Food Ready To Go

Or at least it is for vermiculture. Have you seen this after a few days you forgot spinach or lettuce in the fridge? Well, it is pretty common. Maybe you decided to put yourself on a diet and bought 5 lettuces to eat one every day instead of those tasty pork ribs. Anyway, after a few days of staying there forgotten, lettuce starts to decay. This process is slow in the refrigerator, but it happens.

If you are like most people, you don’t even open the bag and throw the thing away. If you don’t have earth worms, that is. This yucky thing may be unpleasant for you, but it is ready for your worm bin. You see, compost worms like Eisenia Foetida or Eisenia Andrei do not have teeth or any other means of chewing, so it feeds engulfing everything and putting it out from its rear end. For the worms to do this, the food must be in complete decay.

This can happen with any type of leaves (when they are green), if they are stored when they are still fresh. Dry leaves can take a very long time to reach this point. The decay is the work of beneficial bacteria that consume the organic matter into its primary components. If you leave this process to go on for a while, you will get minerals, which are the plants food.

This can take a while, but earthworms take care of business much faster. Since their intestines are full of bacteria, they aid the decaying process when organic matter goes trough their intestinal tract.

So, you can mince a little your leftovers and give them to your worms. Decaying will be much faster when the material is in small pieces, so help them a little. Worms are not picky and the bacteria in the worm bin will help in getting the food ready in no time.You just have to give them some bedding material like newspaper or cardboard.

Use natures own forces to your benefit. That is one of the advantages of vermiculture.

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