Things that have changed in the way I've managed the bin:
- I am much more casual about the amount of food and frequency of feeding. They work their way through everything in their own time anyway. I ended up not feeding them "new" food for nearly a month and I didn't find a decrease in the numbers of worms, or any worm carcasses nor did I have any worms trying to escape the bin.
- I ALWAYS freeze their food (my scraps) for at least 24 hours and thaw it thoroughly before I give it to them. I got a bit cavalier last summer and started tossing food to them as soon as I was done with it. Unfortunately that corresponded with a subscription to an organic food delivery service which gave us fruit flies! NOT happy to find flies clinging to the lid, maggots in the compost and pupae stuck various places. I ended up taking the whole thing out side. Salvaging all the worms, rinsing them off, and starting fresh - putting the fruit-fly-infested compost in my outside yard waste bin. I'm sure the worms were wondering why the sudden flood/swimming lesson!
- I'm just doing one tray at a time - it was too heavy for me to manage with two trays.
- I'm using shredded paper to keep the bin a bit dryer than before, so I don't get worms drowning in lechate.
- I'm rinsing and drying eggshells and then crushing them as finely as possible before adding them to the bin. They don't break down appreciably in the time it takes everything else to break down and actually become a bit of a hazard when it comes time to sort through and recover the worms at harvest time. A couple of worms accidently got cut by the sharp edges and I accidently cut a hole in my glove and underlying skin! Having said that, they seem to like a few 'whole' egg shell halves - they were curling up together in them.
