I got a wormery as a gift at Christmas with the worms arriving early
January. I followed the instructions for setting up the wormery and kept it
indoors by the kitchen door. At first there were worms crawling all over the
inside (with a few escapees!). I kept adding kitchen scraps but nothing much
seemed to happen. After about a month I had a look inside but could not find
any worms. I took off most of the kitchen scraps and added some calcified
seaweed. But again nothing seemed to be happening. That's when I ordered
some new worms.

I was going to add the new worms to the wormery as it was but decided to
have a good look first so I cleared it out and found the grand total of 26
worms of which 25 were short fat red ones and one long grey one. The bottom
of the container where allegedly the liquid was supposed to collect was full
of dead worms! (Were the escapees trying to get away from a noisome mix?)

Should I throw the old mixture away and start afresh? If I do that, could I
use two year old garden compost with torn newspaper and a good handful of
calcified seaweed - I am concerned that the raw compost may be too acidy, or
would the contents of an organic compost which I saw in a garden centre be
better?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Trefor