I agree. In my case, there’s enough space outdoors and I don’t really need to keep it active in winter; if I did need to for whatever reason, I think I’d probably try to get an indoor system going. (Which I might – housing getting complicated).

I like to “protect” my winter system simply because I usually try to keep it semi-active (big difference between survival and actual active vermicomposting).

To each his/her own I say! Those who want to speed things up can focus more on optimization of the process – while folks like us can take more of a mellow approach and still get the results we’re after.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
8)

Given long enough, most of the materials will end up getting consumed. Stuff around the tops and bottoms may need to be thrown in the next bin, but the great mass of stuff will be fine.

I’ve been thinking about one more part of this equation with respect to winter worm composting: there really is no need to ‘protect’ the worms if the pile is big enough. Mostly a big pile won’t freeze through, and even if it does, the worms will usually survive (or their descendants – cocoons – will), although they’ll consume very little in the cold. But as soon as it gets warm enough, they’ll start right up again.

My worm system is really just two big composting bins. One is the ‘active’ one that I add to over the winter. The other is the overflow. In spring, the active one gets emptied to the overflow – where I mostly leave it alone until I need it for the garden.Since the stuff at the top of the active gets moved to the bottom of the overflow, it gets left alone for a long time and is usually perfect by the time I want to use it.

The stuff that was at the bottom of the overflow usually has some pockets of stuff that didn’t degrade fully or is a bit stinky and maybe wet from lack of air. Because it ends up at the top of the overflow – with lots of air – these pockets get broken up, dry out (if needed), and then decompose to soil very, very quickly. There’s a period where fungi seem to go to town on these bits, and the worms move in and go to town.

There are always some bits that haven’t broken down as much as I’d like or for what I’m using it for – they get tossed back (with some of the worms) into the active bin. Oh, and for the most part, I don’t separate the worms when using the compost. I take soil from the top of the overflow, where there are somewhat fewer worms, and if some end up in the garden, well, so be it.

Anyway, this is my ‘least amount of work’ (for me) method. It’s sort of a mix of vermicomposting and regular composting, but there are tons of worms and I think they do most of the real composting.