What can I feed my garden worms with? I need to fatten them up forfishing! Thanks
Eileen from Northern CA
Eileen,
This is a great question. I'm going to assume that you're talking about fattening up your nightcrawlers and common field worms, and not referring to manure worms (red wigglers) that we feed with our kitchen scraps.
The most common earthworms found in the garden are nightcrawlers and field worms (also called garden worms). Night crawlers are easy to spot because they are big! They make wonderful bait for anglers, but they reproduce slowly, so they are not commercially raised as often as some other types of bait worms. Nightcrawlers prefer soil that is heavy in organic matter like lawns and grassy meadows. Field worms are smaller than nightcrawlers. They are also easy to identify because they have a pronounced raised band (clitellum) about _ length down their body. They tend to be more common in soils that are slightly poorer in organic matter. Both of these worms feed by bringing organic debris down into their burrows from the surface. As they move about, the holes they create aerate the soil. Their excretions, also called casts, improve the soil's structure.
When you feed your soil, you are feeding the worms that live there. The more organic nutrients your soil contains, the greater your worm population and the more vigorous your worms. Fertilizers do not necessarily provide earthworms with the food they need (synthetic or organic). They love foods high in nitrogen, so mixing green grass clippings, corn stalks, and green leaves into the soil(dried leaves are low in nitrogen) should provide them with plenty of food.
Apparently, the Purina company also makes and Purina Earthworm Chow for raising bait worms. I haven't been able to locate this online, but I have seen several references to it. You might try locating a worm ranch that raises earth worms (not vericomposting worms) for more information. I know the first two main ingredients are ground corn and ground soybean hulls.
Good luck!
Ellen
About The Author: Ellen Brown is an environmental writer and photographer and the owner of Sustainable Media, an environmental media company that specializes in helping businesses and organizations promote eco-friendly products and services. Contact her on the web at http://www.sustainable-media.com
Add your voice! Click below to answer. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
Put some corrugated cardboard on the ground and get it good and wet. The glue between the layers of cardboard will get gooey and they will eat that.
Any veggie left overs, coffee grounds, they get real feisty, ripped up news paper wetted and put on top, if there in a container put a small light above it, this keeps them from moving out, and they will move out if it's dark.
From the Reln "Can-O-Worms" website: www.reln.com.au/
This recipe in their instruction booklet:
www.reln.com.au/
"Make up the following recipe to fatten and toughen up your worms;
Chicken Layers Pellets 50%
Wheat or Corn Flour 10%
Powdered Whole Milk/Skim Milk 10%
Mix the ingredients and sprinkle lightly on the food wastes about once a week.
After several months you will have fat, tough worms in ready supply for fishing."
You could start off with a few bought fishing worms and feed them up to create an on-going supply.
We call them compost worms over here in Oz. They are great for recycling kitchen food scraps and making the best "worm cast" compost.
Personally I think the worms are more useful kept to make this wonderful compost than feeding to the fish...but to each their own! :)
Are you feeding worms in your garden or worms in a bin? There are very different breeds in each. The most common worm used in compost bins, the "red wriggler," will always be smaller than a nightcrawler no matter how much you feed it, and isn't commonly used for fishing. The "European nightcrawler" (or "giant redworm") is also used in compost bins, and is also suitable for fish bait. These worms need the conditions of a compost bin or manure pile, and do not fare well in garden soil.
The most commonly used fishing worm is the Canadian nightcrawler, which is very hard to raise in captivity and is more commonly found outside. There are a number of other worms in garden soil, too -- if you are giving your garden lots of compost, and not using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides, all of which harm earthworms.
You can't keep garden worms successfully in a worm bin, long term, but you can keep them in a small bin for a short time to "fatten" them. This would be easier than feeding all the worms in the garden when you only want a few for fishing. It also won't interfere with your garden plants. In the first stages of breaking down, non-composted food will compete with your plants for nitrogen.
In a worm bin you can feed them just about anything, although the recipe given in the first answer will "fatten them up" the fastest. If you feed them scraps, they will eat faster (and therefore get fat faster) if the food is soft, or broken up in small pieces. And the rottener, the better! Adding molasses will make food disappear like it's money.
Avoid meat, fish, and dairy products because they will smell foul and attract other creatures besides worms (like rats). Avoid oils or oily foods because they decompose verrry slowly; avoid citrus peelings and onion for the same reason; avoid spicy foods because they really don't like them; mix acid foods like tomatoes up with non-acid foods.
Happy fishing!
Garden worms absolutely love bananas.
Hi there,
We always kept our "fising worm bed" underneath our rabbit
cage...and once a week, the worms got a good heavy sprinkling of plain old waterground or stone-ground corn meal.
It was watered in really well, and when we were going
fishing, my daddy would go out and with a single shovel
full of earth, we'd have about enough worms to catch
fish enough for a good fish dinner. There was no big
deal about it at all. For some unknown reason, the rabbits
provided everything else the worms needed. We lived in
Lakeland, Florida back in the early 40's, and that's
the way we all raised fishing worms.
All the best to you.
Julia in Orlando,FL
Add your voice! Click below to answer. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
