Comments on: Are Pineapple and Papaya Harmful to Worms?

By: Bay

Bay — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:33:14 +0000

Tri-tip is beef-steak. (Cooked).

By: Bentley

Bentley — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:08:10 +0000

ANDY – Definitely a possibility. Alternatively, one can also NEVER rule out alien abduction! Maybe ‘we are not alone’ in the realization of just how cool these worms are!

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ERICA – Very interesting. Thanks for chiming in
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BAY – What is “tri-tip”?

By: Bay

Bay — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:15:50 +0000

I recently conducted an experiment with worms. I fed one of my groups of worms tri-tip, and those worms I believe disintegrated unless they crawled out and are in my house. The other two groups did not disintegrate. One i fed lettuce, the other i fed paper. I’m just curious if worms can actually disintegrate.

By: Erica

Erica — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:24:30 +0000

My worms are voracious with all fruits, but especially seem to love pineapple and melon, which we eat frequently.

I now grind up my worm food, but for years just put in the pineapple rinds and hearts without aging them. The worms would often be found the next day happily (or so I think) huddled under the rinds, and would hang out there until the rinds were finished off. As with the rest of the family, for the worms pineapple is a favorite food.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:14:56 +0000

Maybe someone was jealous of your worms and then stole them while you were on vacation….have any neighbors who like to fish?

By: Bentley

Bentley — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:35:17 +0000

Wow – this has turned out to be quite the hot topic!

BOB- I think you might be right. Perhaps a pineapple/papaya challenge IS in order.

By: Will

Will — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:22:15 +0000

I make papaya smoothies all the time so it’s not unusual for me to stock up heavily on papaya and inevitably some of them rot before I can get to them. I’ve dumped two large whole papayas into my worm bin and the worms totally destroyed the papaya. I find it hard to believe that the worms were “digested”. Unless if that woman’s bin was just slightly larger than the pineapple itself it shouldn’t have killed off all the worms.

Worms when they die degrade really fast so my guess is something else happened (like probably overfeeding with inadequate air circulation) that did the worms in.

By: Sean in Plano, Texas

Sean in Plano, Texas — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:15:35 +0000

I’ve added fresh pineapple scraps to my small population(100~ red worms) and slightly larger population(200~ red worms) and they seem to really enjoy the pineapple. Somehow I think the chemistry is a little more complex. Maybe the mucus coating of the worm protects them fairly well to where the enzymes aren’t too effective against them.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Contraceptive?Yikes. There’s something I wouldn’t count on! As for pineapple, it’s definitely an age-old kitchen fact (refugee from 20+ years in the food biz here) that if you try to cook with fresh pineapple, you best cook it well, to destroy those enzymes (almost all denature quickly in heat). e.g. any decent recipe for pineapple upside-down cake will either suggest canned and warn about how to use fresh – else you end up with a soupy pudding-like mess in your cast iron skillet. Easy to see how the proteins that make up a worms “skin” would be easily break down in this environment. Alan’s success must be attributed to the aging – hard to see how it would work otherwise – chemistry is chemistry, after all!

By: Mark in Santa Barbara

Mark in Santa Barbara — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:58:26 +0000

I’ve heard that papaya seeds are somewhat effective as a human contraceptive, but I’d think the human and worm reproductive systems are so different that I’d be surprised if papaya seeds had a similar contraceptive effect in worms. Just guessing, though.