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Feeding your earthworms

Reviewing different sources about how to feed earthworms we have found that there are as many ways as there are people out there doing this. However, we have tried most of them and we want to share our experience so you can best choose the type for your project.

 

To compost or nor to compost, that is the question…

Compost is an excellent tool to deal with organic wastes including those with high cellulose content such as cardboard box and paper. However you need a strong stomach and lots of patience, because composting will take around 12 months to produce the final item, the one you want. However, we want to conduct some experiments because in Panama, our environmental conditions of humidity and heat can haste the process.

 

However when it comes to feeding your worms, you want to compost materials before feeding it to the worms, this is because the decomposition process will generate heat in such amounts that it will kill your worms. For this reason, many experts advise to compost the materials to be used as food, 15 days before giving it to the worms, after this time the materials will not generate heat.

 

Smash it!

Another methodology is to smash/grind the materials before feeding it to the worms this will reduce the size of the particles, allowing bacteria and fungi to attack it and also worms will be able to eat it directly, however , worms prefer bacteria and fungi as a food source.

 

This process do works, we have tested it, the materials get eaten a lot faster and will not generate heat or bad odors. However the grinding will require energy either electric or your own calories, depending on the grinding tool, we advise using a manual tool because that will reduce your carbon footprint.

Compost

On the other hand, composting the materials does the job for you if you are willing to wait and deal with the foul odors, furthermore, composting will allow you to use materials which normally cannot be feed to worms such as those with lot of ink or tannins. This process is appropriate of large projects such as farms and commercial worm breeding.

 

If you want to know more or purchase a group of worms to start a project write us @: info@grupoaresa.com