How did the dried veg powder work out?
They seem to do well on dried veg. I am considering coffee. I have switched worms. I am now breeding superworms which are similar in design but much larger. I then plan to use those to catch fish in order to make fish emulation. The worms differ in that you need to remove the large worms from the colony in order to get them to pupate, but I am thinking it is going to make controlling the process entirely easier.
Also they eat fresh material much faster. I purchased 500 worms and used about 50 to catch fish, so 450 consumed a large persimmon in less than two days. That was directly after shipping, but I added a large potato and they really did a number on that quickly as well. at the moment I have them in a zero grain environment and they seem to be fine. And very lively. I am starting to convert some to beetles.
I am going to eat some myself, I did a lot of this during the last experiment with the common meal-worm. I discovered that the best way to consume them was to harvest them directly after they converted to the pupa phase. They are much more edible than the common way that people eat the worms {which is equally tasty.} What I discovered though with eating a meal of the worms is that they have a similar issue as corn does if not properly chewed. if you get my drift. Which to me seems not so great. But eating the pupa is far more digestible, particularly if harvested right after they convert. I call it land shrimp, as it is very similar to shrimp in texture. It is somewhere between shrimp and vegetarian meat in texture, and very meat like in taste, quite good. Also I think the pupa have expelled all internal waste {poop} which I know people try to avoid by purging other critters {snails and such}.
But primarily the idea is to begin composting scraps with them.
My first experiment is going to be to grind up my own home made slow release fertilizer. I already have quite a bit of powdered eggshells that I have processed, so at the moment I am drying the heck out of some banana peels on the dehydrator. I was initially going to keep the pieces large but I found that they began to re-hydrate in a way that may become troublesome, and mold. I may also dehydrate some beans and grains that I goofed up today on my meat dehydrator in a similar way that I have been making my own dog chow.
Lastly, I had a planter that I put a huge load of the frass in. And I am now calling it the magic pot. I am growing a Goji in it and a Maringa tree, there is also a garland chrysanthemum and an aloe plant. {I am experimenting with companion planting in containers.} This pot is outgrowing everything but there were a few other factors that could have led to this. I put quite a bit of sphagnum moss that was whole not ground, and there are European night crawlers breeding in all my pots, but it was the only one that had the moss whole in it. Also I attempted to plant a prickly pear as deep as I could in the tall 15 gallon pot and it was not successful. But the dead rotting corpse of it in the pot may have been part of why it grows so well. And lastly there was a colony of super tiny ants that moved in. anyway, the frass certainly was not destructive, and nothing burned from its use. Even heavy use.
But I would not top dress with it. The frass repels water and cakes quickly into a clay like substance. it seems to work really well to mix it in with potting mix, or dilute it into other things you may top dress with. Or make a compost tea. If you use it fresh for tea it will foam up like nothing else. If you let the stuff sit for months you will get none of that.
