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Global Worming News, Issue #103
April 16, 2014

Acidity in worm farms

Hello

I trust you are well and you are looking to a happy Easter weekend! This month newsletter is a little late due to a hectic schedule I had! We got an interesting article from David from Australia. He elaborated about acidity in worm farms. It's a problem he shares with many worm composting enthusiasts so I thought it's well worth to explore a little further.


Avoiding acid build up in worm beds.

I've seen cautions many times about not feeding citrus and several other foods to compost worms because of the acid problem. I've always fed any vegetable matter I can find, in moderation, and my worms are still doing fine ten years on.

by David - NSW, Australia)


David is right! If you do some research on the Internet you will find countless warnings not to feed citrus fruit Cautious as I am I followed these suggestions for years till I got fed up having to throw away all those organic materials and letting them go to waste on a land fill site.

I began to add citrus fruit peels to my worm bins and I totally agree with David, it is not a problem to feed acidic materials to a worm farm as long as one does it in "moderation"!

In addition it is a great idea to add some things like Crushed eggshells, Gardeners' dolomite, snail shells, mussel-shells (rinsed to remove the salt) to the worm bin to assist in balancing the "pH" levels inside the worm bin!

Nowadays I feed all citrus fruits as well as cat poop to some of my worm farms and never had a problems at all!

As mentioned above the secret is to do it in moderation! As long as the worms have enough bedding inside their bin that they can retreat to without being burnt up it will be just fine!

The worms can then just move towards the acidic food eat some of it and move away again!

I even fed some of my worms exclusively lemon peels for a while and they finished them off without a problem!


If you want to make some extra money with your worm farming project why don't you get yourself a copy of my book How to srart a profitable worm business on a shoestring budget It will explain in detail all you need to know to create an income with your earthworms! It is exceptionally low priced at the moment available as a printed soft cover book at Amazon or a Digital version on the "Kindle"


I believe one of the mistakes people make when feeding acidic food to their worms is to add the acidic waste first over the whole surface of the worm bin and than they pour water over it!

The water will than pick up some of the acidity and spread it throughout the bedding with no place for the worms to hide.

So all you need to do if you want to feed acidic food wastes like lemon peels to your worm farm is to do it in moderation, don't pour water over the acidic materials and use the precautions mentioned above to avoid an acidity build up of your worm bin bedding.

If you have any suggestions or questions please feel free to let me know!

Kind regards and happy worming

till next time

Stephan Kloppert ------------------------------------------------------------------- info@worm-composting-help.com www.worm-composting-help.com

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