Recently I attended the first Planning Committee for our Annual Plant Sale scheduled in mid May 2022.
Due to the Covid situation we have not held our plant sales during the last two years so our members are anxious to get back into this annual event for our community. Also, we are anxious to get back into some serious fund raising activity!
This year we are facing a new challenge with this sale. How do we prepare the plants that we donate from our gardens to lower the risk of our customers taking home the newest damaging invasive critters that have moved into our area since the Covid oubreak! I am referring to the "Jumping Worms" which is the common name for a worm that is damaging our soil by removing most of the nutrients in it.
The agriculture departments of our State Universities in the Midwest have been active in research on how to continue gardening while managing to lower the risk of these invasive worms damaging the soil in our precious gardens and yards! It will take a bit more effort to prepare this year's donated plants for sale. We will be using the guidelines developed by the University of Minnesota which seem to be in line with other guidelines we have found in other areas of our country.
If you are not familiar with the damaging and invasive worms that have been moving into the areas in our country, you may be interested in the below link for information. Not only will you learn about this worm and it's life cycles but how to identify it and what you can do to minimize the risk to your own garden beds!
After seeing what has happened to gardener friends in our area, I have moved to taking some precautions to lower the risk for my own garden beds and lawn in the last few years.
I urge you to become informed and consider making some changes in your gardening tasks and processes to protect your soil as there is not a product available that can kill this pest at this time.
Learn about the Jumping Worms Click here:
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