If you think about the size of worms, 150 worms aren't that many, really.

""dumped a load of coffee grounds"". How much is that in terms of tablespoon? The bad smell, aside from too much kitchen/food scraps might also be the smell of dead worms. If you can pick out the visible worms, I would set up a mini worm bin using a small container, add damp shredded newspaper and maybe a handful of the stuff from your old bin in a corner, where the worms are not forced to confront it but safely approached that spot at their pace. There might be cocoons in your old container which might hatch and given time and NO additional scraps, the baby worms will survive, say, in 2 months or so. BTW,. what species are they? By that time, the bad condition in your "old" bin should have corrected itself (I hope) and you can take your worm farming from there, combining the two "bins". Just leave that first bin alone for the next 2 months; only make sure it doesn't dry out. DO NOT soak it, just sprinkle.

And remember to never, never dump A LOAD of coffee grounds unless you have an open worm farm and thousands (or tens of thousands or up) of worms to handle that kind of load. UCG generates heat.

The 150 worms did indeed come with the wormery! How much stuff would you say I should remove? I tried to mix things together yesterday but there's probably too much matter in the thing overall. It's one of those wormeries with layers - do you think I could put another layer on top and put some clean coir in it so that the remaining worms would at least have somewhere to climb to?

I'm worried that they may not have had much chance to lay eggs, as it was pretty cold until I brought them into the house last week and I understand they don't tend to reproduce unless it's warm enough. (They're tiger worms/'red wrigglers') I may get some more, but maybe I'll wait two months for the wormery to be habitable again. Or should I just start again and dump what I have on the regular compost heap?

I feel really bad about having accidentally mistreated them, poor things. I definitely won't be making the same mistakes again - I didn't understand how easy it was to overfeed them, or that they wouldn't breed until it warmed up.

Yes 150 worms is too small a herd to start with. Most people dont start with less than 1000= 1 lb of worms , not sure how that sizes up to UK measures. However many worms you have you need to go slow till you know they are getting rid of the food you give them. Might help you to learn more about the bedding mix before proceeding with worming.

Okay, so what's the verdict - do I try to leave the bin alone, do I dump it and start agin with more worms, do I try to rescue the surviving worms by putting them either in a separate bin or giving them a different layer to crawl to? I'm really unsure.

I do understand about not overfeeding! I will not do it again!

This is the wormery I have (although I didn't pay that price - it was heavily subsidised by my local council) They send out a pack of approximately 150 worms with it as standard. And they say that in about 3-4 weeks they should be able to deal with all the waste from a 4 person family! There's only one of me, so you can see where I went a bit wrong and thought that underfeeding would be more of a risk. I am now Enlightened however, no need to keep telling me how wrong I was ;)

I'm sorry to tell you but the wormery you have got will not cope with a family of 4s waste (even after 4 weeks) I have the same model and also awormcity 125 litre which I've had for a few years. The wormcity is massive in comparison and just about copes with our 4 member family.

The smaller one we use for dog poo

150 worms as stated previously is too little to start with.

I would do the following

1) remove the rotting / smelly food. If the conditions aren't right any worms you purchase will just leave.

Hopefully you will be left with the original bedding supplied by with the wormery. If you do .....

2) add some shredded cardboard and fluff up the mixture to get air. Keep doing this until it no longer smells.

3) Any worms that have survived will carry on as before. Purchase some more worms 500g

4) add food slowly. It needs to break down before the worms can consume it. Make sure you add a layer of newspaper on top of the food.

It can be fixed. Just don't expect it to compost all your waste. it won't

That picture looks pretty much identical to the Worm Factory in size and design, although I think it's a slightly different brand. It is very irresponsible of the public agency that provided it to give you only 150 worms and tell you it'd be ready to handle a household's waste in a few weeks! That is so outrageously inadequate! You need 1000 worms to properly start 1 tray of that type of bin.

You *could* start with 150 worms in a bin that size and eventually get it fully populated - if you were willing to feed it a very, very, VERY small amount of food every few weeks or so, very gradually increasing for...maybe 18-20 months?

And even then the waste of a household of 4 people would almost certainly be too much for it. I am a household of 1 who eats a lot of fruit & veg, and I have a Worm Factory that just about handles everything with four trays completely populated (it came with three and I bought and added a fourth). At full capacity, you would expect each tray to have about 1500-2000 worms in it.

At this point, if I were you, I would try fluffing the bin contents even more and airing out aggressively, without letting the contents dry up all the way. I would pick out any visible chunks of rotting food but leave the original bedding. The coffee grounds can't be removed at this point but they should not cause further harm if they are mixed into plenty of additional fluffy bedding.

You said you're adding cardboard, but not whether you're adding it in big chunks or fine shreds. Fine shreds are better if you can manage them - either paper or cardboard - to add a lot more air pockets throughout the material. You want things as fluffy as you can to soak up excess moisture. Finely shredded newspaper, torn up paper towels, etc.

If you have some peat on hand that would be good to add. (Normally I don't advocate using peat as worm bedding - it's a waste of resources and shredded paper is perfectly good - but in an emergency peat might help, as it is extra-absorbent.)

Make sure that any drainage that is running off into the bottom chamber is draining OUT of the spigot and not sitting there as a stinky pond. (I put extra dry bedding into the bottom drainage area to absorb extra moisture.)

I'm hopeful that you still have a few live worms in there and that they'll hang on. If you can get more worms, try to do so, but in the meantime just keep things aerated and moderately moist. The bad smell should dissipate with airing. Moving the surviving worms to a new, smaller bin is also an option, but that would mean you'd have to find them all and pick them out. If there are worms still alive in there, keeping everything quiet for a while should allow them to recover.

PS. Don't add lime.

I'm a newbie wormer also, but I'll relate my experience. I started with 250 worms. I gave them too much of my special worm chow, it clumped up, and the bin smelled bad. Perhaps not as bad as yours, but the smell filled the garage. "Smells like poop," said my wife. Pretty many worms tried to escape.

I dug around and removed the clumps, added more bedding, and fluffed things up. It no longer smells bad, and the worms seem okay now.

BTW, whenever I fluff or disturb the bedding, a bunch of worms try to escape. I've read that this is especially true of my super-reds. I leave the lid off and put the bin under a light after any digging around.

150 worms is not nearly enough to start a bin that will accept 4 people's worth of leftover organic matter, and it will take you a year or so build up your herd to minimal numbers. It is possible to build up your herd from hundreds to many thousands - I did it, I started with only 250 worms, but if you have access to additional redworms from elsewhere, it will help you pick up the pace.

That "halitosis" smell means that there is no air in the soil. The bin is far too wet.

As already mentioned, add some paper, sawdust or cardboard to absorb the extra water, and dilute all of the food you've got in there. From there, just check your bin for moisture levels (damp like a wrung out sponge), but add no food for about 2 months - there is already enough in the bin for the worms you have - even the bedding is food, so they won't starve. Just let them settle in, and get acquainted with their surroundings.

From there, add a handful of food about once a week, until they have at least doubled their population. If you put their food in a clump, they will mill around it and it will make it easier to see their numbers grow. That will help you to know when you can start gradually adding more food.

I also started with only 150 Redworms. Now after 8.5 years, the population has grown and I have 160 Redworms. Just Kidding. I made mistakes in the beginning (like everyone). Maybe not the same ones as listed here, but there are enough possibilities that no one person can make them all. There's usually a tendency among newbies to overfeed, since it's difficult to understand how so little food can be sufficient for the quantity of worms that you have. The shredded cardboard bedding also serves as a food source for them.