Thanksgiving is all about good food, good friends and good fun. It’s a time of year we all look forward to, because it’s a time during the year for family and friends to get back together and enjoy one another’s company. Kids especially anticipate Thanksgiving because it means that Christmas is just around the corner. And then there’s food!
Thanksgiving usually means one thing and one thing only; you get to totally indulge yourself and feast on the best foods this nation has to offer including the noble turkey! Thanksgiving is a major operation. It’s a lot of shopping, preparation and cooking, serving, eating and lastly, cleanup. Can you guess which of those phases interests a vermicomposter the very most?
Thanksgiving Cleanup
The cleanup phase of Thanksgiving is one of the best parts of the event, because you get to re-purpose all of your food scraps for compost, which literally sells itself! Worm castings are the very best form of compost, which is why we refer to it as “black gold”. Besides, nobody likes to see food go to waste. Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm has just a little expertise when it comes to recycling and reusing kitchen food scraps!
Did you know that our red worms can eat up to their weight in food daily? That might seem like a lot of food to feed them, but they weigh very little and the food is almost always readily available at no cost to you (well, technically it did cost you at the store). The food scraps that you can feed them can be found right inside your kitchen waste basket!
Common Thanksgiving Food Scraps
Here’s just a sample of some of the things you can feed red wigglers this Thanksgiving:
- Fruit & Vegetable trimmings (peels, edges, ends, tips, etc)
- Potato peels
- Melon rinds
- Crushed egg shells
- Uneaten organic food
As a general rule of thumb, if it grows then it is probably good for your worms to eat. Just avoid acidic fruits like lemons and limes. Oily and greasy foods should be avoided. Meat and dairy should always be avoided.
So you see, it is possible to set up a worm composting system and never have to spend another dollar on keeping your worms healthy and happy. You can use recyclable items like cardboard and shredded newspaper for their bedding, your house or apartment for their warm and comfortable, and organic food scraps for food! Thanksgiving day will not only be a feast for you, but for your red worms as well!
Help Reduce Food Waste This Thanksgiving
What’s more, composting your Thanksgiving food scraps will help reduce the staggering amount of food waste that occurs globally each year (around 1.3 Billion, which equates to one-third of the world’s food production). Granted, a good portion of that food waste occurs in the field, during transportation and in grocery stores, but a lot of food waste occurs right within our homes.
Composting with worms is one very effective way to reuse kitchen scraps and the byproduct literally sells itself. It’s no wonder we refer to it as “black gold” here at Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. This Thanksgiving, give worm composting a try and by spring you will have a good supply of compost ready to enrich your indoor plant’s or garden’s soil!
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