Ah -ha!!! I just remembered that I put some store bought worm castings on top of the soil---could there have been eggs in there?? The castings sat on the store shelf for GOd knows how long and then in my shed.

dkgarber,

from what I have read, earthworm eggs can survive for months before hatching. They may also have hatched while in the bag and continued processing the left over material in there.

I have also found red wigglers in some of my houseplants. The plants seem to thrive while the worms are in there so I just leave them. I also occasionally apply a little compost tea and use ground up dried leaves to cover the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. Red's favorite meal is dead leaves, so I'm sure they are happy and well fed. Houseplants can certainly benefit from the influence of the worms. Cheryl

I found red worms in the filter fabric (bidim) of my koi pond. They've been there for ages but as they were always tiny,I wasn't sure what they were, so I left them alone. Anyway I decided to experiment and put some of these tiny worms in a mini worm bin (ice cream bucket) in a slightly damp, but not saturated environment. They have prospered and grown rapidly over the past few weeks and you can now see the familiar red worm bands.

My home-made pond filter is more or less like a thin carpet underfelt and although always submerged, it is just below a waterfall - so is highly oxygenated at all times. Plenty of nutritious sludge present from algae etc. I wonder why they stayed so tiny in that environment?
Cape Town

Here is a link that might be useful: Working Worms

hey fellow MASSer!

i have a container garden (carrots and tomatoes so far) and i use mulch n top of the soil.... i also put worms in the containers and the red worms stay near the surface... top 4 inches or so.... night crawlers and common MA area earthworms dig much deeper to escape the cold. but not the reds.