wnydyacre, although my compost pile is not directly on the ground (because I had to build it on sloping ground), I have tried seeding my two previous piles with worms and they don't seem to have increased in numbers. Don't quite know why?

Both piles I've tried were hot piles to start with and I didn't add worms until they had cooled. I was wondering if maybe the piles were not wet enough?Was your pile covered or exposed to the elements? Did you make an effort to keep it quite moist? How long had your pile been resting?

It's rather strange because my compost looks like a pretty good worm habitat once the heating phase is finished and yet I gathered my first batch of worms from a city-supplied compost bin where I just dumped kitchen scraps. That bin had no bottom and was in direct contact with my terrible topsoil, but I didn't even notice the worms 'til it had been slowly filling for 2-3 yrs!

Your compost looks fantastic - I can see why the worms enjoyed it. Good work!

Harry

My bin is built directly on the ground, three sides are lattice and the front is separate boards that slide out to fill or empty at whatever height you like. It is built of treated lumber and has lasted about 15 years now with only a bit of movement from the roots of the adjacent 80 year old spruce tree (which is now just a dead stump because a tornado took it out!). I never cover it...in fact when the tornado took out the tree that was on the OTHER side of the bin, the only thing that comforted me was now the bin would receive more natural moisture!

I am in SW Ontario, so it gets lots of rain and snow, with very hot humid conditions in the summer and anything from very rainy mild temps to many feet of snow and bitter cold temps, in the winter.

I empty the bin around every two years...it has just happened to work out that way. It takes that long to fill (because it is constantly composting and the level drops) and it takes that long for me to find the time!

To empty it, I pull all the noncomposted debris off the top onto a tarp. Then the rest goes into my raised vegetable beds or perennial beds. Last month, I got a dozen contractor wheelbarrow loads from it.

I always empty it in the fall and have previously saved up many bags of fallen leaves (mostly "stolen" from the street wherever there are neighbourhoods of "good" leaves (not oak). I also will save a bunch of bags of grass clippings and garden cleanup, like hosta and daylily leaves plus the potting soil out of pots I'm emptying for the winter. I live in the country and will get pails of manure from my neighbours also, usually already aged and old rotten bales of straw.

Then I start layering all into the bin, alternating dry/brown/wet/green materials. This last time, I also saved quite a bit of wormy material and layered them into the whole thing too. Every complete layer, I use the hose to wet the top "until it glistens"...that is the advice I read in a good composting article once and that seemed to discribe what it should look like best.

I try to do it early enough in the fall that we still have a time period of warm sunny weather left and then the pile heats up quickly and drops in height very quickly. I spend the rest of the winter and the next summer just dumping my kitchen waste into it and additional garden waste the next fall. It never gets a chance to "rest"...I am constantly dumping into it.

I never turn the pile...there just isn't enough room to practically do that...or enough time! But it does compost nicely eventually, though it tends to get pretty compacted after two years. It breaks up fairly easily when I fork it out into a wheelbarrow and I also crumble any chunks up with my hands as I work.

Anyway....that is how I build and maintain the bin and the worms seemed to like it as they just moved in on their own. They were in every part of the bin except the very top layer. We also took several shovel fulls out to start a worm bin at our cottage, where they are thriving now. That one is my husbands domain. :-D

wyndyacre, other than the fact that your pile is in direct contact with the ground while mine is elevated, our piles sound similar. But I don't leave mine for 2 yrs., only from fall until the following spring/summer and I don't keep adding fresh materials during those months. So maybe worms don't proliferate in my pile because the "finished" compost isn't of much interest to them without the regular additions of food scraps etc.? Maybe my compost is lacking the enormous numbers of bacteria that would be feeding on those regular food additions? Hmmmmm

Thanks for your detailed description,

Harry