calling" them up.

Here is just a little bit more about worm grunting. This was a feature on a program I download onto my MP3 player from Living on Earth. Quite interesting to listen to.

Worm Grunting

We used to drive a wooden stake with many notches into the ground, and rattle the notches with a piece of broom stick. We always assumed it simulated a mole or other worm predator. It worked a little, but nothing geat. At certain times, all we had to do was rake back the leaves and collect startled night crawlers by the dozens.

I'm lazy, I used a chain saw a couple times.

I've never tried worm grunting. I am however quite adept at caterpillar yodeling.

JHAP yodels up a companion for his suburban:

For it to work well the ground needs to be wet.The wetter the better.You can cut a small sapling off about 12-18 inches above the ground.Run a dull saw back and forth slowly(make it vibrate)till the worm is COMPLETELY out of the ground.The best areas are where you see worm droppings on top of the ground.Yes,I know this is obvious.The roots from the sapling will vibrate further into the dirt/soil.We call the worms Long Johns.Some of them may be 18 inches long when they are stretched out.Good luck.Hope this helps.

Worm grunting,catapillar yodeling(which I fully expect a class on this at the convention),it never ceases to amaze me what can be learned here.

Wish I could have yodeled up that Caterpillar when I was digging my pond.

Money talks, just start yodeling about money and Caterpillars will show up with guys who know how to run them...

Thats the way we do it in the south except we call it "fiddling" for worms and this is what comes up.It has been pased down from granpa to grandchild