Hi Pineviewplanter,
Sweet peppers are great to feed your guys. Stay away from onions, citrus, anything salty, and chemically treated anything, such as grass clippings.

I wouldn't feed them hot peppers till they are well-established and only a bit to see if they like it.
Mine ate my leftover pasta in a day or 2.

Don't overload the bin with food. Depending on how many worms you got, put about 1 cup of decomposing food in there, and check it in 2 days to see if it's gone. Then add another cup. If it's not gone, don't add any more food till it is.

Sherry

Well, I unwrapped my shipment of worms. There were supposed to be a minimum of 1000 worms, but upon checking, I would estimate that there are closer to 200-300 worms, tops. (So much for buying worms on Ebay !!) ( I do hope to sell some of my colony once established, on Ebay though, but will make sure I ship more than I advertise !!!) Now my worm box is 4' x 2' by 18" high. I am disappointed in my shipment, but really cannot afford to spend another $30 for more worms. GRRR I just will have to hope these little few worms will fall in love and procreate like bunnies. I have lots of damp corrugated paper in the bottom along with the shredded newspaper, and the composted cow poop. Do you think that will be enough for them to munch on or should I add a nice veggie slushie that I made today from lettuce leaves, corn husks, mushrooms, and a couple of mushy tomatoes. I have about 2 quarts of veggie slushie, but can always put in directly in my cottage garden. I have been digging a hole and putting my cast off veggie matter in there for a while now and have a pretty nice colony of indigenous Tennessee wigglers in there. They love my offerings.. lol..

PVP

What a shame PVP. I would write to the seller and express your displeasure with his shipment. Beyond that, I'm thinking you should put a board of something to divide your bin in half. That way the worms won't get "lost" in the whole bin. When they populate, you can remove the barrier and let them have the whole thing. PLUS, it'll be easy to harvest....just feed in the empty side, remove the barrier and the worms should migrate, leaving the castings behind.

The veggie slush sounds good to get them going in the beginning, but it isn't necessary as on ongoing basis.
Is your bin outside?

Sherry

One thing I have found with my bin is that seeds pass through it without being "digested" by the worms. So - If you add the seeds from that pepper, you will end up with seeds in you finished vermicompost. And they DO sprout very well in that! I try not to put any seeds (tomato, peppers, cantalope, etc.) in my bin.

I got back home from church, and hubby made me a partition for the new box... I carefully moved the whole thing over to about a third of the box... so they should be nice and friendly in there.. I am going on a search for another lb. of red wigglers... this time hopefully I will get a good batch... keep yer fingers crossed..
Any recommendations anyone??

Thanks,
PVP

My worms went through the meat of bell peppers very quickly. The stems took a little longer, but not much. I just chucked the entire top of the pepper in the bin, no pulverizing or anything else.

I also throw in onions, a couple of oranges that were going bad, and pretty much anything else that used to be alive. I don't put in highly salty things, mostly because I don't eat them, but partially due to hearing it's bad for worms. I'm going to try my first chicken leg next week or so, and see what happens with that.

Depending on how long you want to wait until it's all broken down, you can put in anything. I'm in no hurry, and have a rather large bin, so I'm not concerned about citrus taking it's sweet time. If I go to harvest, and it's not entirely broken down, I'll toss it back in the bin.

If something starts growing from the seeds, I'll pull it out, chop it up, and toss it back in. I don't have a compost bin, yet, so I've put weeds in the bin. I chop them up, bury them, and they get eaten. If something starts to grow, I'll do the above. Once I make my compost bin, I'll throw my weeds in there.

I have my bin in the garage, and the worms are increasing rather quickly. I toss a frozen water bottle on the top of it on hot days, and they do fine. I haven't had them over the winter yet, but I don't anticipate any problems.

Worming is very easy, as long as you don't give them too much moisture. For that matter, my worms were still multiplying and eating when my first bin was too wet, but it stunk to high hell.

Actually, you don't need to purchase any additional worms, PVP.
Two reasons:
First, the worms you already have will reproduce quickly if you provide them with congenial accommodations. I've read they can double in population every three months, although it is beyond me how anyone would do such a headcount to find out.
Second, you already have some worms in your outdoor compost pit which are probably the right kind to live in a worm bin. Lots of people just get worms for vermicomposting from a handy manure pile. You have to get the kind (Epigeic)which lives in organic matter, not the kind which burrows down in the earth. There are several types which can do the job. Apparently you have some of them already. Bring some of them in and put them in your bin!
Good luck.
And be patient!
mbetts

Do, keep the bin as dry as a well wrung out sponge, it is fine if the top layer of bedding is dry.

Do, feed only small amounts when the previous feed is all gone at least for the first 4-6 months or so.

Do, be patient.

Do, try new foods for them in moderation in case something turns out to be bad for them.

I expect that with the manure in there, you won't need to feed much for quite a while. Corrugated cardboard is great worm bedding that also has food value to them and helps keep paper bedding from getting so compacted. Dividing up the bed into a smaller size till your population grows is a very good idea. I've heard that a sprinkle of corn meal is a great treat for them that can help get them breeding.

We pulverize egg shells in an old coffee grinder and sprinkle them in the worm bin to provide calcium and grit. Otherwise we don't pre process the food for the worms other than to cut it into pieces that will fit in the plastic coffee can on the counter where we put worm food till we take it out to the worms. We usually avoid putting onions, citrus, and too many tomatoes into the worm bin since they arn't supposed to be very into those things but we do have a very big regular compost bin. I have noticed that when we do put tomatoes into our worm bin, we get lots of Black Soldier Fly larva gathering in the wet acidic environs of the rotting tomato. We are in Florida though and BSF larva are pretty common in bins here. We are even thinking of making a special BSF larva bin that will self harvest to feed the fish. BSF larva are fine with hot compost conditions, acidic conditions, overly wet putrid conditions that would all send the worms away.
But that is all beside the point, sounds like you are doing well so far.

Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx