Im by myself so its a little difficult to manage enough to keep them fed , luckily sis helps me out by saving hers and then when spring rolls around I always give her a full 5 gal bucket of VC. I save my food in ziplock bags freeze it till needed , then everything goes thru my big mouth juicer and saved in large containers till Im ready to feed. We also save all eggshells which are nuked for 4-5 min to kill any infection then ground up in a small coffee grinder and used as needed. I must say Im guilty of keeping a lot that I shouldnt according to some such as mentioned above but as far as I know nothing is dying in my herd as they are devouring everything I put in. I have been rethinking the cooked items and holding them back as of late.

I recently went to a pitchin reunion and my sister saved all the rinds from watermelon. They wiped this out in just a few days but I will say I have thousands of worms so they can handle it. When I feed melon though I leave the drain valve open with a large container under and this is the only time I have drainage, actually the drain valve is always open .

hsteve, if your worms seem to be doing fine then why are you doubting the addition of cooked foods now? Like the saying goes...."if it ain't broke then don't fix it!"

I just put some old dry horse nuggets (after thoroughly re-wetting) into my bins so watching to see how they like it. Picked up some really fresh manure too - do I need to wait to put some of that in?

Harry

You should probably soak and drain them to get rid of the salt added during cooking.

I guess what Im really asking is if cooked food is added to the bin does it reduce the quality of the finished vermicompost.

Why would it? Organic material doesn't stop being organic material because it's been cooked.

Other than meat and salty stuff, I add cooked food scrap to the worm bin. Actually, potato peels, carrot cut offs and broccoli stems get nuked to speed up the process because I found that especially potato peels took a long time to break down. And as I was doing that, might as well add the other stuff. We eat a lot of rice and during summer, if we forget to put left over rice in the fridge, it got spoiled. I mix any spoiled cooked rice, pasta etc. to the juice pulp I have sitting for several months.

Over time we've come around to putting everything that used to go into the garbage disposal into the worm bins now... citrus and really salty stuff still go in disposal unit but that's pretty much it anymore. Everything left over from the kitchen raw or cooked (as well as garden refuse) goes to the worms... pasta, pizza, salad (dressing and all), even cheese and meat. The raw stuff gets cut up a little before it goes into the bins but the cooked stuff comes scraped straight off the plate, bowl, pot or pan into the bin. We now treat the worm bins as the kitchen garbage disposal... keeps the drains cleaner and sweeter smelling as a consequence. Worms (actually its the bin bacteria) don't care if its cooked or not, it all soon turns to mush that's good for slurping... it just takes slightly longer sometimes. As long as you don't get too far ahead of the worms food-wise and bury or use a lid if you do then it really doesn't stink.

I don't trust garbage disposals anyway - I've known too many problem ones in the places I've lived. And after spending decades of my life in California I'm well-trained to be shocked at the water waste they come with.

A good percentage of what I put in the bin has been nuked in the microwave for a couple minutes or so anyway. I "cook" my fruit and vegetable scraps to kill any gnat or fruitfly eggs/larvae that might be on them. Worms always get through the cooked stuff faster, since the heat breaks down some of the structure. The cooking in and of itself is not the issue. As other people say, it's salt, etc. that is problematic. I find my worms don't actually suffer from mildly salty foods, but I don't want too much salt buildup in the compost, as most plants' roots don't like it.