Hey all,

I work at a nonprofit that provides our community with composting education and supplies, including red wiggler (Eisenia fetida) worms. A few months back, without a lot of background in vermicomposting, I took over maintenance of the bins we use to breed worms for sales.

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I've been doing a fair enough job of maintaining the bins thus far, but worm sales have been consistently growing. A couple weeks back, a few big sales I realized how low my bins were on worms and decided I needed to cut off sales or the population wouldn't be able to bounce back.

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So now I'm waiting... and waiting. I have a ton of cocoons, but not many worms, and customers (and my managers) are growing restless.

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I'm looking for recommendations to not only boost my worms' reproduction, but to sustainably manage the population long-term. I'm not as concerned with the total biomass as I am with the number of worms, though the larger, mature worms are definitely easier to harvest.

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A few details about my bins for context:

• I manage 6 Wriggly Wranch bins with 2-3 layers each, 2 larger bins (approximately 2'x4' and 2'x8'), 1 in-ground bin made from a 5-gal. bucket, and 9 mini bins made from 3-gal. plastic containers. The mini bins go with us to elementary school presentations on composting and, uh, there are often casualties, so I regularly have to add worms to these. However, since I don't harvest worms from the minis for sales they currently have the densest population.
• The worms have a diet of juice pulp from a local juicer including carrot, celery, spinach, beet, parsley, ginger, lettuce, etc. I squeeze out excess moisture, dig a trench along one side of each bin, put 3-4 handfuls of pulp inside (for the Wriggly Wranches), and cover with bedding. I feed the other side when that food is just about gone. Even when the population was higher, they only ate once or twice a week. The bins are outside and it's been cool this winter (Southern California).
• My previous strategy was to only use one or two bins at a time to pull worms for sales. When the density in that bin started getting low, I'd switch to whichever bin had the most worms. This way, I was giving each bin 1-2 months to repopulate before I came back to them. I think eventually I'd gone through all of them, but the first one(s) I'd harvested from hadn't bounced back yet, hence my current dilemma.

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I greatly appreciate your input!