Congratulations on the great start. Manual weeding really doesn't take as long as it looks once you get started. Was your Boston timing questions specifically for lawns? Then fall is the best time to seed. For the rest of the garden it depends on the seasonality of what you're planting. Grass seed planted now will struggle with the summer heat, so don't expect full coverage of your target turf in August. In fact you should expect a very healthy stand of crabgrass. Don't worry too much, though, because you can seed again in the late summer to get your turf the way you want it. It will likely be June 2011 before you're really happy with it. You don't need to till and if you did, then yes it would kill the grass you tilled up. That's what tillers do, among other things. You don't need to till the rest of the yard either. If the foliage is mostly gone, then scatter the seed on the bare soil, roll it down to make good contact between the seed and soil, then start watering for 10 minutes, 3x per day, for 2-3 weeks. If you have a bumpy lawn, wait until the grass is growing like crazy to do something about that. You need the grass growing fast to come up through the sand/topsoil you would be putting down.

“LONG post. Looking for advice from folks who have lots of experience with medium scale worm breeding and casting production” Most of us here do smaller scale. “I can already tell that much of the advice out there is like the advice on regular composting - easiest case advice that has been reprinted enough times that certain things become 'consensus' thus must be true.” The same thing happens here. Since you are asking questions about things we may not have experience with, expect more of that kind of advice. “the advice out there that says a worm population will double in 90 days is silly - under ideal conditions they could increase 100 fold in that time period.” The WEIGHT of the worm population can double every 90 days. The numbers will more than double, but many of the new worms will be babies. “My assumption is that the fastest way to get a large population going is to master the right conditions and then to have very low density. IE, a pound of worms in one bin is not going to yield the same population in three months as will the same pound of worms spread across 2,4, or 8 bins.” I have no idea how you come to that conclusion. Worms only breed so fast. Separating them from potential partners does not speed up the process. You want to avoid overcrowding the worms, but one pound in the kind of bin you describe is far from overcrowding. “Is there a minimum number you experienced breeders have found to be the minimum effective dose to ensure worms are finding one another and doing the horizontal worm mambo” Two. “or have these suckers been around a few million years because if there are two they will track one another down and ensure the survival of the species?” I don’t know if anyone here has really researched that, but conventional wisdom says that if your population is not dense enough, you will have less breeding. “For Bins, I am building continuous flow through bins using plastic garbage pails since they are cheap and large.” But are not strong enough to hold the weight of the VC, especially if you have cut a hole in the bottom large enough to facilitate harvesting. Bins made the way you describe tend to collapse under the weight of the VC “I figured the cranked spinning bar would likely just dig a groove above the grate and require some hand loosening anyway” That has been my experience. “I was thinking I'd use 'unfinished' hot compost. By unfinished, I mean it has been turned a couple times and there are still identifiable chunks like leaves that are blackened but largely whole.” This would make great bedding. If your hot compost has a balance of C to N, it would also be great food, and would require no additional food. “Am I right that unfinished compost, so long as it doesn't heat up is more or less perfect and would spur breeding since it would represent a mountain of perfect food source and stay pretty constant in terms of temp and moisture level with minimal effort?” Probably. “Food: I will quickly have more worms than I will have food scraps suitable for feeding them,” You are being optimistic. You may be right, but there can be a lot of surprises when you are raising live animals. “One of my favorite composting ingredients is to get coffee grounds in mass quantity from the coffee shops” This is not ideal worm food. Perhaps you would do better to put it in your hot bins and precompost it. “I have read that too many coffee grounds are bad for worms due to acidity.” A lot of people say that. I don’t buy it. “Is there another reason they would be bad?” Besides that worms don’t like to eat them until they have decomposed a bit? “I don't want to make feeding the worms a full time job so if I get sufficient numbers I know a nursery that will sell a truckload of horse stall compost cheap.” That may be the answer to getting them to breed faster as well. “It's a tad warm usually but I'm thinking that spreading an inch on top of the bins and lightly watering it would prevent heating and I've read that there is no better food for feeding compost worms and getting them to breed/mature quickly?” Correct, and correct.

OOh very pretty!!!! I'll tell you what worked for me. I went to a granite yard, looked around and asked them who they recommended as a fabricator. I should have seen the answer coming when the owner told me, "Well, we have a lot of guys who are all very good," and shoved a dozen or so cards at me. I pushed him a little and realized he wasn't going to recommend anyone because he had a business relationship with all of them and didn't want to be seen as playing favorites. So I went up there 3 or 4 more times, always made myself very visible and always chatted with the owner a bit. After we built a bit of a relationship, I finally got him to divulge the name of the place he really liked, who did the owner's home... And they did a fantastic job!

All perimeter cabinets are simply white. My island will be stained oak. With the black top. However there will be an island table that is attached next to it that will have the white quartzite. I have pieces saved at the stone yard that are what I used in the kitchen so do not want to deviate. I originally wanted soapstone but not to be found here in my price range and when I found the quartzite, I could see my kitchen needed to be light countertops but I wanted the bulletproofness of the granite. Plus they didn't have enough quartzite for the whole kitchen. So I have a mix. Its all good. I would post photos but the computer isn't cooperating. Can you use the island top you are replacing for the wet bar? Or are you repurposing it elsewhere?