I find that my red worms who live outside do really well, so long as the soil is kept moist and they are fed often with vegetable/fruit trimmings. I often will add some partially composted leaves from my compost bin. Although, I find that they do well without much attention in my raised beds that have lots of organic compost, I like to keep one 4ft square bed that is shaded and kept covered with cardboard to add my veggie/fruit trimmings/composted leaves. I go clockwise around the bed to add food and to remove the vermicompost as needed to use in my containers/other beds. There are so many worms in the bed that is necessary to spread the vermicompost out to let it dry out and get the worms to move back to a moister section. Try to use unchlorinated water to moisten the rest of the bed or some that has sat out for 24hrs so that the chlorine has mostly evaporated. Red worms will eat the bacteria from the decaying foods, and I never have a problem with offensive odors ....actually, the compost in this bed smells really good and the plants seem to really thrive on it. I agree that getting these worms from someone in your area may be better as they will have adapted to your local weather conditions. I live in a desert area that has temps from the 20's to the 110's and they have survived many years outside this way.

How exactly do you figure seaweed or fish emulsion isn't organic? ;) And no, I wouldn't cut up your old sushi seaweed sheets (really biting my tongue on that one because it's seriously cracking me up, I find it pretty adorable). Whether or not your seedlings need more fertilizer than provided by the worm castings is really a pretty complex question, depending on what else is in the soil, what type of plants they are, how old they are, and how fast you want them to grow before you can plant out in your zone. Myself, I don't bother too much with extra ferts unless I need to stimulate growth or the plant is a heavy feeding variety, but when I do, I use a very diluted fish emulsion and only on mature seedlings (several sets of true leaves). It sounds to me like you've got the seedlings in some type of soil, ie not sterile seed starting mix that has no nutrients at all, so they're probably fine as is unless you have a reason to think they need more ferts.

I think Ron's got the right idea, esp if your VC is really wet. 2 points. There has to be a lot of light on the top tray, and the babies take a lot longer to move than the adults. If you've got LOTS of babies, you may only be able to scrape off a thin layer of compost each time you take some. Fluff it up every once in a while to encourage drying and allow the noxious sunlight to get a little lower down in to the tray and hurry the worms along. One woman did this and put her 'finished' tray on top of a working tray. The next morning, she had more worms than ever in her 'finished' tray. The worms had moved up. To avoid that, have the tray just below the finished tray have only bedding and food, no (or few) worms. It needs to be a place the worms are willing to go to, but not have lots of worms that will also want to come back up. As the amount of VC on the top gets thinner and thinner, the worms won't have much choice but to go down. You'll never get all of the babies out. The only way I know of to get most of them out is let the finished, 'worm free' VC to sit for a month or three. This allows the cocoons to hatch (is that the right word?) and the babies to grow to a size that's more reasonable to pick out without having any adults laying more cocoons in the mean time. Then you can either try the light method again or put a slice of melon rind on the top of the VC, wait until they congregate there, and scoop of that portion of VC with the worms. They need to be big enough to be able to move effectively. Just don't wait so long that they become sexually mature and start depositing more cocoons. According to the experts, it can take 30-75 days for the babies to emerge from the cocoons and 53-76 days for the worms to become sexually mature after they emerge. Many of your cocoons will take a lot less than the 30 days to hatch as they were deposited a while ago.

castings are a soil amendment that will keep the vital bacterial population happy .... Miracle Grow is a chemical stew that will eliminate the bacterial population ... commonly castings are added to garden soil in small amounts near individual plants, some folks do add them to potted plants, usually by scratching a small amount into the surface sounds like by "juice" you mean leachate, the excess liquid draining from the bin and taking some of the nutrients with it ... it's best used to add back to the bin when it's tending to be dry, it's NOT "tea" the pH of finished castings, like any type of compost will tend to be perfect for plants, very near neutral or very slightly acidic, which is what the bacteria prefer Bill