Jay Crandall

Hey thanks guys! To clarify I certainly feed my worms more than just coffee grounds, I was just explaining how I add water to get the rest of the grounds out of the press and add moisture to the leaves because they do get dry. My bin is large lengthwise not depthwise, so it's good to hear that huge surface area is preferable. I wasn't aware they enjoyed melon so much - I've been avoiding citrus obviously and in turn denying them most fruits beyond banana peels so that's great news as we start to roll into melon/cantaloupe season. I keep my wormbin in my (finished and heated, but still probably in the low 60's) basement so as the temperatures outside start to rise this Spring they may start consuming a bit faster.

I was really only concerned because:
a) the wormbins the man I received my worms from and the ones at my university were composed of "black gold" predominately after this same time period, while mine is still a great deal of leaves

and

b) there are some small bugs living amongst my worms now, which I read can be due to them not consuming their food fast enough.

I appreciate the clarifications and advice guys! I just shredded and fed some celery leaves and banana peels to my lil' fellers a few minutes ago. If you have any pointers or concerns I should have regarding these small insects please do share.

Hello guys, I started my wormbin back in November with a pound of red wigglers. They are certainly troopers and have increased in numbers since then despite my rookie mistake of using leaves as the predominant bedding along with lesser amounts of paper towel/some shredded paper and cardboard.

My bin is large and leaves take awhile to break down so understandably there is still a great deal of leaves in the bin. However, they dry up every few weeks and I add water to my coffee grounds when I add them to keep the leaves moist. But I’m to the point where I want to start removing leaves and replacing them with shredded paper. It takes them so long to break these down that they can't even consume the food I give them in time - I now have small bugs also living amongst the worms.

Is taking out the dry leaves and replacing them a good idea, and is there any specific way I should go about doing it? I feel like I only want to remove dry, full leaves and keep the ones that have a bit of mold on them for microbial food purposes but I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions.