I think that the bacteria turn the foods into a mush that the worms can digest quicker.

yes on the "mush", worms don't have many teeth! they "sip", but:

1... worms are not vegetarian, they do primarily ingest microbial life, and very inefficiently, pass much of it thru little changed - that's why they can continue to ingest/digest their castings for a long time, living with no apparent addition of feed stock

2... a bin of food waste without worms, would simply be a compost bin, and if it was filled with the proper C:N mix to create a "hot composting" situation, it would decompose faster then the same amount of material added to a worm bin at a rate that prevented heat generation or anaerobic conditions

3... considering that there can be 1/2 a Billion bacteria in a single gram of soil, not to mention fungal mass, there isn't much danger that worm "predation" will thin the herd

the "experiments" have been done, from many directions ... vermicomposting is useful for the small amounts of food waste the average household generates, hot composting in large bins is better for large volumes of material including yard waste, that would take huge herds of worms to process in the same amount of time

Bill

Here is a link that might be useful: the processes - link to page 2 at bottom

Darwin, of evolution notoriety, wrote extensively about what worms eat. His work can be found at the Gutenberg Project. I've never encountered anyone who seems to be interested. Perhaps Darwin's worms were completely different from those used by vermicomposting people today (He writes about picking them up in some park somewhere but to my knowledge he never writes about the location of the park.) Among the things that I found most interesting is that Darwin wrote that his worms had something [enzymes?] that would digest animal fats.

Thank you all for your replies. They are exactly what I was looking for. This forum is such a great community with so much knowledge!

Albert - Darwins worms appear to be what we'd call nightcrawlers, common in Europe and England in his time, which is no doubt where he picked them up - their habits are somewhat different than the redworms we use, and considering that he was relatively unaware of the teeming microbial life of soil, his observational naturalism no doubt came to some misleading conclusions ... and worms can handle fats, just takes much longer than rapidly decomposing plant matter

Bill

Had a good suggestion on another thread re: keeping Raccoons from demolishing worm "farm". It was suggested that I not feed table scraps to worms, just cardboard and paper. Will this sustain healthy, reproducing worm population? Is there some supplement other than in "people food" form to feed worms and at the same time discourage foraging coons? All advice appreciated, Gloria

yes Gloria, worms can do ok in just wet shredded paper, but it wouldn't be too hard to make a bin "coon proof" - a heavy wooden bin with a lid that can be well fastened will discourage racoons, and if you bury the feed in small enough quantities that the worms clean it up pretty quick there shouldn't be much smell ... worms aren't a prefered meal for coons, they're going after the food smells ... also if you blenderize the veg waste [NO animal products or fats], it'll soak into the paper immediately

Bill

IMHO, worms will not thrive as well on a diet of only paper and cardboard as with more diversity. It is a fact that worms have preferences of food stuffs (pumpkin, for instance). That said, it follows that worms will eat more voraciously of those preferred foodstocks than that bland old paper diet.

Put some pumpkin in a bin with cardboard, stand back and watch the activity ratchet up.

Eliminating the scavengers will require enclosing the worm areas somehow. (bins, fencing, a moat?)

I agree with chuckiebtoo. I noticed that when there is a lack of foodstuff in the form of fruits or vegetables leftovers in the bins, the worms become thin and small. A few days after the addition of the foodstuff, they seem to recover and increase in size.

I agree with chuckie aswell. Quite a long time ago I decided to try my worms on just shredded paper as I was short on food scraps at the time and they became very sluggish after a while. they were so inactive I thought a lot of them were dead and Id never seen them like that before. I suspected it was the paper only diet and started buying things like lettuce to keep them going and they quickly picked up and got their energy levels back. IMO they dont do very well on just a paper diet, it may be too restricted.

nothing "restricted" about newspaper, especially with some cardboard added, providing the paper is quite wet and contaminated enough to become active with any of the wide range of decomposers that the worms actually feed on - worms aren't vegetarians, they're "meat eaters", as indicated by the varying amounts of time it takes them to attack various types of fresh food waste, which is equivilent to the amount of time it takes a particular item to become microbially active .... melon for instance, goes fast [wet sugar], cabbage goes slow [higher carbon], and citrus can be very slow, until the limonene is neutralized enough for bacteria to work on it ... the reason paper is great for bedding is it also provides a medium for microbial growth

Bill

my experience with paper only was different squeeze, thats all I can say. There was no difference in the conditions apart from their diet and Im sure kelly the worm expert said here that worms do best on a mixed diet of carbon and nitrogen sources, and that is what I found. I also dont believe that worms are meat eaters and eat only the organisms on the food. Ive noticed over the years that they will eat anything soft within days, and they eat their way into and burrow into food aswell even if it is soft but not rotten in any way. From my understanding of what kelly slocum has said here in the past, is that the worms do eat the food but they get a lot of their nutrition from the organisms on the food, which is quite different from saying they only eat the organisms.

I can only go on my own observations, but YMMV

There are misconceptions hard to kill about worm food. They do eat foodstuffs that are predigested, and softened, by other critters...but the operative word is, and should always be, soft food.

If you can't believe that worms will attack un-decomposing foodstock, put some fresh pumpkin chunks into a bin, get a stopwatch, and check how long it is before they are all over it.

Chuckiebtoo

Hey Chuckiebtoo,
Good to see you here after the dustup at another forum.
Welcome back!
Tim