It might take awhile but my guess is they will eat it. It might help some if you would leave a few old 10 dollar bills in it.

Dave Nelson

If a few equals 3, then send it to me and I'll eat that wallet!
I agree with Dave. I doubt the chemicals used to tan the leather are still adequate enough to hurt the worms. I also read somewhere that if it was once alive and is now dead, then worms will eat it.

Homemade processed leather might be tanned with brains (not human), eggs, tannic acid from acorns.

Commercially tanned leather might use tannic acid, chromium sulfate or Melamine. Two business men were recently exicuted in China when Melamine in artificial baby drink, called infant formula in America, killed babies.

The dyes in the leather I don't know.

According to wikipedia: Leather biodegrades slowly, and takes 25Â40 years to decompose.

I would vermicompost leather I have made myself. I would not vermicompost commercially made leather.

I have found that advice emanating from equinoxequinox, whom I will hereinafter refer to as EE, is well thought out and the result of personal experience and knowledge. Listen to him and you can't go wrong.

Dave Nelson

So I'm out $30?
Thanks EE for your learned opinion!
And these worms are still hungry.

EE is a he?
EE is so sensible I figured it was a she.

:D

Now that you mention it, I don't know. Just my male chauvinism coming through, but male or female, EE is a person worth listening too.

Dave Nelson

I have also had wonderful success with EE's advice and definitely think EE is a she.

Definitely a "she!" :) So much for the leather conversation!

Since we are speaking of worm foods, my wife and I like to have salted in the shell peanuts occasionally. Since I do not discard anything organic, I give the shells to the worms, but the worms seem not too want them. They hang right in there with egg shells. Could it be that they are to salty and perhaps toxic to the worms? I'm sure they will break down eventually and disappear but they sure are taking their time. Do any others of you have experience with this.

Dave Nelson

Salt is a preservative. It works by drawing the water out of microbes and killing them by dehydration. Worms eat microbes. I won't put anything with salt in it in my bins.

I have unsalted peanut hulls in my worm box for at least a year. These things rot about like petrified wood, or glass or rocks. It seems that any food that grows underground (potato, peanut, etc.) have a protective layer so that they will not rot.

squirrels won't even eat the shells. maybe rinse them off and use them for mulch?

Well I think I will just not put them in the worm bins anymore although they do not seem to have done any damage. Better safe than sorry.

Dave Nelson