Worms love to eat coffee grounds, and that's great news for your garden. Add coffee grounds to your compost pile to help attract worms, which help speed up the process of turning food scraps into compost. You can also add coffee grounds directly to the soil, but you'll have to be careful not to overdo it.
It's best to start with small amounts to see how your worms will react, then work around that. As a general rule, coffee grounds should not make up more than 1/8th of your bedding material or compost, as excessive amounts could result in too much acidity.
Yes, caffeine can be toxic to small animals (like worms) if the dosage is high enough.
Since worms have no teeth, coffee grounds provide a gritty substance in their guts which helps them grind down foods. And the fine particle size of coffee grounds makes it easy for worms to consume. In addition, the fine particle size has a lot of surface area, which encourages bacteria to grow.
Coffee grounds have about the same amount of nitrogen as grass clippings – 2% or so, meaning they heat up quickly when added to compost and help turn the entire pile into a beautiful dark rich soil. They are also very suitable for the worm farm, with those little guys loving used coffee grounds.
Coffee grounds, as an organic material, can be added to your compost pile. Worms like coffee grounds, so you may want to put a layer of coffee on the bottom of your pile to attract worms.
Worms need food!
They will eat some of their bedding, but they really love scraps of fruit and vegetables. Worms will eat the parts you won't, like cores and peels. Don't feed them too much or too often at first. A yogurt container full of scraps once a week will be enough.
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.
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.
For example, peanuts, soy, milk, and eggs. These contain deadly toxins for some, while others safely consume them daily. Compost worms, however, seem able to stomach nearly anything grown from the ground.
The worms normally live for about 15 days and can survive with nothing to eat for roughly 10 to 12 days. "Our finding is that tiny amounts of ethanol can make them survive 20 to 40 days," Clarke said.
The worms' job is to eat the food before it gets super-rotten and stinky. If you add too much food at a time, they cannot keep up. Too much food can also push the air out of the bin, leading to foul-smelling anaerobic decomposition.
Earthworms consume coffee grounds and deposit them deep in soil. This may account for noted improvements in soil structure such as increased aggregation.
If you want your worms to eat faster, chop the food scraps into small pieces ahead of time and throw them int he freezer overnight. Chopping (some people even use a blender) increases the surface area of each piece of food making it easier for the worms (and the bacteria) to eat.
Banana peels are an excellent worm food.
Bread, rice, pasta, processed foods - you can add the odd crust or bits of cooked rice off the dinner plate, but don't add lots of starchy foods. Worms don't like them and they may go off or attract pests. Acidic foods - citrus, pineapple, garlic and onions.
Worms will eat anything that was once living, Leftover vegetable scraps, fruit and vegetable peelings. Tea leaves / bags and coffee grounds.
Mebendazole works by preventing the threadworms absorbing sugar, which means they should die within a few days. This medication is 90-100% effective at killing the threadworms, but it doesn't kill the eggs. This is why the hygiene measures outlined below should also be followed for 6 weeks.
Due to their slight acidity, coffee grounds should only be 25-50% of a worms diet. It's a good idea to start adding small amounts in the beginning to see if your worms like them or not. It's also important to make sure that the grounds are always moist, not dry before adding to the bin.
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 acid levels aren't fixed but vary as the composting process proceeds, especially if there are worms involved. When composting, she recommends that gardeners add no more than 20% of their total compost volume in coffee grounds. Levels as high as 30%, she suggests, can be “detrimental.”