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~Feeding the worms - Diet~
Mellow Yellowharja's recommendations for trouble free wormy
diet
Plant-sourced material only. Wastes from fruit,
vegetables, berries, tea bags, paper/cardboard/tissues.
Not only do these contain a lot of nutrients like P and
K, but it seems to me that worm castings made with this
kind of feed make for sweet vivid taste and high trichome
content!
Know your limits! Experiment with 'new' foods.
Do earthworms need a complete diet, or can they
survive (and be productive) on a single unbalanced source
of food, very high in N, P, or K?
I think that composting earthworms can survive on
a single food source, BUT that food source must contain
at least minute amounts of the minerals they need.
For example, only paper or only cardboard would support a
worm population very well. But they do need a bunch of
minerals just as we do to survive. I'm guessing nitrogen,
calcium, phosphorus and magnesium would be the most
elevated ones just as they are for us.
Earthworms do not actually eat the food materials
themselves, but the BACTERIA that are feeding on the
materials. These bacteria do the work of extracting the
minerals and making more complex organic compunds for the
wormies, like amino acids and vitamines and what
not.
What foods need to be avoided?
Salt. Salt kills worms. Do not add any foods with high
salt content into the bins. Often breads and processed
foods contain high salt.
Cat and dog manure. Humanure. These can act as a vectors
for human diseases, such as toxoplasma, the brain cell
parasite, and thus may not contribute positively to your
health in the long term. Manure from livestock should be
safe to use (ie. horse/cow/sheep/poultry manure).
Relatively it is thought that worms can process ANY
organic material, given enough time to adjust. From pH 2
wineyard waste to actively 'hot' decomposing horse manure
- but they will need time to adjust to the propertys,
and the worm farmer will need to create suitable
propertys. Experiment carefully.
Does the material have to be partially decomposed
already?
Not at all. While in commercial operations the waste
material is often 'pre-decomposed' or 'pre-composted', it
is perfectly ok to add undecomposed organic waste such as
fresh vegetable peels in a worm bin. One just has to
watch out not to create a thermophilic compost that heats
up and cooks the worms.
While the earthworms can only 'eat' material that has
already started decomposing, usually adding fresh veggie
waste, for instance, poses no problems whatsoever,
especially if buried in the bedding.
My question is should I run my kitchen waste through a
blender before adding it to the bin, or can I just chop
it finely with a knife.
If you run the kitchen waste through a blender it will be
consumed much faster - but chopping with knife would work
quite well. I think blending the waste might halve the
time required for decomposing.
I dont process my veggie waste, just throw them in there.
I have 3 main bins with 8 month cycles, 6+ months of
feeding and 2 months or less of settling. Once the cycle
is through, the worm caste is dark brown muddy pudding
that Sticks to everything.
Whatabout adding sand? My kitchen waste contains no
sand!
Sand - and grit - elevated, but also not a absolute must
in my humble opinion. It helps the worms digestion, and
it helps breaking down the organic matter.
For sand one can, in my opinion, substitute eggshells,
perlite or dolomite lime. Sand is basically broken down
inert, hard, rock-like material, so I suppose anything
inert and hard would work. Do not use metals or
plastics.
One doesn't need that much grit, and note that sand will
concentrate on the bottom of the bin due to weight, so
the top layer wouldn't have that much sand. I would say
that sand content of one percent would be just
fine.
There are all kinds of critters in there!? Can I
harvest or should I wait?
A worm bin or a worm farm may support many kinds of
creatures, mostly useful ones. But the fact that you can
see that other decomposers are present usually means that
the feed/waste has not yet decomposed very well, and
needs some more time to become worm castings (unless worm
compost is what you are after).
Usually critters like mites, springtails or tiny white
Enchytraeid 'potworms' are feeding directly on the foods
present. Unlike composting worms, they cannot survive by
eating the bacteria present in the worm castings, and
thus they will die off as soon as the foods have been
decomposed.
Could I possibly add my soil fertilizers like kelp,
alfalfa, and Guano to the worm bin to up it's NPK. That
way, my worm shit would be the only thing I needed to use
for fertilizing, make a tea for every watering. -
Bobby digital
Yes, very much so. But with some ingredients its best to
only use them for the final soil-mix because of their
cost or composition. Kelp and Guanos are both very very
costly to be used as worm food.
As to using worm bins to process different food-wastes
into different nutriens like vegetative or bloom nutrients, it
works quite well, but often nitrogen and magnesium
supplementation seems to be a requirement.
Worms like alfalfa meal, but one must not use too much at
once as the high nitrogen content might cause
heat-composting or even fermentation.
I think perlite that has spent some months in a worm bin
would have lively bacterial cultures on its surface - yet
another benefit..
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