Vermicomposting 101 Series

The question of how much to feed your composting worms can vex the beginning vermicomposter, and if you’re in an area like I am that features both hot and cold weather, then that amount can vary wildly.

So if I were you, I would get out of the mindset of trying to looking for a one-size-fits-all number.

For example, if you’re under the assumption that worms eat 50% of their own weight each day and you mindlessly feed your 10lbs of worms 5lbs of food waste each day, you might find that you’re grossly overfeeding them.

Overfeeding = worms escaping your bin!

You may also find that you’ll soon have zero lbs of worms to feed because they’ve escaped the hot, stinky mess, you’ve made of their home.  You might also inflict protein poisoning and/or kill them by overfeeding them, especially in a small, closed system. See More!

Probably the most misleading thing about vermicomposting is that it includes the word “composting.”

Wikipedia tells us compost is “organic matter that has been decomposed and recycled as a fertilizer and soil amendment.”

And while that is a fitting description of vermicompost as a product, it communicates the entirely wrong message this when it comes to vermicomposting as a process.

This leads to some pretty bad outcomes to people who treat composting and vermicomposting as the same thing.These outcomes include:

• tossing worms into a 150°F hot compost pile (or tumbler) when 95°F would actually start cooking them to death
  or
• introducing worms to a 6ft-high compost pile and expecting them to process it top-to-bottom

See More!

No.

Or I should say, in nearly all cases, no.

There are 2700 species of earthworms in the world and only about 4 of them of them are good vermicomposters.  They are:

• eisenia fetida*, aka red wigglers, tiger worms, manure worms
• eisenia hortensis*, aka European nightcrawlers
• perionyx excavatus, aka Indian blue worms
• eudrilus eugeniae, aka African nightcrawlers
  *these two are the species adaptable to the most varied environments.  The others are suited well to tropical environments.

Composting worms, especially the top 3 above, are the oddball worms that don’t like dirt.  If you find them in nature, you won’t find them in the kind of soil they’ll have to burrow in.  They’ll be in loosely-compacted environments like leaf litter and the detritus on the forest floor. See More!

Just the idea of getting composting worms to recycle our household waste into awesome fertilizer is pretty exciting, but once you actually start doing it, it’s wise to consider what worms actually like to eat. As a general rule, composting worms will eat any non-meat, non-dairy organic material, but there are some foods that they seem to enjoy more than others, namely:

Curcurbits

Composting worms will absolutely destroy members of the cucurbitaceae plant family like pumpkins, squash, cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon, etc.

These fruits break down very quickly and lack the sinewy nature of plants like broccoli, so worms are quick to move in on them.

Spent Coffee Grounds

Some folks express concern over high acidity, but this is only true of unused grounds or the coffee itself in liquid form.  The coffee grounds themselves are pH neutral. But they are also sterile immediately after being drenched with scalding water, so I find it takes a few weeks before the worms really move in on them. See More!