This came up at a workshop that a fellow composting educator was giving today. She said that when she first starting vermicompostjng she had read not to give them cole crops/brassicas, so she’d always followed that rule.

I hadn’t heard that before, so I tried thinking back on whether I’d given my red wigglers any cole crops before. I gave them a bunch of Brussels sprouts a couple weeks ago that I’d chopped up, but it’s been cold so it’s too early to know if they’re avoiding the sprouts or just taking their sweet time.

Anyone have experiential/backed evidence as to whether or not they’ll eat cole crops? I have a feeling this may be more “urban legend” than fact, but hearing it from a composter with decades of experience does give me a pause.

UPDATE (2/25): Checked back on the bins that I fed the sprouts to before. There was definitely a rotting-brassica funk when I dug them up (as several of you mentioned) and indeed they still hadn’t broken down much, but there was a good aggregation of worms around them so at least it doesn’t appear to be repelling the worms.