What do you feed your worms?! whats your preferred bedding for them?!

So just recently got into organics, i am busily working my way through teaming with microbes online and will be purchasing it soon, i have my super soil cooking and oh dear was it expensive to source and ship all the amendments (to the u.k)..... so apart form looking locally for equivalents i am going to start vermi-composting too.... i have recently made a small flow through worm bin..

Il be using moist card and newspaper for the bedding? any other suggestions on bedding?

so back to the title what do you guys feed your worms? what do you give them, how often?

ive read so far......
potato peelings, carrots, lettuce, cabbage, celery, apple peelings, banana peels, orange rinds, and grapefruit, cornmeal, oatmeal, crushed/powdered eggshells, coffee grounds with the filter, and tea bag these all sound great...... and i have read you can also add

kelp meal, oyster shell flour, alfalfa meal, greensand, rock dust, etc. for a more diverse micro nutrient blend in your finished castings.... this sounds good but it does mean i will be using more of my amendments for soil to feed my worms...

If so whats the benefit of this does it mean i can use less of each amendment, as the castings will contain most of what i need? sort of confused on that one sorry if its a newb question.

I am sure there is some organic gurus out there that don't mind sharing there knowledge

thanks for your time and any replies are welcome bailwah

Well, for bedding, what i typically do is go to walmart and get some cheap compost. Its usually like 3 bucks a bag. Ive never used cardboard or newspaper. They seem to like it. And then when i take some out of the bin to put into a pot. I dont have to worry about separating anything, cause its just all mixed into the compost.

I put EVERYTHING into my bin, minus oils, meats, or fat. I even put flat beer in there, and they love it.

And as far as your amendments go, those provide things in micro nutrients that your plant needs. You see worm casting is great, and your plants will do good with just that. But those amendments add little things to make your plants do great. Things like silicon, sulfur, etc.

thanks for the reply j, yeah i have been wondering whether or not to use card or newspaper, i was think about using some cheap compost too, but i read somewhere if your adding amendments to your bin, the nitrogen break down can cause it to get hot from the cooking process and kill the worms.. so it said you need some form of carbon in there or something like that....
thanks again for the reply haha flat beer i love it!

just out of interest what soil mix/ingredients do you use for your plants?

peace bailwah

jcurtis912 said:

Well, for bedding, what i typically do is go to walmart and get some cheap compost. Its usually like 3 bucks a bag. Ive never used cardboard or newspaper. They seem to like it. And then when i take some out of the bin to put into a pot. I dont have to worry about separating anything, cause its just all mixed into the compost.

I put EVERYTHING into my bin, minus oils, meats, or fat. I even put flat beer in there, and they love it.

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Hmmm, that's a really good idea. I'm gonna have to look in to that because it is a bit of a pain in the nutsack harvesting the castings from the bedding.

yeah sounds like a plan haha, but dont we need a good quality organic compost, no time release nutes, or anything thats had nasty chemical treatment etc or am i just been silly?

st0wandgrow said:

Hmmm, that's a really good idea. I'm gonna have to look in to that because it is a bit of a pain in the nutsack harvesting the castings from the bedding.

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Even better if you make your own mix.

I also got tired of the bedding. What I use for the most part now, is the beginnings of my soil mix.

Peat Moss/Perlite/Lime ..... That's the basic. Not quite as much perlite as I use in my mix, but you do need some. Lime at the same ratio as the mix. This will work as is.

I may or may not add the following to the bedding, depending.

coffee grounds
kelp meal
alfalfa meal
soybean meal
greensand
granite dust

Use small amounts of all this!^^ Like a small handful/5 gallon bucket. You're just trying to get some bacterial action going, feeding the soil as it were, not the worms or a plant. I use ~1/4 the amount that goes in the soil mix.

I then wet it all down real good and let it sit in 5 gallon buckets (with drain holes), for a few weeks if not longer. Nothing much is rushed with worms and it's easy to make this stuff in advance.

Wet

roor8911 said:

yeah sounds like a plan haha, but dont we need a good quality organic compost, no time release nutes, or anything thats had nasty chemical treatment etc or am i just been silly?

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Yes, quality compost would be necessary. If you're growing in a living soil chemicals in your compost, worm bin, or soil is a no-no. I like the idea of using thermophilic compost as bedding for the worms because you can just scoop it out and use it instead of worrying about separating the bedding from the castings. I use coco coir and shredded cardboard for bedding in my worm bin and it gets tedious picking out bits of cardboard from my castings .... so compost as bedding sounds like a big time saver to me!

I use coir for bedding. It's good for soil mix and not terribly expensive. Put
your eggshells in too - great for calcium!

thanks for all the suggestions guys keep them coming

peace from the u.k bailwah

st0wandgrow said:

Yes, quality compost would be necessary. If you're growing in a living soil chemicals in your compost, worm bin, or soil is a no-no. I like the idea of using thermophilic compost as bedding for the worms because you can just scoop it out and use it instead of worrying about separating the bedding from the castings. I use coco coir and shredded cardboard for bedding in my worm bin and it gets tedious picking out bits of cardboard from my castings .... so compost as bedding sounds like a big time saver to me!

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Yeah and see what i do is just add all my super soil ingredients over time, so that it will not kill the worms or anything, just a little sprinkle of all my ingredients everyday. So i just put the food waste in the middle, and the worms just dump their load right into the compost. So when i go to make a pot, i just grab the compost kinda loosely and shake any worms from my hand. At times i get some eggs in there, so when i go to harvest, i usually have 2 or 3 worms in the pot that hatch. I can see in the soil where they made good little air passages.

I also, do a worm tea on the new pot just to make sure any anaerobic bacteria that were in the soil get outcompeted by the beneficial aerobic bacteria. This method has always worked for me, nothing but good smoke and healthy plants.

thanks everyone for the great info... keep it coming will be purchasing some cheap compost soon for the bedding.
whats peoples opinion on adding stinging nettles and dandelions to be broken down? as there is an abundance of both these real close to me.

roor8911 said:

thanks everyone for the great info... keep it coming will be purchasing some cheap compost soon for the bedding.
whats peoples opinion on adding stinging nettles and dandelions to be broken down? as there is an abundance of both these real close to me.

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You can, but you'd probably be better served to make a tea out of them or an FPE. If you do add them to your bin, consider chopping them up real fine or blending them to speed things up. If you just toss them in your bin they will take quite a while to be broken down.

yeah i was already planning or shredding or just juicing/pulping them to pour in the bin, thanks anyway for the heads up. whats FPE i do not think i have come across that abbreviation before

roor8911 said:

yeah i was already planning or shredding or just juicing/pulping them to pour in the bin, thanks anyway for the heads up. whats FPE i do not think i have come across that abbreviation before

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Fermented Plant Extract. You would take something like dandelions, nettle, comfrey, yarrow and others and soak them in water for a period of time. The resulting liquid is chalk full of micro-nutrients and pest deterrents. You would dilute this mixture with some H2O and apply as a foliar or soil drench. There's some good info out there if you do a google search on what each plant/weeds benefits are. I'll see if I can dig up the link for you ....

Here's one roor:

https://www.frenchgardening.com/tech.html?pid=3164873867231346

st0w awesome man thanks ill definitely read up on that in the morning, thanks for taking your time to find that link dude much appreciated

Would something like kelp meal be ideal if you could wanted to spend the money to feed worms exclusively that? I would love to figure out what truly would be the "the best" worm food for producing castings.

st0wandgrow said:

Here's one roor:

https://www.frenchgardening.com/tech.html?pid=3164873867231346

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Nice site. Now if i can jus find some of those plants. lol

danielJackson said:

Would something like kelp meal be ideal if you could wanted to spend the money to feed worms exclusively that? I would love to figure out what truly would be the "the best" worm food for producing castings.

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Kelp meal is wonderful stuff and feeding it to the worms makes sense but why feed anything exclusively? You want a variety of minerals and nutrients to end up in your soil so you need to put a variety in. Peels from working in your kitchen, rock dust, greensand, oyster shell, coffee, handful of leaves, sludge from AACT, etc. Variety is "the best" to me.

No meat, fat or citrus but most anything else the worms will eat.