Software
Houzz Logo Print
charitycomposter

Fruit bonanza

11 years ago

I've made arrangements with an orchard to get their unusable fruit. I don't think there are any worries using apples (I'll remove the seeds before putting in bins.). How careful do I need to be feeding peaches? Are they too acidic? I will freeze the fruit and chop them up into small pieces before feeding. I always add powdered egg shells every time I feed and will include plenty of bedding to soak up extra juices. My plan is to include the fruit along with the well aged horse manure I feed my wormlings .

Comments (5)

  • 11 years ago

    Your plans sound fine. No need to remove apple seeds, and as long as you have bedding you should be fine. Even peach pita should be fine in there although they probably won't break down much. ))

  • 11 years ago

    Sounds like a good time to be looking into how to make hard apple cider ;) If you will be getting loads more of this than your worms can consume and have plenty of browns to combine with them they would probably make for some excellent compost. We are tilted green negative here so my mind always goes that way when they are available.


    Would agree on no need to remove the seeds, if they did sprout they would be quite easy to pull, not like a weed that produces 100s of thousands of seeds or spreads by root fragments.

  • 11 years ago

    Worms should love it. I found (mostly apples) that any physical smashing of the apples helped get the process started (I used a sort of stave, put them in a bucket, and just whacked until they were moderately pulpy) worked great. I would think freezing and cutting into very small pieces would be overdoing it, no need, really. You may find a sweet apple smell and some smell of fermenting, neither of which bothered me, and lots of fruit flies (no surprise). A layer of paper or shredded cardboard or browns on top keeps both moderate - but a fairly thick layer. Of course, fruit flies are not really a problem, just mildly annoying. Mixing with extra browns and horse manure is a good idea - you may have the pile heat up for a bit, but if (for example) the worms are underneath or bin is very large, they'll hide and move in when the conditions are right for them.

    You mention bins, obviously some/all of the above depends on how large and how much discarded fruit you have. I had a lot of spoiled apples all at once in a fairly large outside bin. In my case, I didn't really add browns at same time, worms were very happy in apple sludge.

  • 11 years ago

    Normally you wouldnt need to remove apple seeds, but I make a lot of smoothies and in the process I remove the seeds before putting in the blender. Peaches seem like more work as you need to remove the pit. For me its mainly apples, bananas, melons, etc.


  • 11 years ago

    Freezing is a good idea to store the fruit between feedings and also to kill off any fruit fly eggs/larvae. But if the fruit is in good enough condition to store outside the fridge, I'd probably just chop it and nuke it in the microwave, both to break it down a bit and prevent fruit fly infestation, for a minute before putting it (after cooling) into the bin. That also solves the very minor non-issue of the seeds sprouting. I haven't fed peaches, but I've put in mango peels and pits, which should have similar if not greater acidity. The worms were super excited by the mango scraps and seemed to have no problem with their acidity (although I, too, throw in a dusting of eggshell powder whenever I feed anything acidic). They cleaned the mango pits of every single scrap of digestible matter and enjoyed hanging out in the fibers around them. The pits also apparently really enjoyed being in vermicompost and started sprouting, which is when I removed them.

Sponsored