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 :)

@Vanessa L here is a video of my mini worm tower as u asked for

This bin is getting pretty casting heavy! Probably you g to start the dry down process here pretty soon so I can sift and then add in some fresh bedding. Check how much food is left, check the moisture, check the smell, and see if those worms look happy and fat! Fluff it up and introduce oxygen back on every week or two. Don’t feed more until the food is almost gone.

***Another Update*** After pivoting to Red Wigglers for Bigger Ben and making some solid steel caster brackets for it, its was too tall for me to reach to the center so...... Bigger Ben is now slightly smaller or shorter. The depth now is only 11 inches and the side rails are slightly wider to allow for extra space for tools, food and such. This has been a big project but lots of fun. Bigger Ben now has his 1st inhabitants, 5,000 red wigglers from Scott @ hungry worms plus the starter kit worms from @Cherene Packard and cocoon bedding from @Rick Redding A few small touch ups to pull the pond liner tight, cut it kinda neatly, fasten it around the edges and it will be done!!! New pic is in the comments!! ***UPDATE*** Bigger Ben is complete, aside from bedding and worms. 8'L x 42"W x 17"D the future home to many red wigglers and loads of premium castings. Starting him off with 5,000+ squirmies and about 25 gallons of precompost to get the breeding rolling!!! Thats Little Ben sitting alongside which houses all my ANCs. 😁🪱💩😁 ***Update*** Progress on Bigger Ben and change of plans. Pictured is this weeks progress on Bigger Ben. Caster wheels installed, floor joists and flooring put down. Hopefully get the side and end walls installed tomorrow and the pond liner in this weekend. The change of plan is that it will be a red wiggler bin. Little Ben has become home to my ANCs who seem to be very happy in there after a few days. Coming soon to a wormery near you. An even bigger worm bin, "Bigger Ben". This is the initial frame work for a 3 1/2' x 8' x 18" ANC bin. 3/4" plywood will make the walls and floor which will be on 16 inch centers. It will be lined with pond liner and this time I'm gonna cut it to size and seal the seams with a pond/fish safe sealant and will also be installing caster wheels rated for up to 4,400 lb making fully mobile as well. The max capacity for ANCs is much different than red wiggs and blues. They top off at about 3 lbs per sq ft and only about 300-400 per lb which is a max capacity when full of about 35,000 worms. We shall see 😁🪱💩😁

Hi all! Sorry I've been MIA since Sep as work is kicking my behind 😆 However, I am back with a question I am thinking of starting a worm farm with my students as part of our science unit. However, I have two problems: 1) I need to make it small as I don't have a lot of space. 2) I also don't have a lot of worms anyway as I only bought 1/4 lb for my farm. Unfortunately I cannot buy more, as we were not given any budget to buy anything outside of Staples, and last I checked, Staples did not sell worms 😂 I've also already spent over $300 of my own money for my classroom so I would prefer not to spend more. I don't mind taking some worms out of my personal farm for my students but I also don't want to remove too many worms and slow its progress. SOO my questions are: What size bin would you recommend for a classroom? And what would be the minimum number of worms that I would need in order for our bin to be able to see progress or at least some kind of movement within one or two months? Worst case, I just don't do a worm farm and maybe wait until my worm farm is bigger to do it with a different class in the future. Thank you experts!!!