Next Question, What Can Earthworms Eat?

The short answer is anything that was once alive. However, earthworms do not have teeth; thus, their food must be reasonably soft, or fine like sand, so that they can suck it into their mouths to ingest it. For example, earthworms cannot consume a fresh carrot but will readily devoured a rotten one. I should point out that composting earthworm have no interest in the carrot itself; rather, they are actually eating the microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) that cover the food they eat. These tiny organisms thrive and multiply in the worms intestinal tract and are excreted in their castings.

Having said this, there are a few, a very few, organic materials that should not be fed to composting earthworms. Red Wigglers do not like scented words like cedar, eucalyptus or redwood, or their sawdust. They cannot tolerate animal fat or the oil from a frying pan and these substances should be separated from the kitchen scraps you feed to your composting earthworms. Almost anything else from your kitchen table may be deposited in the wormery without fear of harming the worms. You may have heard or read that meat products should not be fed to earthworms. To the contrary, my composting earthworms love meat of any kind, the rottener the better! However, if meat products are fed to Red Wigglers, it should be buried deeply in the worm's bedding so that flies cannot get to it. Otherwise, the worms bedding will quickly become infested with maggots. While maggots are part of the chain of organisms that devour our organic waste, they are unsightly and, thus, unwelcome in the worm's bedding. I feed my Red Wigglers a diet which primarily consisting of aged horse manure, shredded newspaper, cardboard, coffee grounds and, of course, kitchen scraps. The cardboard is placed over the worm's bedding to conserve heat during the cold winter months and to conserve water and lower the temperature in the worms bedding during the summer. Composting earthworms love to burrow their way through cardboard consuming it as they go. Kitchen scraps represent less than five percent of my Red Wiggler's diet because of the size of my wormeries and the scarcity of the kitchen waste I have to feed them. Coffee grounds make up about 25 percent of the organic material fed to the worms. The mixture of aged horse manure, readily available for free almost anywhere in Northern California, coffee grounds and shredded paper products (primarily newspaper) produce excellent worm castings. There is nothing better for your garden, nothing even close. You will not be able to generate a significant amount of coffee grounds from your kitchen; however, Americans are addicted to their coffee and there is a Starbucks in nearly every supermarket in the country and on most street corners. The enterprises generate enormous amounts of coffee ground waste and are more than happy to give it to you, all you have to do is smile and ask for it! Happy gardening!