Most people use some sort of plastic jar, recycled half-gallon yogurt tub, empty waxed paper milk carton, or similar thing to hold kitchen garbage.  Odors develop when anaerobic decomposition begins.  If the holding tub is getting high, don’t cover it, feed it to the worms.

It is neater to add garbage in spots rather than mixing it throughout the bin.  When feeding garbage into the worm bin, lift the cover, pull back the bedding with a three-tine hand cultivator, and make a hole about the size of your garbage container.  Dump the waste into that hole and cover it with an inch or so of bedding.  The whole operation only takes a few minutes.  A few days later the kitchen compost bucket will again be ready.  Make and fill another hole adjacent to the first.  Methodically go around the box this way.  By the time you get back to the first spot the garbage will have become unrecognizable, the spot will seem to contain mostly worm casts and bedding, and will not give off strongly unpleasant odors when disturbed.

Seasonal Overloads

On festive occasions, holidays, and during canning season it is easy to overload the digestive capacity of a worm bin.  The problem will correct itself without doing anything but you may not be willing to live with anaerobic odors for a week or two.  One simple way to accelerate the “healing” of an anaerobic box is to fluff it up with your hand cultivator.

Vegetableatarian households greatly increase the amount of organic waste they generate during summer.  So do people who can or freeze when the garden is “on.”  One vermicomposting solution to this seasonal overload is to start up a second, summertime-only outdoor worm bin in the garage or other shaded location.  Appelhof uses an old, leaky galvanized washtub for this purpose.  The tub gets a few inches of fresh bedding and then is inoculated with a gallon of working vermicompost from the original bin.  Extra garbage goes in all summer.  Mary says: 

“I have used for a “worm bin annex” an old leaky galvanized washtub, kept outside near the garage.  During canning season the grape pulp, corn cobs, corn husks, bean cuttings and other fall harvest residues went into the container.  It got soggy when it rained and the worms got huge from all the food and moisture.  We brought it inside at about the time of the first frost.  The worms kept working the material until there was no food left.  After six to eight months, the only identifiable remains were a few corn cobs, squash seeds, tomato skins and some undecomposed corn husks.  The rest was an excellent batch of worm castings and a very few hardy, undernourished worms.”

Vacations

Going away from home for a few weeks is not a problem.  The worms will simply continue eating the garbage left in the bin.  Eventually their food supply will decline enough that the population will drop.  This will remedy itself as soon as you begin feeding the bin again.  If a month or more is going to pass without adding food or if the house will be unheated during a winter “sabbatical,” you should give your worms to a friend to care for.