Thank you Cherene for creating this community and the invitation to join! I hope to learn many things and share my experience with the group. My vermicompost story so far... After doing months of research online, watching videos, reading articles/blogs, etc., I started a worm bin (20 gal tote) at the end of August of this year. About a week before I ordered worms, I made a batch of precompost successfully, based on Cherene's videos on YouTube. I only did one heat cycle for this initial batch. I ordered worms from a local farmer (about 600-1000) in IL so they weren't in shipping for too long. I placed them directly into the bin once I received them. I used my phone light to encourage them to get under the surface right away. I did not feed them any food scraps or anything for about a week, which might have been a mistake, but they all survived on the precompost bedding I made, thankfully. I kind of wanted to see if they would settle into the bedding first before I fed them anything. Once they settled, my first feeding was just some basic vegetable food scraps like tomatoes and bell pepper scraps. I froze them first, then added them, in small amounts, about a fist sized amount. I also dried eggshells and pulverized them in a blender to add some grit to the food scraps. They devoured the portion within 2 days. I made sure not to put all the food scraps in at once because I wasn't sure how long it would take them to finish them off. Within one month I noticed much more castings present in the bin and even some cocoons!!! I think doing the precompost really helped the worms settle in and feel comfortable enough to breed very quickly. My purposes for this bin is to just have a successful initial run and grow my population, while making the worms happy and healthy. Now when I take a peak, there are tons of baby worms in the feeding area every time I add new food!!! I will post in here with updates, including videos and photos, to share my experience. Thank you to those who read this :)

My “Hope” nursery bin is now 6 weeks old and I checked it for cocoons. Started with 66 mature worms and have 55 cocoons. Oh my! Excited!