I have had my HB for a year and love it. You are keeping the bin too wet. No need to add wet cardboard on top. I have a HB and never have added water. All bedding, even a little peat moss, shredded cardboard, or used up potting soil from a dead annual plant are all dry and applied thin layer below and above the high moisture food waste at time of feeding. The goal is that bedding should absorb the moisture. I sometimes get leachate if I put a whole rotten peach in bin but the goal is no leachate. With HB, lack of moisture is not problem. Ventilation could be improved but I modify my feeding to adapt. For aeration, I will partially bury some whole egg crate, paper towel rolls, an upside down brie cheese cellulose container from Costco, etc. Another tip to get the casting to fall easily to the bottom is to rap lightly against the sides of the bin exactly above where it tapers. No need to use crow bar or any tool. Harvest once a month and tinker around for optimum performance. Good luck.
Smaller pieces of .... food? carbon? Actually, the answer would be the same for both of those: The pieces would be handled quicker by the worms due to there being more surface area for the bacteria and other microbes to gather on, and which the worms feed upon.
Well that is what worm castings is supposed to look like though, all the other youtubers are showing you unprocessed coconut coir, of course it will look dry and brown but it sure aint worm casting.
Out of the free flow systems available I do think that this one is the worst - I love my UWB and I know others love the Verimbags I think the bin in itself is a great shape and good to use outdoors as the water wont enter it But for the expence and seeing your experience I am not tempted to buy one Hx
I think if I wasn't so persnickety about how the castings come out, I'd go with the HB just because it's very durable and won't need to be replaced in the future. If I had a large garden area, I'd take the overly moist castings & worms and pour them on my garden every month. It provides a great personal amount plus it's easy to take off the harvest tray and easy to replace. Don't really need to dig castings out of the bottom. It wouldn't matter that I don't remove the worms out of the castings since the garden benefits from their presence and they reproduce pretty quickly in the HB. After 2 years of using the HB, the big take-away from this now is that the castings at the bottom are just that. Pure worm castings. That's my plug for the HB. LOL. That said, all CFTs have their pros & cons. I like all of them, but they do take time to get used to.
