Best of 2000: Best Worm Farm

Sharon's Worm World
310 Creelman Lane, Ramona
(760) 788-4423

Buy a pound of worms from Williams, the biggest worm farm in the county, and you'll get maybe 1000 wigglers. Buy a pound from Sharon MacLachlan, and you'll get 25. So why would you buy from her? "Because I give you my worms still in their earth, with their castings, and their eggs," she says. "Worms adapt better when their environment goes right along with them. You take a handful of [loose] worms and put them around a rosebush, nine times out of ten you're going to lose most of them. If you take them in their worm bedding, they're going to survive." Happy worms, she says, are productive worms. "I was the first in the nation to try this approach. It works." Nurseries like Andersen's, Simpson's in Jamul, and Grangetto's in Fallbrook, Encinitas, Valley Center, and Escondido appear to agree. All stock Sharon's worms.