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An agronomist pulls up more than soil with his soil probe.

Tom J Bechman 1, Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

May 8, 2020

1 Min Read
massive earthworm hanging off soil sampling probe
KING OF THE WORMS! If there isn’t a Guinness World Record for the biggest earthworm, there should be. This worm found by Logan Kolb would surely be a contender. Logan Kolb

Danny Greene wanted to communicate with farmer-clients during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, Greene, owner of Greene Crop Consulting, Franklin, Ind., distributed the first edition of the Greene Gazette. It proved to be a memorable one.

He included a picture taken by Logan Kolb while soil sampling. Reprinted above, it features a gigantic earthworm hanging off the end of the soil probe and extending almost the entire length of the soil core. In fact, the worm is so big that a typical first reaction, especially in this day of photo-editing software, would be that it’s not real.

“It’s real,” Greene insists. “Logan pulled it up with a soil core. We often find part of a worm in a core when testing fields with lots of earthworms, but he pulled up the whole thing.”

Kolb adds, “I was sampling this spring, and when I pulled up a core, there it was. I snapped a picture. Now I wish I had measured it.”

Or maybe he should have weighed it. As earthworms go, it’s huge. Imagine how big a fish you could catch with that earthworm as bait! It certainly would be a candidate for a Guinness World Record, if there were such a category, or for Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

All joking aside, the earthworm is a testament to what can happen in a reduced-tillage environment. The field Kolb was sampling was a no-till cornfield. When no-tillers refer to earthworms as their “underground livestock,” now you know they’re not kidding!

About the Author(s)

Tom J Bechman 1

Editor, Indiana Prairie Farmer

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