Petrock, I'm taking a chance and adding mine, too. Some of my problem is not knowing forum etiquette, having started at it at a ripe old age and no one around to offer any help. I am thinking I sometimes put others "off" unintentionally, or maybe I just don't ask the right questions, who knows? I'm not too old to learn, but still need a bit of time to figure it out. Your points are all good, and I thank you for the input, all and any of which I appreciate, from anyone. The bin is not only inside, but in my kitchen over in a corner, and I get a kick out of people not even knowing it's there if I don't tell them. I wasn't concerned about the worms, really, and yes, it was condensation, but a really LOT of it, and for the first time since it was set up in late October, I had a puddle in the bottom. I keep a somewhat thick layer of newspaper over the bedding in the top tray, and it was not only very damp, it was solidly covered with mites. Again, I wasn't concerned about the worms, but wanted to know what had the bin out of balance. I am working really hard at learning how NOT to succumb to new worm bin syndrome! I'm at the six month point, and want it to keep going as well as it has been. You are correct that it was too much to add a filter full a day (not the paper remember? reusable basket), but more because I was just dumping it in and not making sure I was covering it with bedding than because of the amount of UCG, which Bob made clear. It went straight from a closed drip coffee maker, and was full of water. It was room temp, having sat all day, but still not the best way to add them. Overfeeding isn't the problem, or at least I don't think it is. I started slow and just added more as the herd multiplied. I think I started with either 1000 or 1 lb of worms in one tray, don't really remember, but it wasn't many compared to the bedding the instructions told me to add. Now I have worms in, it seems, pretty much every square inch of the middle tray, still some but not many in the bottom tray full of castings, and an increasing number in the top tray, where I feed and added the UCG. I don't add food if there is anything recognizable left over. I run about a week ahead, with worm food going in a bag in the freezer for a week, then being left in a wire strainer in the sink for half a day or so, getting stirred now and then, before being added to the bin. When I take a bag out of the freezer, I start another one for the next week. It used to go through my blender, but that got to be a lot of trouble, so now I just chop it small when I'm all done cutting and prepping for eats the next week for me and hubby, and toss it in the bag. The bag starts out skinny and is fatter by the end of the week. I try to use common sense how much of it to add without overfeeding. As in, how much did they eat of the last batch? I don't know where you got your worm factory from, and I don't even presume to know enough to make recommendations, but I do feel okay giving a suggestion. Toss the directions that came with the factory and listen to what you get here. I realize that this might label me as a lurker, but I've read every single post made in the last however long, and some others, and there is a wealth of knowledge and experience here that I really wish I had found before I spent as much $$ as I did. I am not saying the worm factory is bad and mine is doing well, but I know now I could have done (and will do in the future) better for less. I do believe it's called live and learn. :) I'm sorry. I just reread this and it really sounds like preaching, doesn't it? I don't mean it that way. I just started saying what I thought and it's what came out. I hope I didn't offend anyone. Lynn

Do coffee grounds repel pests?- I do not know, the caffeine and smell may repel something. A camel non-filter cigarette has been used to de-worm goats because the nicotine does kill intestinal parasites, but I have not heard anything about caffeine or coffee. Earth worms do love grinds mixed into the soil, but I do not see them in any of my piles of straight grinds. If the flavor of the ammendment carried thru to the taste of the fruit, my tomatoes would taste like the underside of a horses tail!!

Correction: I use HALF a cup of beans to grind coffee for 3 cups of coffee, not a whole cup of beans. I would prefer a glass container for the ground coffee, but don't find the plastic on in the Cuisinart a big problem so far. The plastic container for the whole beans is of no consequence to me. It's grinding evenly, and a setting just south of "Medium" grinds fine enough for me. The roar is a waker-upper. Think of an old cartoon where a character has upset a hive -- only *louder*. The most important feature of any drip coffee maker is its' ability to heat the water to the right temperature and keep it there to the finish. You also need good water. Our tap water is great, but I still draw from the filtered water dispenser in our refridgerator door. I only want coffee brewed NOW, not an hour later, and not 'kept hot' on a hot plate. My old Krups drips into a pre-heated thermos carafe that I can then seal tight. I don't find that feature on any 'grind and brew' makers. (Some have thermos carafes, but they don't seal.) We would probably be good candidates for the single cup capsules, but I'm too cheap to pay more for the maker or the capsules!

Agree that growing corn in this manner isn't worth the effort and has a low rate of success. But if you want to do it then you need to understand the nitrogen needs of corn. It needs a lot of it, in consistent amounts, and are normally applied at stages of growth to trigger changes in the plant. Plus coffee grounds are a low-dose source of usable nitrogen and dependent on an active soil food web to covert what nitrogen they do contain into a form usable by plants. The same thing applies to using compost in containers. That active soil food web does not exist in a container. Container growing of any crop has its own set of guidelines for what can be used to fill the container and when and how they must be fed. They are quite different from gardening in the ground. The color of the container itself is only a very minor issue. So for best odds of success, use a high quality soil-less potting mix (not soil) to fill the container and provide regular supplements of a high nitrogen liquid fertilizer at at least 3 stages - when the plants have their first set of true leaves, when the plants are 12-18" tall, and again when they are 3' tall. Also suggest some reading about this question over on the Container Gardening forum here. Dave