GardenerBob said:I have begun raising worms for their castings after reading about how beneficial their castings are for gardening. I have 13 elevated beds i'm building this spring so I am going to need a bunch. They do eat a lot but so far our home waste has been enough to keep them fed. I puree all our organic scraps in the blender and feed them that. It disappears in about 3-4 days I also do the ground egg shells and coffee grounds that they enjoy also. Will be collecting my first castings on the 22nd.
Nice beds. I really enjoyed my worms. I actually had some in a few bins inside my tiny studio apartment LOL. I had a big bin on a furniture dolly under my kitchen table, and a couple in the dark under the bathroom sink.
I had a shredder in the bathroom on a little table, and I'd feed the shredded paper to the worms, along with coffee grounds and such. I did end up with some bugs, but they got under control when I simply changed back to just shredded paper for a while.
But, then I tried sifting the bins to separate the worms and cocoons from the castings and major fail! At least as far as using the soil inside. If you were just going to use the soil outside and didn't care if any worms hatched, then that's great.
I read some studies that were done by the Indian government on what types of waste worms prefer. They were studying to see if they could use worms to help compost garbage. It was a fascinating study. They put different types of waste on the outside of a large circle, and put worms into the middle of the circle, then waited to see where the worms went, to see what they preferred to eat. Very cool.
They preferred certain types of manure to other types, as I recall. Can't remember the details. But, you could probably google India government study on waste management with composting worms - or something like that - and find it.
Enjoy your worms. They are amazing little critters and extremely efficient at composting.
