I would like to know what other people find to be the worms most popular and distasteful food.

[Woo]

My worms just love banana peels and consume them very rapidly. I would say that is their favorite. On the other hand avacado skins seem to be least popular. I guess the hard skin is sort of like the egg shells a little hard for them to eat. I have both Red
Wigglers and Europeon Night crawlers.

[Steven Chow]

While it seems like everyone else has luck with used coffee grounds, it seems like my red wigglers prefer everything else to them. They eat everything else first before reluctantly eating the grounds. It might have to do with the fact that I tested it when I was first setting up my bin and at that time I was blending my veggie scraps since I was worried there wasn't enough small pieces of organic matter in my new bin. Maybe if i try again now that I'm no longer blending foods they will go for the coffee grounds.

Anyone else notice their worms don't like grounds as much as they are "supposed" to?

[J____]

I put both used and new coffee grounds in my bin once. Although I spread my coffee grounds out over the surface (I recommend burying ALL food (2 inches deep or more) to avoid pests, even if it says it will kill pests [like caffeine] it can also feed them) they didn't seem to care about eating the coffee grounds, but I think they did when they ran out of food, but it is very difficult to tell the difference between compost and coffee grounds when they are mixed together. I did hear that the caffeine works as it does with people, by giving them more energy and make them work harder (faster). I can get free spent coffee grounds from at least 10 pots of regular coffee a day if I want from a place that serves fresh coffee 24 hours a day.

Also, I saw a video online where someone took 2 PVC pipes and drilled holes in it and put them in the bottom of his worm bin and had them poking out one side and had a screen over the end sticking out, and he said that it helps get air to the bottom. I took home 2 super strong cardboard industrial garbage bag rolls and I think i am going to put some decent size holes in them and just throw them in the bottom of my bin to aid in airflow by giving them a place they can go with no pressure from the bedding. I have not added holes to the bottom of my bin, because as of now, I have problems with worms escaping and no plan on what to use to catch the water without blocking airflow and defeating the purpose. I hear no-seem-um netting will keep all mobile creatures from passing in or out of whatever you use it for.

[Emily]

Perhaps it depends a lot on the pH of the bin. If it is a low pH, perhaps they'd avoid acidic things more than they would if the environment was basic.
Or have I got that backwards? In any case, perhaps the environment matters.

[Amanda]

I would say that my worms (all reds) especially love melon. They also like raw egg and lettuce. When I recently sorted out the worms from the compost, I discovered that they had completely cleaned and split open a mango pit - which I thought was rather impressive. They seem to like corrugated cardboard as well.
On the other hand, my worms do not eat bread or phone book paper. They didn't compost a clump of dog hair and sand I unclogged from the vacuum, but there was a large nest of babies in the clump. Who knew dog hair could be so romantic?!

[Kris]

Raw egg? Do you put them in whole or crack them?

[Steve K]

But eggs have a lot of fat in them and I thought fats and oils should not be used.

[Kris]

I just started my worm bin last week. I put in coffee grounds, an apple core, a peel from a kiwifruit, some swiss chard scraps (spinach like lettuce), and newspaper. They appear to like them in this order: apples, swiss chard, newspaper, coffee grounds, and kiwi. There are no worms at all on the kiwi, and a stray every now & then on the coffee grounds. The apple core seems to be their favorite so far.

[Amanda]

I put the shells in with whatever part of the egg is left - whether it is just residue, or a white or yolk when a recipe calls for just one or the other. I haven't caught the worms nesting in a half shell yet, but I've heard that some do.

[Kris]

That sounds cute.... as cute as worms can be that is ;)

[J____]

My worms seem to like banana peels very much too. If you do not like to eat bananas, there are places you can possibly get them for free. Try going to a 7-11 and tell them your doing worm composting and would like to recycle the skins of banana peels for the bananas that can no longer be sold, and that you have no use for the edible part of the banana it's self and prefer to not take home the inside of the banana unless you have to.

Corporations are strict about allowing companies to give away food that is expired, that is why I said to only request the skins, and tell them you will peel them yourself and bring a bag to put them in so that it wont cost them anything and that the edible part of the food waste, can stay at their company. If they tell you that they can't because you may try to eat them, offer to roll them around in sand outside or stepping on them, or if they have any suggestions for making it in-edible for humans, but fine for worms. If you have to, you could even offer to pay them 5 cents each, which is 10% of their selling value on something that is going into the dumpster.

Good luck.

[Kris]

That's really great news for me. We eat a lot of bananas in our house compared to other produce.

[Nathan Scholten]

my worms do not seem to like bread of asparagas.
They do seem to like just about everything else.