how big/small should worm food for vermicompost bins be?

[rainbowgardener]

Incidentally, re worm bins. I just emptied mine to get the worm castings. Since I don't have one of the fancy ones with different chambers, I just took all the stuff off the top, bedding, food, worms and all and dumped it into a big wastebasket, down to the layer where everything was solid.

Dug all that out, put some fresh bedding in the bin, dumped all the rest back in and covered with more fresh bedding (I.e. fall leaves). Turns out it was a good thing to do. All the stuff at the bottom being so packed down was pretty soggy-wet and getting a bit anaerobic/ fermenty. So now I have a bunch of worm castings and the worm bin is all nice and fresh and aerated. Happy worms!

[imafan26]

Chopping and freezing the veggies first helps them to decompose faster. I'm lazy I just throw in the whole leaves and banana peels. When I get there the next week everything is usually gone except for the hard stems. That I fish out and could be tossed into a compost pile. Sometimes, I don't have enough kitchen scraps so I cut off the outer leaves of my kale and swiss chard and give them that instead. When there are a lot of worms you can even watch them pushing and dragging the pieces down.

[ruggr10]

Freezing is a big help. It bursts the cell walls of veggies and that aids in the rotting of the plant. I also tend to throw everything (after thawing) into a blender. It's kind of yucky but my 3 year old enjoys watching and dumping it into the worm bin. This has dramatically increased how quickly the worms break down the food.

[sepeters]

Why would you need to cook potato peels for worm food?

The potato peels have a tendency to sprout and begin growing in my bin. I don't peel my potatoes, but the other half does and I usually don't know they're in there until I see something growing. They're easy to remove and don't seem to harm anhything, but I'm lazy and don't like weeding my compost... I'm sure destroying the cell wall would keep it from growing and make it easier for the worms to eat.
@ worms with teeth! Would be nice!

Good tip on the bone meal, Bobberman! I don't eat eggs or have a good way to grind them, so this will be perfect for my situation!

[rainbowgardener]

I'm just tacking this on here as a place to put it, since it's about our most recent worm bin thread.

I just moved my worm bin outside. We have a few more nights of below freezing. I'm hoping that will sterilize it a bit, without killing all the worms, which have a lot of bedding around them. It was getting a bit too full of life to keep indoors: slugs and a whole bunch of little flies (about half the size of house flies, very triangular wing shape). I guess they come in with the fall leaves I was using for bedding. Anyway, it wasn't seeming like an indoor thing any more.