Just about any fruit or vegetable scraps that are not salty or oily will work. I feed lots of potato peels. They are a little slow to break down, but they do break down eventually. Chopping or grinding helps things break down faster, but some people won't take the time to chop up food that the bacteria will eventually break down anyway. Nearly everything I feed goes through a grinder first.

If you have veggies coated in soy margarine, try them in small amounts to make sure the margarine doesn't go rancid in the bin.

Kitchen scraps I have fed:
Potato peels
lettuce cores
cabbage cores
tomato cores
green pepper cores
bananas
bread
rice
cucumber
apple cores
egg shells
onion skins
carrot
broccoli
cauliflower
tortillas

and probably a few other things I can't remember.

what if i tried rinsing them under hot water would that remove some of the margarine?

I'm confused. Why don't you eat the vegetables that you've cooked and put margarine on?

I feed my worms the trimmings from preparing vegetables and a lot of banana peels and coffee grounds.

I eat the veggies, its what is left over and scraped off of plate's

The small amount of margarine you use on your veggies won't hurt the worms.

I feed my guys potato peels, grapefruit, orange peels, broccoli, soft rotting onions. Anything I eat, they'll eat.

I've picked up old produce from the grocery store and there were lots of kale, lettuces, basil, cilantro, etc. I wasn't sure if they would like the cilantro, but they ate everything.
The only thing I noticed is that kale takes longer to break down. Hubby doesn't complain about any smells from the bins, but he does ask "what stinks?" when I use kale.

I chop and freeze EVERYTHING prior to feeding.

a local store always has "reduced" produce, may be worth buying a few grind it nd freeze it. I really dont eat many veggies until my garden is grown up. i'm going to try to stop putting butter on my veggies

2 points:

1) I would not buy anything to feed my worms, since it is so easy to feed them stuff that is free.

2) As someone pointed out, the small amount butter or margarine you put on the veggies may not be a problem in the bin. Try some and see how it goes. If the veggies are eaten without any rancid smells or unwanted visitors, you should be fine.

small amount? 2 big tablespoons to a small amount of veggies, its the only way my step-kids will eat them

Just call me Sherlock, but if you only give your step kids a small amount of veggies, with all this Marg on them cos thats the only way they will eat them! but you are then talking about scapings off the plate? so clearly the Marg isn't helping, give them even less veg, no marg and make your little worms happy :0)

heather38 said: Just call me Sherlock, but if you only give your step kids a small amount of veggies, with all this Marg on them cos thats the only way they will eat them! but you are then talking about scapings off the plate? so clearly the Marg isn't helping, give them even less veg, no marg and make your little worms happy :0)

Ditto!! Besides... if you take a small amount of veggies and drown them in butter, all that cholesterol and sodium in your soy margarine has shot the heck out of the benefits of the veggies anyway! It's kind of like using a condom that you know has a hole in it! LOL!!

JMHO!

Robert

Well put, Heather38.
Perhaps the kids don't like the taste of the soy margarine that you're putting on the veggies. Maybe better to prepare them the French way: real butter. In any case, everything I've read about vermicomposting says avoid any oily (soy, butter, or other) foods.
That being said, I've never tried it in my bin. But I've also never tried feeding my kids soy margarine.

soy is healthier than real butter or margarine, i just wont bother to try, cant kill the critters

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD NOTHING LEFT TO WORRY ABOUT BUT WHAT TO FEED WORMS:
When my children were small I was very into soy instead of dairy. A close friend of mine was even more into it. They had soy everything. One of her daughters developed a nasty problem whose name I forgot, an ovarian condition that was attribituted to too much soy!
Very difficult to cure. But she's OK now.

I don't use my castings on plants I later eat, so I'm not concerned with anything entering my system. My bin is outdoors, so I'm not concerned with smell.

Because of that, I put everything into my bin, EVERYTHING. I have put in pasta that had an oil based sauce. I've put in potatoes and vegetables that had a good amount of both butter and margarine. I've put in whole chickens, once I picked off as much meat as I could. I've put in shredded cheese that got moldy, and I've put in salsa that managed to do the same. I even threw in the dill plants that were left over from a jar of homemade dill pickles.

My bin is a larger flow through, so I've got room to spare. I don't chop or pre-process anything, just keep it in a container in the fridge until they are ready for more food. My worms are doing quite well, there is rarely a smell, and I haven't had any trouble with them dying off. Potworms and mites have come and gone with no major ill effects.

Long story short(er), you can throw in just about anything that you would eat. I wouldn't recommend dumping in a half gallon of olive oil, but I also wouldn't recommend eating a half gallon of olive oil. It mostly depends on how large your bin is, where it is located, and how often you feed.

I agree, mndtrp, about giving the worms EVERYTHING. Of course, my worm bins (like yours) are well established, and I have a zillion worms. Sometimes when I read the posts here I wonder at people who are so selective about what they put in the bin, when and how they do it. I do recognize that a lot of the people here are relatively new to keeping worm bins, and their bins are not so well established yet. It is easy to overfeed at first.
But I just want to say that once you have a zillion, they can pretty much take care of whatever you put in there. In my experience, a little salad dressing won't slow them down, nor bread, nor rice, orange peels, or onions.
Well, I take that back. Someone once gave me a huge bag of orange peels (after making Christmas punch) and I put them all in at once and had a huge smelly mess.
But basically my worm bins are a terrific way to put ALL of my kitchen waste to productive use!
mbetts

As far as the salt and oil, I feed mine veggies that have some on from our dinner. I wouldn't put a bag of Doritos or Nachos in the bin though! But the amount that is on our food that we are eating isn't going to hurt them.

I am getting ready to establish (or try) some larger drum worm bins, and am happy to hear the throw anything in posts, because that is my plan. I would love to hear from someone in zone 8 or more (hot) areas as to the viability of having outdoor worm bins - of if the heat of the my summers is going to mean composting is the better option. I currently have compost piles, but want to be able to process more vegetable matter in the same amount of horizontal space - so I am going vertical. I am looking at the flow through designs.