I have 3 worm bins inside. There's two types of worms, earth movers and I think the other if I remember is composters. Earth movers are the night crawlers or any other worm that makes permanent burrows/homes. They make permanent burrows many feet deep and HATE them being disturbed. At night, they come to the surface looking for surface scraps to eat. They always end up at the hole they left from, they release a slime as they travel away looking for food, and can distinguish their trail from all others, and will follow it back to their individual burrow. Bins full of earth movers, everytime you disturb the bin to put in food they'll all come out trying to flee, and the person who wrote a book, known as the worm woman tried repeatedly to make them work and earth movers always died, unable to live in a worm bin environment. The other are the compost worms, red Wigglers, Eisena Fetida, whatever they don't live in perm burrows, don't mind being disturbed, have an unquentiable appetite but MUST live in organically rich environment like worm bins, manure piles, compost piles, etc. If you put them in the garden to be "set free" they usually die as they thrive in organic matter, not dirt.
I have 3 worm bins, I started one for my home and went online and purchased the Eisenia Fetida. I got mostly P. Excavatus worms instead which are like, the weeds of the worm industry. They mutliply 3x faster but try to leave your bins constantly, good for southern places but not north as they're a tropical earth moving worm. I complained and got my money back, and as I feared they died in winter when my basement temps dropped. I tried again to purchase E. Fetida from a place called
http://www.HappyDranch.com and they were all E. Fetida, if you're serious about it that's who I recommend from. You could also just go find a manure pile and fill a worm bin with it, you're sure to find E. Fetida in them.
From a vermicomposter... for bedding for them I was surprised natural stuff is not the best. Nothing beats cardboard like the brown cardboard or gray but not white all the way through. Rip the box and if the middle is gray (or light gray) or brown you're good (cereal boxes). If the middle is white avoid it (most toothpaste boxes). I've found paper bedding tends to form into solid balls. I send my cereal boxes, toilet paper & paper towel cores, and cleanex tissue boxes through my paper shredder and try to use that for bedding the most, along with any of my private documents I shred and some brown cardboard boxes I've ripped into strips. The next best material is newspaper, followed by laser or copy paper. I haven't had any luck with leaves (particularly oak), nor straw, especially sticks because they don't hold water like a sponge, and worms love moist bedding (but not too wet). The bins the bedding was just paper did not do as well as the ones with shredded cardboard mixed in as well. Weigh the stuff in a container when dry, and add 3x the amount of weight in water. Got 3 lbs of shredded paper & cardboard then soak 9 lbs of water in it. The bedding should be about 6"-8" deep before adding worms, the worms eat in only the top 6" or so, throw in a couple hand full of sand/dirt worms don't have teeth they grind their food in their gizzard and use the sand/dirt to help. One of the first mistakes I made was making the bedding 16" deep. As the bedding starts to lower from eating and you're having more difficulty completely burying the scraps then add more bedding, usually 2-3". Things I don't add are brocolli as it stinks to high hell, lettuce as I did that once and it got all slimy and covered with little fruit flies, banana peels you have to wash them as the peels can be covered with pesticide and cut them up in pieces with scissors. Grapes, pierce the skins with a fork first before adding (worms have no teeth), onions & garlic & citrus should be avoided but you can add small quantities in worm bins. But, those things usually release an acid the worms don't like and they'll try to move away from it. Egg shells are a requirement, they give your worms the nutrients required for them to lay eggs and the worms use them to help grind the food. But, they have to be in powder/granule form to be useful. I take my egg shells and leave them in the sun for a day to dry out. Then put them in a ziploc bag and use a roller on them repeatedly in all directions with a lot of force which turns them into powder. I then sprinkle the powdered eggshells on any food I add. Usually, the food you add makes up for any loss of water and you don't need to add anymore. But, on occasion check your bins anyway to make sure. I moved up to 3 bins because I didn't like seeing the company I work for throwing away so much coffee grounds and cardboard and I take all the grounds home and any small cardboard boxes if it's time for more bedding and rip it into strips and put it in the bins. In winter time, they slow down... A LOT (unless you have them in a heated area). In summer it usually takes me about 3 months to go through a bin and the worms are lively, in winter they're about 1/4th the speed and sustain heavy losses. Once spring comes they perk right back and population recovers. I find it pretty fascinating I can turn some of my waste and work waste into the richest organic fertilizer known to mankind. Worm waste is saturated in beneficial bacteria and microbes, it's also a light hormone that stimulates plants, and improves any soil added. But, it needs to be mixed in with regular dirt for biggest impact. Plants grown in just worm castings, or just dirt didn't fair as well as those mixed with both. By the way, you'd be surprised how heavy worm bins get. Each of my bins starts out about 40 lbs and I add 8-15 lbs/week. After 3 months each weighs in 75 - 100 lbs. Remember, when it comes time to harvest you have to carry them someplace and trust me you're better off with several small bins than trying to lug one large bin weighing a couple hundred lbs. Also, for bins what matters is surface area not depth. You want more length and width than height like a dresser drawer, not a deep but short container like a trash barrel. Mine are plastic storage containers I purchased from K-Mart for $4.99 each, I drilled holes for air.
