I throw weeds and clippings from the garden into the worm bin all the time in the spring and summer. I also don't worry about green vs. brown in the worm bin. I only worry about not feeding them more than they can eat before it goes stinky and not putting too much stuff in at once that can get too hot as it decomposes, such as grain-based food and giant piles of coffee grounds. Green/brown ratio isn't really an issue in a worm bin. In my experience, green plant matter never has the time to get hot unless you're grossly overfeeding.

I'd be more concerned if I was trying to dispose of pure grass clippings, because those can mat down into a solid mass more readily. No lawns around here, so it's not a problem I have.

I don't suppose I ever tried to calculate "green" vs "brown" for a worm bin either, I think much more in terms of food mass, moisture, and aeration.

The key here is that you stewed the weeds enough for them to slime. The microbes rule in the earthworm diet, it is clear.

Worms in an established bin do just fine even without "sliming" and other pre-fermentation. I personally think it's less likely to introduce bad bacteria, unwanted creatures, and odors if you don't do these things, although I know a lot of people do bokashi and other processing and don't kill their worms or anything. But, to me, it's just another fussy step when the worm bin is meant to be as simple as possible, not create more rituals and routines.

Ah, but it wasn't a fussy extra step, but rather the natural consequence of me failing to clean up the patio in a timely fashion before it rained, and then failing to fish the weeds out of the rainwater before they got slimy. A process of laziness from start to finish!

Believe me, I'm all about the labor-saving. I have a disabling medical condition, so I never look for ways to make more work for myself. I would not want a worm newbie to get the impression that this is something one *should* do, rather than it's something you *could* do, if only for the entertainment value of experimenting.

Yes, I realize. I was addressing baldeagleomelette's implication that the "sliming" was what made it possible to add the weeds. It's entirely possible to add green stuff to the bin without "sliming" it. Healthy worms and worm bins are already full of the microorganisms needed to turn stuff into castings.

For my worm factory, for an individual tray, I put in some shredded newspaper as bedding, some coconut choir(s), a bit of garden soil and some sand, covered by more shredded newspaper at the beginning. After a feeding I put more bedding, so the ration of browns versus greens may change but it is still reasonable. The worms are doing well, but I find that immediately after a feeding the worms tend to gather on top of the bedding for a few days (probably because the nitrogen rich food is a bit warm. In my compost barrel it is important to watch the mix of browns versus greens because it gets a bit slimy.