Let me show you how we did it.
First, we filled up the bin with cardboard and paper. We filled it to be about 3/4 full. We really wanted to make sure there would be enough dry material to soak up extra moisture.
Then we added some soil, compost from outside and worms that I bought from Growing Power in Milwaukee. I think they are red wriggler worms. We have our compost bin in the basement, where the temp is consistently around 55-60F. Where ever you might keep your worm bin, the temp cannot get to freezing or below. These worms are from the south and will die in cold temps. Even if its not cold enough for them to die, they certainly won't be composting very well if they are too cold.
The bins need to be covered. Worms are very sensitive to light.
Mold grew for a little bit after each addition of food scraps. It didn't cause any trouble for the worms and usually by the next load of food scraps that I dumped in, the previous colony was gone. And even though its essentially a bin of rotting food, it only smelled when the lid was open. Visitors had no idea what was really in the storage bin if I didn't tell them or show them.
In February we decided to sift through the bin to see what kind of work the worms were doing. We took the sifter for our outdoor compost (made out of 1x2s and hardware cloth) and then added another layer of hardware cloth so we could catch the worms and any material that could be broken down more.
The top layer was not decomposed at all so that went into a new bin we were starting. The next layer was dirt-like but so wet that when we tried to sift it, we got nowhere. Sifting mud is hard. So ended up throwing most of that in the new worm bin as well. The last layer was the largest and driest. To our surprise, the bottom of the bin was fairly dry and almost all of the cardboard and paper were gone. But worms like to work their way to the top so the compost in this layer was pretty rough since the worms didn't spend much time on it. This layer will go outside with us when we plant our seedlings in the garden. It should work well to fill the holes we dig for the seedlings.
