The New Era - All about Sweet Home since 1929

By Kym Pokorny

Oregon State University Writer

Jumping worms, a not-so-nice pest that arrived in the United States in the 1920s as fishing bait and as hitchhikers on imported plants and soils, have vaulted into gardens and nurseries up and down the Willamette Valley corridor.

Unlike beneficial earthworms and nightcrawlers that burrow deep tunnels in the soil, aerating and releasing nutrients as they go, jumping worms stay in the debris on top and eat two to three times the amount of leaf litter as the other worms, according to Sam Chan, Oregon State University Sea Grant Extension watershed...