Comments:

1) I have had my bin for 4 months, and I still poke around too much. I am having problems right now, so I like to see if things are stabilizing, and if I still have healthy worms.

2) Some foods have a strong odor while they decompose. Cutting down on the onions might help.

3) Your bin might be too moist. It is hard to say without seeing it.

4) covering the food does help keep the smells down.

5) You are probably feeding too much. If you are, the best way to control the smell is simply to stop feeding for a few days. Let the worms catch up.

6) Moving the bin to a colder place may just make the problem worse. It will slow everything down, which will take longer for the smell to go away.

Gena, Sounds like you are seriously into your "nesting" stage of your pregnancy. ;-)

First of all, you have your bins backwards. The bottom one is the catch bin: no holes because it is supposed to catch any leachate that drips from above. The top bin, *with holes* in bottom, sides and top, is filled with bedding, food and worms. This is where the work is done. The food needs the air to decompose. Once that bin is really going, you can put a third bin (with holes for ventilation and migration) on top of that.

Also, it takes a few months for the system to really get going, so you probably have fallen into the classic mistake of overfeeding and overwatering.

You've got bedding in the top bin (the one with holes), so dump the contents of the bottom bin on top of that. Remove any food that is still visible. There will be enough microbial life in the bedding and compost to keep the worms feeding for weeks. Top with fresh, dry, shredded paper. When you are digging around, make sure that you always leave a layer of shredded paper on top of the food. This will help keep down the smell of decomposing food. Wash and dry the bottom bin. Layer some torn up cardboard sprinkled with kitty litter in the bottom. Put the worm-compost-bedding bin on top of this catch bin. Put on the lid. Walk away.

You can still check on them, but remember that a lot of movement does stress them. (I know because I have to stop myself all the time.) AND do not feed again until the bin begins to smell like damp morning earth. Mmmmmm. Then feed *moderately* in small pieces. Stay away from onion, cabbage, broccoli until your bins are well on their way and the population teeming.

And don't worry, once the baby and you PILs arrive you will be so busy, you will fall into the pattern of benign neglect that the worms thrive on.

Good luck.

Folly

To follow up on some of the points made in the responses:

Oh yeah! The nesting is driving me crazy. I want to go out and play in the dirt whenever we have a sunny day, but I'm having to make do w/the worm bin. Yesterday, we had some snow, but people were outside over the past weekend in short sleeves. Tennessee weather can be fickle.

Both bins have holes and I doubt I have any leachate -- the bins are see-thru and there is no standing liquid. I have a battery operated temp/humidity gauge in the bin. Temp is running around 73 and humidity is between 85 and 95%. Also, when I transfered them into the bin, there wasn't any liquid in the other setup.

Can the bedding be too moist if the top layer is shredded newpaper that is still dry? I haven't added any water to the bin since my humidity readings have stayed above 70.

For now, I'll stop feeding. That's easier than neglecting them. :) I put in 8 ounces of food last night -- no more until the banana peel and avocado mush is gone.

I'll agree that overfeeding is probably part of the problem -- trying to increase the number of worms before the bin was ready was probably where the whole experiment went crazy. That and trying to start super-small.

Think I should just remove the visible food chunks for a few days and see what happens?

Wonderpets, It sounds to me that your main problem is overfeeding. You said you have had the bin a month but didn't say how many worms you started with. Although you DID say you started "super-small." As long as you don't have leacheate coming from the bottom of the bins, they are NOT to wet. But remember - you don't WANT leacheate; a well run bin shouldn't have any. Your temp/humidity readings sound really good. I would take out the onion and any other large pieces you can see, and give the worms time to settle in, get adjusted, and begin mating.
However, I must say, all that digging around does not help the situation. And neither does having transparent bins. Although, since you have them in a closet, they should be ok.
I'm not sure what your bedding mixture is, but you did say that there is newspaper in the bin. Don't worry, the worms won't starve. They can digest the newspaper for quite a while. Wait until the bin starts smelling like compost and you start seeing babies before you feed again.

I started with a gallon jug of bedding + worms from a local freecycle member, which makes for a fairly small start and no real way to quantify how many worms. In moving them from the jug to my baskets and now to this bin, I haven't seen any cocoons but I have seen lots of little pink immature worms about an inch in length.

I know there are at least 50 worms old enough or almost old enough to breed -- that's the number at which I realized the futility of trying to count them one by one. There seems to be quite a nice start going. They are spread out throughout the whole 8 gallon container now, even on the side that was just fresh bedding + coffee grounds.

The bins aren't totally transparent -- they are that smokey gray color, clear enough that I can see the worms crawling on the side of the bin from outside. Most of the time (when I leave them alone) they are shut up inside a closet without any light.

I knew it wouldn't happen this winter, but my long term goal is to be able to have enough worms/bins next winter to process all of our veggie and fruit scraps when the weather keeps me from playing in the big compost pile. And maybe make it so I can let one of the outdoor piles finish completely before I decide to sift out the finished bits....

Even though it'll slow them down, maybe moving them to the downstairs wouldn't be a bad idea. It would certainly increase the amount of neglect.

You appear to have a very small worm population for your bin size. Typically for a bin your size, one would start with one pound of worms, which is about 1000 worms of various sizes, or 500 to 600 adults. You probably could have kept the worms in your gallon jug for a few months before moving them to the big bin. If you started with only 50 worms (You don't say how many you didn't bother to count) it could take a year or more for the worm population to get well established in a bin the size of yours.

For now that means that you are off to a slow start. Even with a larger worm population, worms eat slowly at first. You can probably stop feeding for a week or two, then feed small amounts until you get a feel for how much your worms actually eat.

Well, last night I de-stinked the bin. I dug through and removed almost every piece of recognizable food and any truly stinky mushy bits. I pulled out the avocado mush from Monday and some onion skins and some onion ends -- all in all, what came out fit inside a paper towel when I wrapped it up to throw away.

I left Monday's banana peel, a few small bits of orange peel from last week, and some things that looked like they used to be cucumber peels from last week. They've already eaten everything else that I'd added over the last three weeks, except for the coffee grounds.

Most of the sour smell came from the avocado mush -- I don't eat avocado myself, so I can't blame them for leaving it alone -- and the rest of the smell was just pure rotting red onion. I'll have my husband give it a sniff test this evening, but I think all the stinky is out.

This morning, I had a temp in the bin of 77 degrees with humidity at 90%.

Petsmart....you don't say.

Yes petsmart and if you go and get extra i could use some you know just to take the edge off. i don't need them but........

You mean, your friend (yeah sure) is now sleeping in the shed? I sympathize with him.
Interesting story though and very well told/written.

But ultimately it is W who started it. She should have known better.
I am not familiar with the aerea where "your friend" lives but if he can find a stable with an aged manure pile, he can start digging around in there and find oodles of worms. How about his own CP? No worms in there jeff?

How about growing beautiful flowers for W and stress the result of the beauty on the WORMcompost. She "might" mellow.

Otis.

jeff-npr that was an amazing story, I read it aloud to my family and though they agreed it was well written and interesting they didn't quite laugh as much as I did(as I see myself doing all those things H does)

Once again thanks

Substitute WI for FL and thats me and the wife!-)
except I compost and Vermicompost in my basement