Our worm bins only once smelled bad and that was when I tried giving them nuts that had been in the cupboard for two years. They went rancid so I dug them back out and threw it away. The bin was back to smelling good in a couple days.
For our first bin I filled a 50 gallon Rubbermaid tub half full out of our the compost tumbler. It was probably half done at that point. So in three months they've turned 25 gallons of partially composted food and 12 pounds of weekly kitchen scraps (blended for faster consumption) into about 35 gallons of soil. That was 500 worms.
Since that was so successful but slower than I wanted, I decided to increase the production with more bins and more worms. I've overdone myself though
I got 2500 more worms and have only had a chance to create 1 more worm bin... It's been hard to keep up with their food demands at this point!
For the second bin I emptied the fresh compost tumbler (food scraps from last two months) that had barely composted into the new bin on top of a 1" layer of shredded paper. That was possibly 30 gallons and then I put 2" of our natural silty loam soil onto the top and mixed it into the top few inches of food scraps. The bin has roughly 1500 worms and in the last 3 weeks they have gone through about half of the food scraps already was well as two pounds of blended food scraps. In another month I expect the full bin will be done and then I will be asking my neighbors for their food scraps to help feed these guys
I have just enough leftover food scrap wannabe compost in the tumbler that I can make another bin but it's frozen solid so I may have to wait until I can get it out of the tumbler. Then I'll have a pretty solid system of bins for the food scraps we make. I figure the garden scraps once it's going will also wind up in the worm bins as supplemental food.
