If it makes you feel good do it! but unless you are trying to force feed them as much as you can I don't see any reason to gind the food. I am sure that they can process it faster that way but I don't think it is necessery? The biggest thing is to make sure that they eat all food placed in the bin before it has time to turn acidic and mess up the bed.

depends on the "grinding" - what's most useful is just making sure everything is chopped into smallish pieces so you don't have say, orange peel halves or whole potatoes or carrots, etc - bigger pieces of cooked stuff go faster - raw it does help to make'em smaller, but they don't hafta be 'blenderized'

weighing isn't too big a deal, as said, just watch and add some more when the last batch looks fairly decomposed - worms eat stuff that's already started decomposing, or actually the microbial life that's causing the decomposition - the only danger with feeding a lot of food waste is it will heat up as it starts getting microbially active

if you're tending a compost pile already, you could save the hassle of feeding by composting all the food waste, and after it's decomposed enough that it's no longer recognizeable, shovel that part-finished compost over to the worm bin - what I do and they love it

Bill

OK

- I can't seem to find much info on the amount of castings/compost that can be harvested every three moonths from each bin (l lb of worms each) -

I asked a similar question on the Garden Forums site (they have a vermiculture forum as well) concerning the Can O Worms bin. From what I have gathered so far when in full swing it produces around 5 gallons of vermicompost per tray and a tray takes 2-3 months to be 'done'.

Full swing means the worm population has increased to it's ideal levels. From there the amount produced is dependant upon surface area of the bin. The Can O Worms is 20" in diameter per tray. Surface area influences the maximum population of worms so a smaller bin would produce a smaller amount when finished and a larger bin, more.

LOL username "I asked a similar question on the Garden Forums site (they have a vermiculture forum as well)"
are we there yet? :)

yes, Heidi, you have to remember the reason redworms make such good processors is they breed like crazy - you may have started with 1 lb, but in a very short time you'll have many pounds - watch the weights you add with respect to how fast the food disappears, and work yer math using the fact that roughly 1# of worms can consume roughly 1/2# of food daily - when you find your additions of 1# disappearing in about 24 hours, you know you have at least 2# of worms!

also the reason they can process that lumpy stuff is what they really do is "slurp" the decomposing surface, along with the bacteria causing decomposition, which is really their primary food source

Bill