Traditional compost makes great worm food. If you collect your fallen leaves now, in the spring they will make great bedding for your worms. If you can find a nitrogen source to add to the leaves, that will make it even better.

You don't want to use compost while it is hot, or could get hot, but if it past the heating stage, the worms will love it.

Leaves + kitchen waste should be good. As an experiment I filled an empty tray in my worm factory completely with fresh leaves (had to trim some branches from a crab apple tree this summer) and immature crab apples. This tray was on top of 2 others that were a safe environment in case the worms needed to escape this one. It heated up to about 90 or 92 but not much hotter than that. After about 3 weeks there were very few leaf pieces left, mostly the stems (petioles for any horticulturists out there) were left by that time. The little immature crab apples still were hard and looked fresh off the tree. I had to slice them all in half before they started to decompose. Not sure if the moist environment prevented them from "dying" but the knife did a good job of that.

I started my first bin with shredded newspaper and cardboard a trowel of fine sand and a bite of old fruit scraps. They did OK Not great. The next bin I put in 3 scopes of compost to cover the bottom . The compost I used was shredded tree branches aged in pile about 3 months and past heating It was a much better bedding They started to eat the first day. Now I cover with a bed of leaves and don't use paper products just compost garbage and leaves.

Curt:-) Lets all try to be a little greener.

I agree, if you have some compost, why not use it - I'm sure that is the best way to "kick-start" a new worm farm. A couple of handfulls of fresh vermicompost if available from an existing bin (from a friend?)would be even better as the microbes in the worm compost would be up and ready to take on the new food. I wonder if legumes such a sweetpea or bean plants, could provide the nitrogen.

Here is a link that might be useful: Microbes role in Vermiculture

I frequently add a few handfuls of compost to a new bin. I seems to minimize roaming during the first few days. I also throw some casting on top of the newspaper for the same effect.

My kids wanted to start keeping their own worm bins. I started them off with a layer of dried leaves, some cut up pieces of Jack-O-Lantern and some VC from my worm bins + EF worms. I started my last bin this way and I think the best part of starting a new bin with a decent amount of VC and worms from an existing bin is that there is some bedding that they are used to that they can escape into while the other food and bedding gets up to speed. 3 days now and my boys have not had issues with escapees or wanderers so far.

After a couple of months, I sift compost with an old cat litter sifter to get the smallest stuff for the garden and flower beds. Makes a very nice, uniform mulch. The larger material goes in big 20 gallon container to be used as worm bedding for the multiple worm bins. I figure it is much better to recycle paper than to use it as worm bedding unless it's phone books. They are at the end of their recycle life, I've been told. Of course, if you don't have compost available, then you do what you must. I must say, though, that using compost for bedding requires a sooner harvest. I'm also pretty certain the worms multiply much faster in the compost bedding.