Eggshells as food for composting worms Composting worms can absolutely be fed with crushed shells from eggs. You should know that compost worms will eat just about anything that's organic (all except meat, seafood, poultry, dairy, oily, or spicy stuff).
The best technique for handling eggshells is to rinse them and let them air dry. After several dozen pile up, crush them with a mortar and pestle or any hard object. This should quickly result in powdered eggshells. Sprinkle them on top of your worm bin.
Worms love lettuce, kale, Swiss chard, to name a few of these vegetables. Be sure to cut these scraps down into small pieces or even food process them. Remember to thoroughly rinse off all hot spices, sauces, oils, dressings, and cheeses because they can harm your vermicomposting project.
Earthworms need grit to digest their food, and ground up eggshells are an excellent source. Even if you don't have a worm bin, you'll eventually have earthworms hanging out in your outdoor compost pile, and in your soil, so including some shell debris for them will help them to thrive.
Avoid feeding the worms large quantities of meat, citrus, onions and dairy foods. Some processed food also contains preservatives, which discourage the worms from eating it. These foods won't harm your worms, but they will avoid them and those scraps will break down and rot in the bin.
Banana peels are an excellent worm food.
In the end, you probably can't add too many eggshells to your compost. If you grind them down, they will soon impart calcium and potassium to your compost. If you leave the shells partly crushed or entirely whole, it will take a while for them to break down.
The calcium from eggshells is also welcome in garden soil, where it moderates soil acidity while providing nutrients for plants. Eggshells contain such an abundance of calcium that they can be used almost like lime, though you would need a lot of eggshells to make a measurable impact.
To keep your worms happy ensure that you provide them with the right amount of these 3 key elements: food, moisture and oxygen. 1. Feed them regularly or whenever they are running out of food. You will figure out how often you need to feed them by observing your worm farm (once or twice a week).
Worms will eat anything that was once living, Leftover vegetable scraps, fruit and vegetable peelings. Tea leaves / bags and coffee grounds.
It is not a requirement to wash eggshells before composting them, but you definitely need to. First, cleaning them speeds up how fast they will break down inside the composting bin. Secondly, cleaning them is important so as not to attract animal pests.
Eggshells serve double duty in a garden. If you mix them into the soil, they'll have the same impact that they do in your compost: they'll decompose and feed valuable nutrients into the soil, which in turn will make your plants happy.
Worms have a gizzard like chickens so fine grit should be added to help the worms digest food. This gritty material includes cornmeal, coffee grounds and/or finely crushed egg shells (dry the shells and then crush).
So in order to keep a compost bin healthy, you need to mix and turn your compost to aerate it and allow oxygen to reach down the deep unreachable places. The aeration not only provides oxygen for the good bacteria, but it also kills off the anaerobic bacteria since they can't survive with oxygen.
The molds that form on most vegetables are usually OK, but the molds on some fruit and bread can be problematic. If you're in doubt, try a small amount first and see if the worms are bothered by it. If not, then it's probably OK to use it, otherwise, you should put them into your backyard bin instead.
If larger flies or maggots are present, it is generally a sign that food (especially meat) is rotting rather than being eaten by your worms. Avoid meat in worm farms, and make sure you are not over-feeding your new pets.
Shredded paper and cardboard, egg cartons, ripped up newspaper, receipts and envelopes should all be a regular part of the worms diet. LOTS of non-glossy paper should go in your worm farm - it is worth repeating!
Worms hate: meat or fish, cheese, butter, greasy food, animal waste, spicy and salty foods, citrus.” The food-to-worm ratio is not precise, nor is the amount of castings they will produce. The rule of thumb is that a pound of worms will eat one to two pounds of food in a week.
The rolled oats, cornmeal, and alfalfa work together to plump up your worms quickly. The finer this mix is powdered, the quicker your worms will eat it up and fatten up. Moisten your worm bedding and then sprinkle it over the bedding surface.
Grass clippings are a great addition to a traditional compost pile and worms will eat these as well in their natural setting, but in your vermicomposting system, they will heat up the soil and can kill all of your worms.