composting worms

[Dianyla]

They say if you lay several inches of fresh dry shredded newspaper on the very TOP of the surface of the composting bed with the worms, it keeps most of the fruit flies from getting down in the damp food stuff to lay any eggs.

That probably would help. However, in smaller bins, especially the tray systems, the height of each tray is about 6". As it starts getting full and ready to jump to the next tray, there's absolutely no room for that much additional material added on top. One thing I did try was to lay several sheets of newspaper down around the entire tray, to "seal" the top of the active pile from flies. Didn't work. The only thing that worked was to stop putting in citrus peels.

I read that freezing food scraps and then thawing them helps 'break them down' right away to the stage where the worms will be able to eat them much more quickly than if they were just fresh scraps. That makes sense to me.

That should help make the nutrients more readily available to the worms. When processing vegetables/etc. in the kitchen I always make sure to chop the rinds into smaller pieces. Also, I've also found it's a lot better to feed them in batches. I'll collect a pailful of my own kitchen scraps, and consolidate my scraps with a friend's kitchen scraps. By the time I take it down to the worms (about every 2 weeks) it's getting pretty ripe already. But the worms seem to love partially rotted scraps more than absolutely fresh cuttings.

Also, staggering the feedings forces them to eat some of their less favorite foods, otherwise they'll continue to avoid less favored foods and head for the choice items every time.