Can anything be done to control nightcrawlers in the lawn?
Night crawlers are very good at mixing the soil. This is good for lawns and difficult to mow around and walk on. Power raking, or rolling with a ballast roller, or core aeration will help decrease their numbers. As of yet there is no chemicals registered for their control. When are nightcrawlers the most active? Usually they are most actively working the soil in the spring and fall. They benefit the lawn by loosening the soil, but are disliked because they push up mounds of soil which hardens into hard bumps on the lawn. What can be done to knock the bumps down? Any process of raking or dragging the lawn will break the bumps down. One of the side benefits of power raking is the knocking down of nightcrawler mounds. Where did the nightcrawlers come from? They tend to move at night from one yard to another. Fishermen use them as bait and don’t mind having them in their backyards.
