My tiny bin is too small for a here, there and the other place. I sometimes wrap offerings in a used paperbag or sheet of newspaper and put it right on top. I might put an open bottomed tube on top of the flow thru and put additions in to so these can have time to decompose. Sort of an in place preconditioning bucket that many use. I sometimes cover additions with half finished vermicompost or the larger vermicompost bedding bits that has been seived of smaller bits. In the cold of winter I sometimes covered especially wet additions with cornmeal. Even if I had the space I doubt I would bury in sequence. Although I tried to when I started out because I had read the book. It is probably a good method. Rather than lifting bedding and burying new material I would probably throw stuff in one area and cover that area with new bedding.

I am fairly new to worm composting.

I kept forgetting where I had buried my last offering, so I just kind of randomly put stuff in around the sides. I do bury the food, adding bedding each time. I don't weigh, but do keep a mental tally of amounts, though at first the amount was so small that I measured it in weekly amounts (like, this week I fed them about two cups) but for some reason I never have included the bedding I add as part of the weight, even though I am saving it from the landfill, and they eventually eat it... oh well.

I don't wait for the food to disappear, figuring that while one feeding is getting nice and microb-y, the worms can be working on another earlier feeding, so there may be two or three feeding sites at one time. I go more by smell. If something stinks, then it gets taken out, because the worms can't keep up with it, I think.

I don't freeze first, but I do microwave banana peels to kill gnats, and to make them break down. We eat a lot of bananas, and if I didn't hurry them along they would be in there for EVER.

Good luck, and have fun!
There are wonderful experts here that know so very much and are great helps.

"forgetting where I had buried my last offering" some people use a bath duckie, or bottle cap or leave their garden trowel at their last deposit and move clockwise from there.

Other than the stems banana peels vanish quickly for me. Stems I sometimes split or jab to help along. And the belly buttons. Ever find banana belly buttons?

When my RM bins have new bedding, I bury the food. I will pull the bedding back from one side, and feed that side and cover the food. I alternate sides.

When the bedding has started to decompose, I feed on the top, one side at a time, an cover the food with dry bedding.

In my FT, I feed a layer of food across the whole bin surface, then cover it with damp bedding. Three of my last four feedings have heated up, which suggests that I am feeding too much at one time.

Curious, how thick a layer of food do you need to make it heat up?

How do you know it has heated up?

How much does it heat up?

I don't bury. I tend to get best results when I feed a balance of bedding and scraps and then let the worms work on that. When it's almost gone, I add the next batch right in top.

I used to feed scraps every now and then in a less regimented program, like the worm bin marketers advertise. It was not as successful by a long shot.

But if you have problems with other critters, I would think that burying the food could be beneficial at helping control them.

"Curious, how thick a layer of food do you need to make it heat up?"

About an inch. Maybe inch and a half.

"How do you know it has heated up?"

When I look down into the bin, I can feel a very subtle wave of slightly warm air rising from the bedding. I dig into it with my finger to confirm that it is hot.

"How much does it heat up?"

I don't have a thermometer.

Seems as though many feeding styles work well. About the microwaving...would you suggest doing that to all of the scraps if I don't have the time to pre-rot?

sbryce, why don't you do a thicker layer on only half the top at a time, so the worms have a cooler half to come up to the surface on? Sure, your layer will have to be thicker, but it might also make it slower to heat too, with more mass.

Or have I got that wrong? Hot composting always confuses me.

antoniab, what you suggest is great. I had considered that myself. That is the way I feed my RM bins.

Wendrew, If you want to microwave, it is OK, some people do, and some don't. Some freeze and some don't. It depends on how fast you want the food processed by the worms in the bin and how much work you want to do. You can try it and see if you like doing it, and if it works for you and your worms.

I've had my worms in a worm factory for several years now and they tear through my scraps at a furious pace. I don't do anything at all to baby my worms and definitely don't weigh anything. That sounds like something to do if you're trying to make it a commercial venture or something and squeeze all the performance you can out of your worms.

I produce a good amount of scraps so I just throw them into two different bags, one that I'll end up using for veggie stock and the other that will just get composted, and those bags live in the freezer. The freezing is mostly just for convenience but i imagine it also speeds things up. The only difference in the fate of the two bags is that when the stock one is full i simmer the contents for an hour or so and strain out the stock. Either way I just dump the whole grocery bag of scraps (either frozen or cooled from making stock) into the bin. If there's a bunch of poo in there already i'll stir it in a little maybe. The only bedding i tend to put in is enough to give it a cover layer to try to cut down on bugs. I'll often fill one of the worm factory levels in one feeding and if so i just rotate up a new level. By the time the full one comes back around everything in there is gone.

Benign neglect works great for me. I have lots of very fat and happy worms that have been with me for many years. I would say find the approach that you find fun. I have a newer bigger flow through bin and I really like getting shoulder deep in there to see what the worms are up to. Others might not like that approach as much. ;)

"I have lots of very fat and happy worms that have been with me for many years"
I think the worms in my WF have a short life span. I started it in Dec. 2008 and still have only 1 full tray (waiting to be harvested and this will be harvest #3) and 1 working tray. I started with 1.5 lb (supposedly) of EFs. I found only a few adult worms, lots of juvies and todlers; so the original herd must have gone to worm heaven. I haven't noticed any smell of dead worms in the bins.

Otis, What would happen if you put bedding and food in all your layers? Would your worms disperse and breed up to that greater working surface?

It seems that the more room I give my worms, the more worms I have.

antoniab: I have not done that because the 1 working tray hasn't been "teaming" with worms.
My thinking: if I remove/split the amount of worms to start another tray, it will slow down the process and I wouldn't gain anything.

Paralel to WF, I also have a 4 bin RM (plus 1 catch bin underneath). I now have 2 full bins (still processing) and 2 about 4/5 full bins. The worms in here are fatter and bigger and I find more mature worms than say about a month ago. So my conclusion: these are new generation too or most of them anyway.

Otis, that makes sense. I wonder why your worm factory is not as much a breeding place as your Rm's?

I have had a worm factory for just under 2 months. I started the 2nd tray because my first was full and I was also concerned that I overfed it and wanted to give it and the worms a rest. I am slowly adding food to the second tray and a few worms are moving up to it. I find them dangling if I lift that tray so they are probably migrating up and down.

I think the worms are not going up, nor going down.

I think the worms are dangling. They seem to like to dangle. I suspect they have their heads in some tastey nonarobic bit of stuff and their bodyies absorbing up the oxygen. Cloging up the elevators for all the other wormies.

Except the stuff in the bottom tray should be touching the tray above it, so no air for them to dangle in UNTIL the tray is lifted. Hold the tray up for a few minutes and they soon pull up into the bottom. I also don't see them dangling out the bottom of my FT.

It is a nice mental image though. :)

Yes, the trays are touching so the worms dangling would only be when I pick the top tray up. I don't hold it up very long as I don't picture that they like it but maybe they do, who knows.