You shouldn't add 7 pounds of food to a new bin. It will either heat up or go putrid. You run the risk of losing all your worms.

You don't add the upper bin until the working bin is finished. That can take several months.

Marshall

Won't they just retreat to cooler pastures down below if it heats up?

I dont beleive they eat 1/2 their weight in vegetables a day. I have two worm bins with about 10,0000 worms in each, an i wouldnt put more than 2 pounds in each a day. They also consume bedding and castings as well.

Even so, you dont start a car in 5th gear. You got to warm it up first, and then slowly increase revs and move up through the gears before its working in top gear. Same with the worm bins. SLowly at first. See how they like things, let em settle in.

The food goes on top of the bedding. The food you have added shouldnt heat up or go putrid, and yes they will scamper if it does, but down into the water collector is fine. They will come back up when its safe.

Plenty of shredded paper gives them heaps of hiding places.

Using only 1 tray, I would put your food on top of the bedding you have (Coir), then fill the whole tray in moist shredded paper, and not worry about them.

They will be fine.
Raf

Ok... so I should take out a bunch of food and bedding from the 2nd bin where it is? And put some in the first bin, even though it's full to the top w/ bedding?

I have NO food in the bedding bin where I put the worms, and it is full to the top so it is in contact with the upper bin. The COW instructions say to start adding food/paper to the 2nd bin if the 1st is full from the beginning w/ bedding, so that's what I did.

I was putting in food for the week, since I'll be gone. I'd rather them be well fed than hungry!

I checked on them, and they are migrating up into the food bin.

The worms are moving into the upper bin where the food is as you have observed.

The lower bin now has bedding only and will not be processed because all the worms are munching away upstairs.

You should only have one bin working now. It will take at least a couple of months before the first is finished at which time you add the second layer.

Marshall

I don't mean to seem dense, but... the instructions are wrong? I mean, there isn't room to put food in the 1st bin without compacting it a lot, and I thought that was bad.

Why is it bad to have them in 2 bins, one bedding and one food? I realize the bedding won't get processed quickly this way, but why is that important, as long as the food/paper is?

The instructions are telling you to add the second bin when the first one is full. They mean full of finished vermicompost, not full of bedding that you have just added.

It's your choice whether you follow the instructions or do it your way.

So - what's the difference between worm food that is putrid and worm food that is beginning to break down wo they can eat it?

I put food in today that I chopped in the Cuisinart (which I use more for the worms than for cooking these days) and had it sitting in a carton waiting for them to eat last week's feeding. The chopped stuff has some mold on it - is that OK or not OK for the worms?

BettyN

BettyN,

We were talking about 7 pounds of rotting food in a COW. I think that is too much food to add to a new bin at one time.

Mould is ok for worms. I have a slop jar that gets very mouldy.

Marshall

Ok, to clear up the confusion.

You start with one tray. You add the second tray when the first one is full. BUT, the fine print is, "after a few months". Because, just like a garden conmpost pile, the bedding and food shrink dramatically (as it is processed by the worms, loses water etc). You keep adding it, it keeps shrinking, add more, shrink again, etc etc.

A full can o worms tray of new beeding and some food (like you have at the moment) will shrink to maybe a 1cm (You just keep adding more until the "complete" level (thick black rich compost) is near the top of the tray, then you put the next tray on. SLowly the worms move up th the new tray and you have a tray full of compost and a few straggler worms.

Back to the "what to do now". I would recommend you remove some of the bedding from tray 1 and tip the food from tray 2 into the top of it.

When you get back from your trip away, you will see how much the compost has reduced.

Sloppy, mouldy and decayed food is fine. Fermenting food is not good in bulk.

If you leave it the way you have it everything will be ok, you will just find the stuff in tray 1 doesnt get composted, and your "active tray" will be the top (second) tray.

You will notice a few months from now that the worms are almost all in the top tray, and there is a good 1 inch layer of of rich black vermicompost in it, while the bottom tray still has uncomposted bedding. I suppose you can just slowly move the bedding from the bottom tray to the top tray if you want until its all in the top tray, then you remove the first tray, lesson learnt. But again, its not a big problem. By the way, if the worms have moved up into the food, then they seem to be saying that the amount you have is good and not to hot or putrid. If they are in it, they love it.

Dont worry too much though. It will take care of itself. Nothing you are doing is harmfull to the worms, its just not the most efficient way to use the system.

Cheer
Raphael

Raphael!!! That was AWESOME! (Wish I saw it before I left...)

Correction: I did not have 7 lbs of food in the bin. I had maybe 2-3 lbs of food in the bin which was filled to the top with paper/cardboard (which I did not count as food, but which I understood they could eat if they ran out of food.)

Status today, when I returned home: bedding bin had reduced and there are lots of castings evident. Most worms were in this bin, and fluffing showed nice cacoons! (that spelling looks off... oh, well...)

There were a bunch of worms in the top bin, too, munching away. There was still a little bit of recognizable food, and the paper quantity had been reduced a lot. I'd say maybe a 10th of what I put in was left, both food and paper. It seemed a bit too wet, so I'm leaving it open a bit and have added a bunch more paper.

All smelled good and earthy.

The bottom part where the spout is did contain some sludge and some dead worms. :( From what I've read, this is common with a new bin. It was nothing like mass fatalities, and there are sooooo many worms happily squirming in the other bins.

I think I will try to migrate the stuff from bin 2 back into bin one, a bit at a time, as I get how there's little point in having 2 active bins...

No worries, glad its all working out.

Raphael