Avocados have become an increasingly popular food, making them an essential buy for many people during their weekly shop.
Having them in salads, sandwiches or spread out on toast makes for a perfectly tasty and nutritious meal.
It has also become quite popular to keep the avocado pit on order to grow your own avocado plant. But what can we do with the skin?
Yes, worms eat avocado skin. For those of us who have worm composting bins, there is nothing from an avocado that should go to waste.
The worms in your bin will happily eat the skin, and eventually the pit, should you not want to regrow it.
The skin may take a bit of time to become edible for the worms, but they will make their way through it with no problem.
Can composting worms have avocado?
Yes, composting worms can have avocado. Generally, unless it is acidic or spicy foods, you are likely safe.
Due to the fact that avocados are quite oily foods, it is normal to wonder whether or not they would be a suitable food source for the worms in your composting bin.
Well, worms love avocados. They break down relatively quickly and are full of nutrients for your worms.
Some prefer to bury the avocado in the worm farm so as not to attract fruit flies, but however you decide to do it, your worms will love you for it!
Avocados are full of rich nutrients that would be great for the worms as well as the compost for your garden.
The worm castings (worm poop) which feed your vegetation will only be enriched by what can be found in the avocado.
When putting them in your worm bin, do pay attention to the environment and maybe add some extra bedding such as:
- crushed egg shells
- coffee grounds
- manure (from herbivores)
- shredded paper
- cardboard
and other food scraps from your kitchen (like banana peels, apple cores, etc), to ensure a stable and balanced environment for your worms.
When it comes to the outer layer and the pit of the avocado, they are great for the compost bin too.
They will break down nicely and some have even found that their worms thoroughly enjoy the avocado skin as bedding.
You may find that deposing the avocado pit straight into the compost bin will encourage it to grow into a newborn avocado plant.
Should you not want an avocado plant, simply cut the pit in half and put it back into the compost. It will decay and be eaten up by the worms in no time.
Do Red Wigglers Like Avocado?
Yes, red wigglers do like avocado.
They are great for your vermicomposting system. Your red wigglers will love it and it will decay quickly into the other compost.
These fruits are oily and so should be treated with caution when being put into a worm bin. Putting too many in at once could be damaging to the worm bin, but a bit every now and then should do just fine.
You may find that your little creatures have found a new favourite spot in the avocado’s skin.
The oily texture makes for a comfortable area for the little creatures and they will use it as much as possible. It will only be good for them.
So there you have it – worms like avocados, probably even more than we do. Feeding them to your worms would be a wise way of dealing with your kitchen waste and keeping your red wigglers happy.
Naturally, too much of anything is bad and due to the fact that avocados have a high oil content, you might want to keep an eye on just how your own little creatures are reacting to them.
