Earthworm

How to recognise it

Familiar. In a healthy bed you should turn up several per spadeful.

Mistaken for

Sometimes chopped by digging and assumed to regrow as two worms - a myth; it usually kills them.

What it eats

Not recorded — the field is blank rather than guessed.

How to attract it

Mulch, compost, no deep digging, no copper overload, and never bare soil in summer.

Plants that help

Straw or compost mulch

Lifecycle

Long-lived, breeding through the mild months, dormant in high summer drought.

Months: January, February, March, April, May, October, November, December

The thing people get wrong

Worm count is the best free soil test there is. Dig one spadeful and count: fewer than five means your soil is hungry, compacted or over-cultivated. Mulch and stop digging, and the count climbs within a season - and every other soil property follows it.