I posted some time back about my experience with worm farming. I touched briefly on what not to feed worms and the difference between worm food and worm bedding. If you haven’t already, you should read that post. Anyhow, I would like to expand on that subject here, for the edification of budding worm farmers. Most worm farming websites will tell you that worms will eat almost anything and there are only a few things they can’t/won’t eat. Well, from my experience, the list is somewhat longer than I initially thought. Pretty much any worm farmer will tell you never to give worms meat or any meat products (cheese, milk, yogurt, etc.) or anything oily or greasy. They’ll also tell you that worms do not eat foods like onions, garlic, or chives; basically anything hot and spicy is out of the question. This is all accurate, however, there are a few other things I’d add. Worms seem to like some vegetables more than others. Lettuce seems to be a perennial favorite, but only if it’s wilted. They really like food that’s already rotting; the ickier the better in my experience. Make sure your veggies are good and wilted before you feed them to the worms. They can’t digest anything acidic, so lemon and orange peels are out. They also seem to have no love for banana peels. I’ve fed them banana peels a few times, and they just ignored them for several days until they attract flies. Not good. I also seem to have trouble convincing them to eat apple cores, strangely. Perhaps they just need to rot some more. They love peaches, though. Also, celery seems to be hard for worms to digest. If you want to get them to breed, put some oatmeal or oat bran in the worm farm; they gobble that up like it’s going out of style. Use sparingly, however, as it might start to ferment. That’s a general rule of thumb for worms. One should never overfeed them, or the food will ferment faster than they can eat it. That’s just a smelly, unpleasant mess that you don’t want to deal with. Trust me. So far, those are all the things that I know of that earthworms will not eat. If I think of any more, I will be sure and update this blog to reflect that. Until next time, happy gardening.
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AuthorI'm Ian Wilson, a slightly eccentric amateur horticulturist bumbling his way through the garden. Archives
October 2021
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