I'm not sure how you might go about harvesting worms from the ground, but chances are that even if you are successful that they will be the wrong type for composting. Usually only Red Wiggler and European Nightcrawler worms are used for composting food scraps and the types of materials you're talking about. I would call local bait shops in your area to find out who their suppliers are and try to go to the source locally.

Also, don't feed citrus rind; it is too acidic and will sour your bin and kill your worms. Good luck!

I feed citrus to my worms and have no problems with it. If it has been pre-composted, the worms should devour it. But I would not feed citrus exclusively. Citrus should be a small portion of the food that is given to the worms. I don't know if it true for other citrus fruits, but oranges have a chemical in the rind that is toxic to worms until they have had a chance to decompose.

I don't understand people's concern about a bin becoming too acidic. Has that actually happened, or are people just parroting someone else's fears? And I mean too acidic, not too anaerobic. I have fed my worms citrus and whole tomatoes and I have never had a problem with either one.

I don't know if your typo should have read "from the ground" or "for the ground," but either way, the worms that are sold for composting do not live in the ground. They live in cold compost piles.

Worms are not shipped in cans. They will die if shipped in cans.

There may be restrictions on shipping live worms from outside of the Bahamas.

Peanut shells and palm fronds are tough materials that will not break down well in a worm bin.

Worms don't typically live in anything that could be described as a "house."

thanx to all. When i said house i meant bin. Tips r verry apreciated.

i'll check the bait shop.

I have fed oranges, lemons, and grapefruit to my bin. I have fed tomatoes, as well as salsa that went bad on me. All have disappeared over time, with no ill effect to the worms.

Peanut shells are unlikely to go anywhere. I've been tossing pistachio shells back into my bin over and over again, with them not breaking down. Any new shells I have now, I just toss on the lawn to break down in the soil.

I put a bunch of chopped, previously frozen in my bin yesterday.
I checked it this morning, and there was a larger chunk of lemon, that had a bunch of worms underneath it. So mine definitely like citrus, which I've noticed from the beginning. Grapefruit really gets eaten quickly.

Are you asking because you have a large volume of peanut shells, citrus rind and palm frond to compost? These are some items that generally take a much longer time to break down. Keep in mind that composting worms eat the microbes that decompose organic matter, not the organic matter itself.

Cutting up or shredding this material will speed up the process by giving those microbes more surface area to colonize. It also wouldn't hurt to be sure to add other material into the mix that decomposes faster (mellon, banana, any softer fruits). If you have a large volume of these materials to compost it may be worth it to use a chippper to tear it into smaller pieces.

Any of those materials can certainly be used in varying quantities, but you'll need to be pretty patient with the peanut shells and palm fronds. I'd suspect you may have better luck trying to hot compost those materials than give them to worms.

Limited quantities of citrus are fine. Honestly, limited quantities of almost anything organic are just fine. Almost all articles you see on home worm composting say to avoid meat an dairy, but that's just because they may smell in a home bin. I'm nearly 100% certain that large-scale projects which vermicompost food scraps at hospitals, schools, prisons, etc. include meat and dairy in the waste stream.

The only things I would not feed to worms are those which are known to be toxic: castor bean plants, poison ivy, food suspected of being spoiled by botulism, etc.