Hi Tessa, absolutely you can use worms from an existing bin to make another worm bin. It may be necessary with time if your worm bin gets too full of worms, although they do a decent job of moderating their population. To do this, all you would need to do is set up another bin with bedding/food and toss a couple handfuls of worms or even vermicompost mixed with worms into your new bin. Just be sure you don’t overfeed them to start as the smaller amount of worms won’t eat as much food as quickly as a higher population. With time, your new worm bin will become more full of worms as they continue to lay eggs and castings. Hope that helps and have fun vermicomposting!

Hi Ana, having a bin that you can keep inside during your cold winters is a great idea, however, I don’t think a 7 inch depth is worth the effort, you may as well just use a bigger bin if you are going to take the effort to set one up in the first place. If you did use a 7 inch deep bin, it will still work, you just may run out of room quicker than you anticipate and you may not have as much depth in bedding to sufficiently cover your food scraps. Hope that helps and good luck!

Hi Steph, I am not sure what are you referring to as “nests”? Usually if something is that smelly, it is typically anaerobic, I would just make sure to spread out the blended food more evenly in hopes that there aren’t masses of food inside the bin. It will create more surface area which will help the worms break it down quicker, I wouldn’t be worried about it effecting the final vermicompost as the worms will continue to break down the material in time. It seems like the worms are doing just fine in your worm bin so I would just keep up with what you are doing. Hope that helps and enjoy your vermicompost.

Hi Margo, shredded cardboard works great! Red wriggles typically are most active in the top inch or two of most bins but 3 inches doesn’t quite seem deep enough as you want to be able to bury any food scraps enough so they are completely covered. You could also add peat moss, coco coir, compost, or even some potting soil to add more bedding to your worm bin. Hope that helps and good luck!

I have an 18 gallon tote and I purchased 100 worms in March. Our worms live inside as the summers in SW NM are very hot. My question is how deep should the bedding be? I harvested castings yesterday and put in fresh bedding of some dirt and shredded cardboard. (It’s hard to find newspaper here as only a monthly paper and $1 for about 4 pages.) It is only about 3″ deep, but my first bedding back in April was about 6″ deep. With all the castings it kept getting higher and higher so I removed the castings and started with fresh bedding. Should I add more bedding to make deeper than 3″?

I love reading your articles.