Darkling Beetles in meal worm castings I bought

14 years ago

I just bought a bag of meal worm castings to use as a soil amendment and organic fertilizer. Before I bought it I asked the seller if I had to worry about eggs in it hatching and producing Darkling Beetles. She played dumb and said she didn't know. Well I just opened the bag and it is infested with live Darkling Beetles, which in their larva stage are known as meal worms. I am glad I didn't mix it with my potting soil which I had intended to do, because if I brought it inside my house might be crawling with these beetles.

My question, can I use this infested meal worm castings in my garden or will I bring a plague of beetles upon myself if I do. I read the adult beetles will eat both live and decayed vegetation. Should I try to get my money back and if I can't throw this stuff away or will it be safe to use in the planting holes when planting tomato and other plants in my garden?

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Comments (5)

jean001
14 years ago
Adult darkling beetles (plant damagers) look very similar to ground beetles (predatory beetles which are good guys; Carabidae family)

So it's important to differentiate between the two.
californian
Original Author
14 years ago
I just called Rainbow farms that produces much of the mealworm castings in the LA area and the lady I talked to said the bags of castings, which are mostly the skin molted off the growing mealworms, do usually have some live darkling beetles and live mealworms in them, but she didn't know if they would be harmful to a garden. I don't want to use this stuff if suddenly I will have beetles and mealworms eating up my plants and vegetables and fruit. So does anyone know for sure if they would be safe to use?
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Ingrid, think of your garden as a place to raise "free-range earthworms" and they'll provide you with all the castings you could need, depositing it right where you need it without you having to dig it into the soil for your plants. Do you have a set time of year when you apply mulch? If so, consider gathering as much organic material as possible which isn't composted yet, spread it out, then cover it with mulch. If you buy a garbage can for it, you can collect a lot of coffee grounds from your local Starbucks and use that. If you don't already have some worms in your garden, buy some (like I mentioned before). As long as you keep them fed, you shouldn't have to buy them ever again -- the colony will keep growing. As I said before, I'd consider buying worm castings only for houseplants, and only because it isn't practical to keep earthworms alive in pots. It's just so much cheaper and easier to encourage a population of earthworms in the garden and let them deposit their castings on their own -- as well as keeping the soil aerated with their tunneling. :-) ~Christopher
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Some lady is advertising meal worm castings on Craigslist for $15 for a 35 pound bag. I had read this thread before I went to her house so asked her if she had gotten her castings from the place in Compton that I think you were hinting about, and that I read you can get it for free. She said yes her castings were from that major mealworm producer but they weren't free. I offered her $13 for the bag and she said OK. When I got home I weighed the bag and it was only 28 pounds, not 35, and the bag said hybrid wheat on it, but I figured they were just recycling the bags so didn't care about that. My question, is the supplier Rainbow farms in Compton or Long Beach, and are the castings really free if one goes direct to them, or if you have to pay how much is a bag and what size is it? The castings were very light and looked sort of like termite or furniture beetle sawdust if you ever saw that. Does one have to worry about beetle eggs in the mealworm castings hatching and flooding your house and yard with beetles? http://www.greenpeople.org/listing/Rainbow-Farms-Fertilizer-40597.cfm
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Years ago i had a pet store and also my own private collection of reptiles. I used to raise mealworms so i could have freshly hatched mealworms to feed baby herps that were just too small to handle the ones from the commercial growers. The castings went into my houseplants and they did great. So if you get them for free, go for it. Now as far as which is better, mealworm or earthworm castings, my intuition says earthworm. My reasoning goes like this: The digestive process is different. The mealworms eat 'meal' a mixture of grains etc. They convert the sugars and protein pretty much directly into their own protein and fat. With the earthworm, they can do the same to some degree if the particulate size is small enough. However they mainly rely on microbes to break down the cellulose and macrostarches of their foods into sugars and amino acids in a form they can absorb. The resultant feces is filled with microbes that seem to have an extra beneficial effect in garden soil. You can look up some studies on this and comments of mucous-like compounds that offer surfactant effects, etc.
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jonas302
14 years ago
You could probably safely make a tea or liquid fertilizer out it the castings knowing all the bugs would die or put it in the freezer or microwave to destroy the bugs
aaghwilson_gmail_com
12 years ago
hello, putting the castings in the fridge will put the beetles to sleep, as much as i love those things, it's the most humane way of dealing with it
putting it in the fridge will slow their growth and make it longer for them to evolve from the egg to the worm to the larvae etc.

so my best answer is leave it in the freezer for two days and it will freeze and kill the beetles, eggs and mealworms.

Here is a link that might be useful: Follow me on twitter and feel free to ask questions
californian
Original Author
12 years ago
Just bought some more meal worm castings. The bags weigh 32 pounds and wouldn't fit into the freezer or microwave, not that I would do that anyway. I think I found a way to kill the beetles. I put the whole bag in a black plastic garbage can and close the lid, and let it sit out in the sun on a hot day. I put a thermometer in there and it got up to 115 degrees F inside. Letting the beetles roast like that for a few days evidently killed them all.

Darkling Beetles in meal worm castings I bought

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jean001

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Darkling Beetles in meal worm castings I bought

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jean001

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jonas302

aaghwilson_gmail_com

californianOriginal Author

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californian
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