The wigglers keep increasing their numbers, and better yet they're breaking down the contents quickly. The tumbler went from near full to half full in no time- it's safe to say that red wigglers are an excellent addition to outdoor composting efforts. Red wigglers are very resilient to extremes, but if it gets too hot or too cold, they can burrow into the contents or exit the tumbler for a bit.
Back in January I made a brief post about my compost tumbler being full of worms...and by worms I don't mean red wigglers, but earthworms. Who cares? Well, I've decided it's time to pay tribute to earthworms again, because they're often confused with red wigglers and their purposes get mixed up. Red wigglers are super resilient (e.g. temperature changes, crowding), live in organic material and have a serious appetite...they make the most sense in a full-on vermicomposting setup- anything from a super cheap/simple worm bin to the popular Worm Factory or Worm Inn options. Red wigglers aren't a guaranteed solution for your compost tumbler- it just depends on if they can adjust to the habitat. It's getting tumbled weekly and can get very hot- not necessarily hot enough to kill…
In the wintertime, I take my composting efforts indoors to pay attention to the worms. We had yet another uncharacteristically warm day here (if just one more person says "omg i love global warming lol"...ugh ), so I checked out the composter...full of worms! It had just rained, and the inside was a bit damp...so my guess is that the earthworms were just looking for warm, moist ground and they found it in there. They also found a lot of stuff they probably weren't used to, like a Sun Chips bag trying to degrade, and some paper packaging material that I lazily threw in without ripping it up, just for fun. I get a lot of emails talking about worms in the composter...these worms are almost certainly just earthworms (sorry…