Karen,
Yep, got plenty of carbon. Nitrogen is in short supply this time of year. All the grass clippings and green waste from the garden went into the outdoor compost bin. I'm saving our coffee grounds for the worm bin and I think the nearest Starbucks is a 25 mile drive each way. I dosed the leaves up with some 12-12-12 and got the heat up into the 70's. I haven't checked it for a few days. We need to run by one of our nearby horse owners. They always have plenty of manure to dispose of. I'm planning on setting up an area for hot composting in the early Spring when the weather is more appropriate.

Starbucks sets a good example for other companies that produce usable waste. I imagine Walmart dumps lots of old produce into the dumpster.

I have been picking up leaves and grass clippings for years now, I keep adding them to the garden and slowly the soil is improving. I love picking up shredded leaves at this time of year, even picked up seven large bags of brown grass clippings the other day. I love to build up a large bank of shredded materials this time of year and let them decay on their own. I also love to build hot compost piles, I use sheet composting, spot composting, etc. Just about any means of getting organic material into the soil. In my zone and climate, it is fairly easy to keep a hot compost pile working if I am willing to put forth the effort, but now I have built up such a accumulation of organic materials I really don't have to do all that turning unless I just want to. Strangely I do still enjoy the process. I just seeded rye grass and after the great rain for the past couple of days I noticed this morning I finally have a lot of those seeds starting to sprout, so I will have green material to add to the compost pile.
The worms are still a mystery to me, sometimes I have an abundance of them and then at this time of year I seldom see any. There is always an abundance of food available for them (shredded leaves and grass clippings), so I know they are sill around, just not out in plain site. My wife and I generate very little kitchen waste, so that amounts to an almost negligible percentage of the materials that go into the compost,still at times I do see lots of worms. I see at least three different types of worms in my garden, not sure what they are but some are very tiny, some are small, and some are what I would call medium (Alabama jumpers I think). The very tiny ones are only found in the bog, they look like very tiny red worms.
Even after doing this procedure for years I am still in awe of the process of forming beautiful garden soil from waste, I just love seeing it happen over time.

Hi Larry,
It sounds like you’ve got composting down to a science. Your climate adds a lot more available time to the composting process. We have poor soil here, mostly clay. It was originally all farmland, mostly in corn and soy beans. Plant, grow, harvest, repeat. Use whatever chemicals are necessary to get maximum crop growth. Rainfall runs off and if you dig a hole the water stands in it for a long time. It's in need of lots of organic matter. We are currently just amending the soil around the things we plant but this fall we put down a foot of wood chips over the entire garden. Basically “no-till”, which will decompose and add an organic layer. Most of our leaves come from our neighbor’s yard, primarily oak. We have a stand of walnut trees and those leaves are also compostable, contrary to popular belief.

We have lots of night crawlers here, some the size of small snakes. They aerate the soil but don’t create concentrated compost. Not many other earthworms.

I’m with you on turning green waste into soil. An amazing process indeed.

Well, I guess I'm very lucky because I have a large, wooded area behind my home. The layer of leaf mold is quite thick, going down several inches. It's there for the taking.

I think I remember reading that as they decay, grass cuttings create too much nitrogen for worms. I believe there's a caution about using it in the bins. So if you're putting grass cuttings into your compost pile, the worms might just go elsewhere as they're bound to do.

Is it possible that the tiny red wormeys are baby red wigglers? If they were white, I'd guess that they're pot worms (not harmful).

@joannakat,
No, the tiny worms are not baby red worms, though they do look like it. They never get big, and it is fresh grass clippings that draw them in. Several years ago I was just dumping fresh grass clippings trying to fill in the bog and noticed one day when I was down there that there were hundreds of those small warms underneath the mound. Then I started putting the grass clippings down there just for the worms, they must not have read the article about grass having too much nitrogen. For some types of worms I guess it is possible for grass clippings to be too rich in nitrogen, but not for these little fellows. It is amazing how fast they can go through a mound of grass clippings during the warm summer days. As I have filled in the bog more and more with leaves and other organic material I see less and less of the little worms and they are being replaced with the lager worms as the bog dries up more and drains much better.

Joanna,
I envy you having all that naturally composted leafy material readily available. I think the main problem with grass clippings in a worm bin is that the decomposition raises the temperature above what worms can tolerate. My understanding is that they require a high carbon, low nitrogen environment. From "Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada":

"High protein/nitrogen levels can result in rapid degradation and its associated heating, creating inhospitable, often fatal, conditions. Heating can occur safely in the food layers of the vermiculture or vermicomposting system, but not in the bedding."

That would seem to indicate that the food source needs to be kept separate from the bedding and not mixed, contrary to what some articles seem to advise.

All very interesting. I'm laying my food on top of the bedding, and when the worms infest it, I know it's time to add more food. I don't know if it eventually gets mixed into the bedding, but that's up to the wormeys!
I have to say that I was a bit creeped out by them at first, but now I love them and can't wait to see them.

One season, I buried a bunch of kitchen scraps about a foot down in my flower garden. When I went to check on it some months later, there wasn't a speck of it left. I love when that happens! As humans, we take from the earth all the time. Isn't it wonderful when we can give back?

I'll try to post pictures of the leaf mold at some point. It's lovely and I don't feel bad about taking some because no one else seems to know about it.

I've read a lot of conflicting information on vermiculture. I'me sure everyone's experiences are different and may or may not be applicable for every instance. I've been following the info I mentioned above, available here as a .pdf file:

http://www.oacc.info/DOCs/Verm...

It seems well written and verified. We have lots of night crawlers living beneath our compost bin. They usually find their way into the composted material but only at the lower levels. I've never tried burying kitchen scraps but I would guess that worms would find their way to it. We try to do our part toward keeping our waste stream to a minimum by composting and recycling.

I'd like to see your leaf mold pictures. Good for you for using an available resource.

My worms don't seem to mind the cold weather. It's 70 degrees in my worm bin, in the basement .

I hope everyone had a great Christmas .

McCannon said:My worms don't seem to mind the cold weather. It's 70 degrees in my worm bin, in the basement .

They do generate energy, don't they? It was 45 f in my basement area where my bin is, but 70 f in the bin! Gotta love nature.

Hi Joanna,
My basement stays in the 60 to 70 range most of the time. I have an indoor/outdoor temperature probe buried in the bin and a nearby heat duct in the ceiling which keeps it a little warmer if the basement temperature drops. The main problem I have is keeping the bedding wet enough. Even with a cardboard cover right on top of the bedding. Very low humidity in the house, especially during the winter months. I'll be setting up the indoor plant starts down there pretty soon which will help add some moisture.

McCannon said:Hi Joanna,
My basement stays in the 60 to 70 range most of the time. I have an indoor/outdoor temperature probe buried in the bin and a nearby heat duct in the ceiling which keeps it a little warmer if the basement temperature drops. The main problem I have is keeping the bedding wet enough. Even with a cardboard cover right on top of the bedding. Very low humidity in the house, especially during the winter months. I'll be setting up the indoor plant starts down there pretty soon which will help add some moisture.

Hey Mac,

I have the same problem. Winter heating can be very drying! I keep a nice cover of newspapers in my bin, and a nice spray bottle of water right there too (I find the newspaper retains moisture better than cardboard). I spray the newspapers until they're nice and moist every night or so (as needed) and the bin then stays moist. If it appears really dry, I'll lift the paper and spray the bedding too. I love doing that because then, I can watch the wormies run away (they hate the light!)

Thanks Joanna,
I might try the newspaper. I use cardboard because it's easy to lift out when adding food. I have a spray bottle and usually give the bedding a good spritz every day or two. The bedding gets pretty dry on the bottom while the top remains fairly moist. I have a flow-thru bin with cardboard covering the bottom and about 6" of bedding which is more shredded newspaper than cardboard so that may be contributing to the evaporation issue. Here's an inside view of the bin.

McCannon said:Thanks Joanna,
I might try the newspaper. I use cardboard because it's easy to lift out when adding food. I have a spray bottle and usually give the bedding a good spritz every day or two. The bedding gets pretty dry on the bottom while the top remains fairly moist. I have a flow-thru bin with cardboard covering the bottom and about 6" of bedding which is more shredded newspaper than cardboard so that may be contributing to the evaporation issue. Here's an inside view of the bin.

Oh, yes, it might be the newspaper. I understand that where excess moisture is a problem, adding shredded newspaper can help to dry things out. And the reverse is that if it's too dry, use less newspaper (or other paper) and more high-moisture food (cucumbers, etc.)

The bottom of your bin is awfully open too....I wonder if that might affect the moisture too?

Joanna,
It's flow-through design. The bottom is initially covered with a sheet of cardboard, which eventually breaks down. The castings are successively harvested from the bottom. Here's an example:

https://texasredworms.com/tag/...

I have more shredded cardboard which I will add to the bedding. I collect the thin corrugated stuff that I can run through my shredder.

McCannon said:Joanna,
It's flow-through design. The bottom is initially covered with a sheet of cardboard, which eventually breaks down. The castings are successively harvested from the bottom. Here's an example:

https://texasredworms.com/tag/...

I have more shredded cardboard which I will add to the bedding. I collect the thin corrugated stuff that I can run through my shredder.

Interesting, a real DIY! And a nice amount of work too? Do you have to separate the worms from the castings when it's ready? I'd be very interested in hearing how it works.

Joanna,
I like to build stuff. After a lot of reading, the CFT idea seemed like the practical thing to do. This is new to me so I don't have any results yet, but the idea is that the castings end up on the bottom and the worms stay above, where the food source is. While a few end up being harvested with the casting, the majority do no, so no need to pick through the piles to separate them. I posted pictures (on the previous page) of my set-up. The lower bin is the collection point when the castings are removed from the bottom of the upper bin. I'm guessing it will be a while before I get any results.

McCannon said:Joanna,
I like to build stuff. After a lot of reading, the CFT idea seemed like the practical thing to do. This is new to me so I don't have any results yet, but the idea is that the castings end up on the bottom and the worms stay above, where the food source is. While a few end up being harvested with the casting, the majority do no, so no need to pick through the piles to separate them. I posted pictures (on the previous page) of my set-up. The lower bin is the collection point when the castings are removed from the bottom of the upper bin. I'm guessing it will be a while before I get any results.

Thanks Mac. It sounds like the same concept as the Worm Factory 360, which is what I'm using. The worms climb up to the bin that has the food, leaving the castings in the lower bin. Easy peasy.

Like you, I'm new to this and so am still working with the first bin. I purchased Red Wrigglers and they seem happy, but I thought they'd be fatter. They also move a LOT faster than the fat ground worms I've found in my garden.

My instructions say that it takes around 90 days for the first bin to fill up. That's when you're supposed to start the second bin and if all goes well, the worms climb up and you have your "black gold!"

Are you getting any little flies? I've heard they're a part of the process and a natural occurrence. I've got some, but not too many. But then again, it's winter....

Mine works a little different. There is only one bin for the worms. The castings are removed out the bottom of that bin and into the lower bin. The bedding settles in the upper bin. A lot of worm casting sellers use a similar system, but usually on a larger scale. My bins are roughly 14" by 20" by 16" deep.

I have Red Wrigglers (or wigglers as they're sometimes referred to). They're growing. Yes, they're a lot faster than the nightcrawler we have in the yard.

No flies or bugs of any kind so far. There's a "fruit fly" cure that some worm growers refer to, involving apple cider vinegar with a drop of cooking oil on top. You can "google" it.

Let me know how your system is working for you when you start collecting the castings.