Worm Composting
Put you bedding about 4" deep in your bin and then moisten it down. You don't want water on the bottom of the bin, but you don't want dry spots either. The worms need moisture to breathe. You'll also need to add some grit for your worms. A handful of dirt or some crushed eggshells will do fine. Finally, dump the worms into the bedding and add some food scraps. I stir my scraps into the bedding. If you cover the bin with newspaper or cardboard, you may not need to do this. Covering the food scraps with bedding helps keeps the fruit flies down.
The Food You can feed your worms any vegetable scraps. I've found fruit, cooked vegetables, bread, soft salad vegetables, and indoor plant trimmings work the best. According to the Cornell Composting site, onions, cabbages, and broccoli smell funny and citrus fruits make the bin too acidic for the worms. I've never tried any of these. I figure I'll take their word on it. I also don't like to use carrot and potato peelings because the peelings turn leathery and the worms take a very long time to eat them.
The Harvest After about three months you can harvest your worm casings. You don't want to leave the casings in too long, because the worms can't live in their own casings. You can harvest your worm casings several ways. Some worm bins are arranged in layers so you can add food to the upper layers and the worms migrate up. You scoop up the casings they left behind. You can imitate this by laying a screen over your bedding, adding new bedding on top and then putting food into the new bedding. The worms can migrate right through the screen. You can also put food and new bedding only on one side of the bin. Eventually the worms will move to that side and you can scoop up the casings from the other side. When I want to harvest the casings, I dump my bin out on some newspapers and make several piles. When I shine a light on them, the worms migrate to the bottom of the piles. I scoop the casings off the top. This is the fastest method.
The Lesson I've encountered few problems with my worm bin. All of them started when I left it outside for week when I was gone. It rained into the bin and most
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