Hi Mike, Congratulations on your new bin! I will try to answer your questions based on my own experience, and I'm sure that others will add their own wisdom. First, I would be hesitant to put the worms into the sunlight - sunlight can hurt them and heat up the bin rapidly. They may be moving to the sides because the center is heating up past their comfort level. They should be just fine in your garage so long as they don't reach freezing levels. If you really want to bring them outside for a little warmth, keep them in the shade at all times. If your consistency is gooey, I would suggest two things: first, it may be the food processor is chopping up the food too small to allow for air flow. If I chop up my food, it is no smaller than one inch chunks. Most of the peelings and trimmings from food preparation are already small enough for the worms. When I started my first bin years ago, I went to a lot of trouble to process the food until I realized it really wasn't necessary, and decreased air flow and eventually made my bin smelly. White mites indicate that the bin has a lot of moisture in it. They won't hurt your worms, but the lack of airflow might. I would encourage you to put the food in as-is (not finely processed), and mix it with dry or barely moist bedding and the coffee grounds. Bigger chunks of food leave bigger air pockets. Dry bedding should absorb excess liquid and balance the moisture in the bin. I would encourage you to make sure that you are not overfeeding them. Two pounds of worms, at their absolute best, should consume a pound of food a day. You do not mention how long you've had the bin, but it can take a month or three to really get the microorganisms in the system going to the point that it can really process a full pound a day. Your worms will eventually multiply and eat through that two to four pounds of vegetable waste per day that you are producing, but right now it is too much for them. If the worms are getting more food than they can handle, it will start to rot, get gooey, and get compacted and decrease air flow, which compounds the moisture problem. When I first got worms, my goal was to feed them every scrap from my household in order to bring our green waste to zero. It was a really good goal, but it took several months before they were up to it. I have used a tray system but I found that my worms quickly outgrew it and I ended up using it in a manner that it was not intended, causing myself a lot of extra work. They can work really well, but in my experience cannot handle the amount of food that you are producing. Others on this forum may have other experience they can share with you. Here is a post of my vermi-tray experience, though it is probably not typical: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/verm/msg0816361714189.html If I were in your situation, I would do one of two things: Option 1 is to buy more worms to consume the waste my household currently produces, knowing that within a few months I will need to either find another source of food or start giving away worms. Option two is to be patient and add lots of bedding. Mix in a lot of dry bedding to balance out the moisture in the bin, and add your food scraps with enough bedding to keep the moisture balanced. I would be more inclined to add it in patches and pockets rather than in layers. Layers can decrease airflow and give the worms nowhere to go if the food heats up when it decomposes. In the mean time, throw your extra scraps in the compost heap or the freezer and know that the worms will have multiplied substantially within a few months and they will meet your household's scrap production. In order to help the worms eat the food faster, I like to mix in some of the existing compost with the food as I add it to the bin. (i.e. I make a pocket for the food that is larger than I need, dump in the food, some fresh bedding, and quickly toss it with my hands so that the food mixes with the bedding and a handful or so of the contents of the bin. Then I cover it with the contents of the bin.) I think this helps the microbes get into closer, faster contact with all the surfaces of the fresh food so that it can start decomposing and be available to the worms more quickly. Just a word of encouragement: your worms really will be eating up all of those scraps faster than you realize. I started with 2 pounds of worms and a single Vermihut in April of 2011. I now have 10 containers totaling almost 500 gallons and I'm starting to give away worms by the pound on a regular basis. I just built a new container that will hold approximately 80 cubic feet of worms and compost because my worms are quickly outgrowing their containers. I now collect from local restaurants to keep all my worms well-fed. I hope that this will be helpful to you, but please take what is useful to you and read through the forums. Most newbies have exactly this problem and there is a lot of information for you in questions already answered. Good luck to you, and let us know how it goes!

Yes, you can use what you get out of that bin in your garden. This is actually a great kind of worm farming since you didn't even have to introduce the worms so it isn't like you would be contaminating the local environment by accidentally releasing some imported worms when you put the castings around your garden (there are always some worm eggs mixed in.) Just so you know, compost happens. It is a natural process. The active management of contents and temperature is just people trying to make it faster. Those leaves would have done their best to break down even if you hand not put them in a bin, you just got it to happen faster. As far as variety of materials, you can put kitchen scraps in that bin (try to stick with the veggie type since meat, oil, and dairy can cause pests and nasty smells.) Also shredded junk mail, newspaper and ripped up cardboard can be added to that bin to cover any veggie scraps and keep the environment nice for the worms. Have fun!

Hey Equinox; Haven't been here in awhile. This darned internet, ever expanding - ever interesting; like the world's biggest library. Maybe if I'd just never learned to read, I would've been ok, Ah Well.. Yep, I'm one of those people who freezes and blenderizes. For those who don't know me, I have two large (16 Gal.) Rubbermaid-type plastic bins which I originally started in Nov. 2009 with EF's. Part of the problem, is that we produce a lot more waste than the worms can consume and even though the town where I now live has a city-wide organic waste recycling program, it just feels wrong to be tossing stuff that I know the worms (microbes) will enjoy. The freezing and thawing process really helps to break down cell structure, leaving a nice, soft mess. This then goes into my (not my wife's) food processor, to which I add composted rabbit poop, coffee grounds, powdered eggshells, etc. The resulting mash which usually tends to the wetter side, I mix with shredded cardboard and then feed on one side of the bin. It usually takes the microbes a week or so to start working on the food. Within two weeks the worms have migrated to the food, leaving the other side worm-free and making it easier to harvest the castings. As for air flow, I finally solved my problem. I drilled 1/2" holes all around the sides in the upper half of the bin. Sure, the worms could escape if they wanted to, but with ample moisture, plenty of food, good airflow and proper bedding; they just don't seem to want to leave. Of course when the weather is nasty, I'll always find a few gone exploring, but the majority seem to stay put. In the past I lined the inside of the bins with fine mosquito netting, hoping to keep out the fruit flies and fungus gnats while providing air flow through the netting, as well as keeping the worms from escaping and making it easier to harvest the castings (because all the castings are within the netting and not stuck to the walls of the bin). In reality it didn't quite work out that way. The flies and gnats got in regardless. I found the best thing is to hang sheets of yellow sticky fly paper above the bins and then to encourage the flies to join their friends at the big yellow picnic table. It usually works. When the mosquito netting got wet, it stopped the airflow rather than helped it, so that didn't work either. But here was the worst of it: when the worms hatched, they were so tiny that they could actually pass through the fine mesh of the mosquito netting into the space between the netting and the wall of the bin. Once there, they couldn't get back. Food particles and moisture would filter down through the netting and I always found worms there whenever I harvested out the main bin. Now, my bins are outside. I have a large porch/patio area, but no actual ground. The winter of 2011-2012 was particularly wet (in my area) and so I didn't really have a chance to harvest out the bins properly, until Mar.2012. In Dec. 2011 after about a week of constant rain, I had a major worm escape (though mostly from the worms living in that limbo place between the netting and the bin)and lost around 500 worms. After that experience, I tossed the mosquito netting and drilled large 1/2" holes all around. So far, even with heavy rains, they seem to stay put. Shaul

Zesting, If I remember my cooking terminology correctly. Is scraping the brightly colored glossy outside part of the Citrus peal off.. You will see the zest used on tops of pies or cakes as decoration or incorporated into certain foods, to add a citrus hint to deserts or foods.... but I could be wrong.. If so please correct me... I do agree ( if I have the zesting thing right) that it would help the worms eat it faster if that part was removed. The oil in the stuff after all is flammable. (bend an orange peel inward in front of a candle to squeeze the oil spray into the flame once to try it) That being said.... I would never add that many citrus (3 bushels) to my worm bin unless it was huge with lots of already happy worms. ( hey, I wouldn't add that much of anything to my bin unless it was bedding.) One thought... If you have your worms outside can you find enough space to dump the oranges and just cover them with leaves or some sort of mulch for several months? Just to let them break down for a while hopefully breaking down some of that oil... then slowly fold some of the mushy product into the bin at a rate they will eat. If you keep it covered would your wife let you get away with it? Kinda out of sight out of mind. The smell would be cut down too if you were diligent in keeping the pile covered. That might allow you to add it at a more reasonable rate for the worms. Hope that helps! :-)