"Tom Shufflebottom charmed 511 worms out of the ground at the first World Charming Championship, held in Willaston, Cheshire, on 5th July 1980. Entrants charm worms on a 3 sq-metre plot in a time of 30 minutes. "

Well, that's easily said. :mad:
I'm sick of the little sods slipping out of my grip on the night time lawn, so I tried 'charming'. Banged into the nicely wet lawn with a garden fork. Bashed and tapped it with all sorts of implements to charm the worms out.
Not a sausage.
Not one worm.
Wormless.
No-worm City Arizona

How tf do you do this? Is 'Tom Shufflebotton' an April Fool joke I missed? Anyone tried it?

Glenn,

Get yourself some decent aftershave and turn up in a flash car, waving a wedge of money about.

Worms aren't much different to women

Try watching the sea gulls, oyster catchers etc when it is blowing a hooligan and they can't feed on the coast, stamp, stamp suck up worm, no problem.

Elton, Baby teething or what

Alan

This could explain a lot.

Worm charming seems too much like hard work to me, not to mention the fact that I share my lawn with a huge labrador, so walking around it in the dark is not always a good idea <G>

http://www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk/ much less strain on the old back!

Success at worm 'charming' depends on quite a lot of factors one of the most important being the moisture content of the soil. If the upper soil layers are dry the worms go deep. Its not sufficient for the grass to be wet, the top couple of feet of soil must be damp.

At my previous house I accidentally found a brilliant way of getting huge numbers of worms. First I set up a sprinkler to soak the lawn over a large area. After a few hours of this I placed my petrol lawnmower in the middle of the soaked area, engine running at about half speed. Worms just came pouring out of the ground. Doesn't work at all at my new house.

The most reliable method I've found is to locate a meadow with plenty of old cowpats on it. The grass must be closely cropped and it must be a true meadow i.e. not been used for anything but grazing for many years. Stick your garden fork in the middle of the cowpat (down to the full length of the tines) and wiggle back and forth. Keep wiggling and be patient. Usually works very well.

[ 26. June 2004, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: mikeclough ]

OK, here we go .. lawnmower in the wind+rain, at dusk. Our neighbours already think I'm a nutter, so what the hoo

I watched this method on television one afternoon at the end of the news or something and I was truly amazed. The man demonstrating the technique was clearly tuned and he had his own particular ryhthm. He even had a pair of 'lucky' sticks that he prefered to use over any others. He only brought up 10 worms or so but he achieved this in a minute or so, the time given for an adecdotal slot, which I thought was pretty bloody good.

Mat, at £8 for 50 worms the strain as moved from your back to your wallet
Glenn, have you tried soaking your lawn with water from a hose and then pouring a mixture of warm water and washing up liquid onto it? This is supposed to work. Never tried it myself as I just collect the slugs from my garden instead, they dont get away when you grab them and are great bait for carp and tench and you dont get bites from smaller fish which suits me.

Yep, I use the vibrating fork method during daylight, but I much prefer to catch them at night when they are on the top.
My lad loves to catch them this way too, but he is pretty good using the fork too, so you can tell its easy.