Looking at my post, I’m not sure why the little guy with sunglasses is there. I started with 12 adult worms with visible clitellium in the ceramic mini-bin and more worms in the plastic container.

Very interesting indeed to see how they fared.

I put some leaves in my bins recently and they were gone in no time!! I have read that if there are leaves, they prefer them to food, so they will leave the food alone. I have a little grocery bag full of leaves to feed them again. One thing I’m afraid of is incorporating undesirables in the bins hitch-hiking on the leaves, so I’m hesitant on adding a lot.

Has anyone seen pill bugs, earwigs etc that might be on the leaves, in their bins?

Turning the contents of your bin periodically can be helpful, but I probably wouldn’t recommend doing it on a regular basis (as in daily) since the worms will likely do a better job if relatively left undisturbed. I certainly dig around in my systems with a hand fork quite regularly – but not so much for the purpose of aerating the system, but rather to see what’s going on with my little wiggly friends.
🙂

Fall leaves are awesome. Not great as a sole ‘bedding’ material since not absorbent, but great as a secondary bedding and food source as long as they don’t dry out on you.

Better late than never, I guess!
Thanks for sharing!
8)

These mini-bins were started in July with just a few worms in each. The ceramic jar had a plastic coffee can lid with holes laid on the top. The clear see-through container had holes punched around the container, near the top.
They were both bedded with shredded paper. I fed them sparingly and added cross-cut paper when needed.

Last week I emptied them out to see how they fared. They had lots of worms! One had 53 (started with 8) and the other had even more. I stopped counting after a while.

So small bins would work, BUT there is no room for error. Obviously a decent-sized Rubbermaid container is best so they can move away from any danger. This was done, just for kicks and giggles.

My clear bin was done solely to see if they really disliked light as we are led to believe. I could see them at the edges, but I put lots of shredded paper in to keep it dark.

I’m wondering if I might have too much bedding. My bin is only a month or so along and other than adding food to the top and obessively peeking in on my brood, I haven’t dug into the depths of it. Last night when I checked things out below the surface, I found the layers of shredded newpaper I’d use to set my bin up had become a thick, matted strata. I’ve also not had any liquid drainage at all. In fact I’ve only had a spare lid sitting under the worm bin and it’s remained bone-dry. I’ve sprayed the bin down a couple of times, but I’m thinking I might have added too much bedding in my set up and it dutifully absorbed any and all moisture. Plus I went a little crazy with my drill and made quite a few more holes in my bin than your video recommends, so there’s definitely plenty of aeration going on in there.

So now I’m wondering if I can just break up the matted sections, keep adding kitchen scraps, but hold off on adding more bedding? Do I need to stir my bin up periodically, or do worms prefer to be left undisturbed?

Also, I’d really like to add some fall leaves with the next feeding. Would this exacerbate the problem?