Pumpkin warning

[Jay Blair]

While worms will eat up pumpkin rind, be wary of feeding the seeds to your bins.

Ground pumpkin seed is an old time stock dewormer remedy.

As a test, I ground up 250 dried seeds and made a tea of it and added to a test bin containing 100 worms. Four days later the test bin was down to a population of 7 worms.

So please beware the power of the pumpkin seed on your bins.

[redhen]

I have asked around about the pumpkin seeds hurting the worms. The answer I got was that although the ground seeds were a dewormer for intestinal worms, that the seeds would not hurt your worms. Also that a good pumpkin patch would be full of worms. I am a bit relieved, because I have already put lots of pumpkin goosh from mine and my neighbor's Halloween pumpkins. Last year I put it in also and got tons of pumpkin plants , that I just dug under and composted. This year I am saving, and of course, roasting many of the seeds. Jay, do you think it was the crushing the dried seeds that caused your worm demise?

[Jay Blair]

The grounded style from my understanding , is the way the Amish process it. However three years ago after adding the pumpkin gore to bin #3 without the seeds ground , I had reduced concentration of banded breeders in that bin for about 3 cycles. Enough breeders remained to maintain bin viability until I sifted the remaining seeds out.

After removal of the seeds, the breeder population returned to normal levels. Now I throw any pumpkin goo and rind into the manure aging piles or through the feed predigester as a precaution based on the empirical data I collected on the two testings.

My thinking is that as aging breaks down residual wormer in the manure, it does the same to the pumpkin remains.

As we have noticed before, worms will retreat from toxins in the natural environment. The confined aspects of a bin could contribute to toxicity simply by preventing retreat.

[jimmy2s83]

Hmm,
Thats very helpfull. I probably would have thrown some pumpkin in the bin. Thanks for the warning. The only thing that is puzzling to me is that I was able to find some of my worms hiding under some pumpkins we have set out in front of the door. There seemed to be at lest 2 under each of the 3 pumpkins. Perhaps they like the skin but not the seeds?
Anyways thanks again for the heads up.
Jimmy

[Jay Blair]

tt and I discussed this and I developed a hypothesis. on my experience. after the test with ground and none ground seeds. While the ground seeds killed off 97% of the test unit within days, the non ground seeds first required microbe activity to break down the protective seed case. While the microbes took a few weeks to break it down, I believe the seeds either began to sprout and neutralized the toxins as they germinated or normal pre comp heating reduced toxicity to levels not as damaging to the worms just as aging manures breaks down residual livestock wormers.

[jwalker]

???Jay this forum seams dead what up if anything. i put whole pumpkins in my bin. haven't noticed ant ill effects yet knock on wood