Restarting My Compost Pile

Making Compost for 2021 Garden
As the year winds down, I'm starting to prepare for next year. In particular, I'm restarting my composting operation that I had working at the beginning of this year. This way, hopefully, I will be able to make my garden beds ready long before I need them, and I won't have to delay my planting till my compost is done.
I'm using the Berkley 18-day fast compost method again, though I'm not sticking strictly to it. I have enough time to age the compost more, and hopefully get an even better quality compost than last time.
Fast Compost Using Tumbleweed: • Fast Compost Using Tum...
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Nuwe Blare Homestead is a homestead in the Arizona desert. We (try to) grow our own food with our desert garden, we raise chickens and ducks for eggs, and we build the things we need. Homesteading in the harsh Arizona climate is not easy, but we are learning how to use the resources we have at hand to accomplish our goals. We're a South African-American family, so we occasionally share recipes for South African dishes.
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[@kellymahan861]

How are the worms doing? I have 6 bins now and the worm population is over 50K. My red wigglers have exploded in numbers, I started with less than a thousand and now they number over 40K, I can't begin to actually count them. I have been feeding them my garden leftovers and they love the cantaloupe and the watermelon. The tomatoes are a hit, too. The bins weigh over 200 pounds now. I have harvested about 75 pounds so far.

[@NuweBlareHomestead]

Sadly, I've not been spending much time on them, so they're not really multiplying (they tend to expand only as far as their space will allow). But with winter on the way, I'm hoping to ramp up on the worms and see if I can spend more time looking after them, and maybe getting another 2 or so bins going.

[@kellymahan861]

@@NuweBlareHomestead Have you looked into the African Night Crawler? I see they are a big worm that seems to really reproduce fast. I hesitate to release any worms into my garden for fear of creating an unstoppable problem. The garden has thousands of very small unknown worms that winter over. I don't know what would happen if I released my composting worms directly into the garden. I use the castings and I'm sure worm eggs get added to the garden, but I don't know if they hatch and thrive or if our winter temps kill them. I picked the last of the maters yesterday and it is 30 degrees today. I picked about 75 lbs. and put them on shelves in the basement to ripen. Hopefully the chard, kale and other greens won't freeze for a few more weeks.

[@NuweBlareHomestead]

@@kellymahan861 Worms like the red wigglers don't survive the cold, they need those warmer temperatures, so I wouldn't worry about it if I were you (I certainly don't, and I've used the castings in my beds).