I see where the original poster is coming from. Tumblers are not as cheap as they should be and they don't process as much as an open bin can. For people living in a city though in either a condo, townhome, or a house with a small plot of land it's a good way to process the small amount of food scraps they produce. I have one and I'd definitely prefer to have a several cubic yard bin instead. If for no other reason so I could do true "hot composting". I've had it go stinky once when I was first learning and remedied it with some dry leaves and shredded paper. It's a batch system though so you have to let it finish cooking before you can use it. Initially that meant I stored all my scraps in the freezer for about a month while the bin finished. Now though I have a Vermicompost bin that I use to finish the compost. This way I don't care if the tumbler gets 100% finished as long as it gets close enough that the worms like it. It's not an ideal solution but it reduces the waste my family puts in the land full and it produces some good compost for our vegetable garden. Maybe someday I'll have a bigger piece of property so I can do a big bin, but for the foreseeable future, I'm happy wig how the Tumbler works into my garden system.

I'm also a noob to the composting thing, although I've already started. I live in New Hampshire. Have a fair size lawn (1/3 acre or so of lawn, takes a good two hours to mow) and more than my fair share of oak and maple leafs every fall. For the last several years I've been piling the leafs in a particular spot. Last year I started a pile mixing these old leafs with fresh grass clippings. We also added kitchen vegi/fruit scraps from the kitchen along with coffee grounds. So far so good. During the summer/fall months there was noticeable heat coming out of the pile while turning it. My question/concern is that many of leafs are whole and don't seem be decomposing (granted I haven't turned the pile in over a month (being March, its partially frozen and until recently covered with snow). Is it advisable to run the compost through some sort of shredder at this point, if yes any special considerations regarding what type of shredder to use? Also, those compost tumbling bins - are those worth the $ and would it be advisable to batch my pile through one of those to finish it off?

Well it really only froze solid during the brutal winter on 2013-2014 when the polar vortex was the big thing in the news (which happened to be the first winter my compost bin system endured). Not knowing this past winter wouldn't be quite as cold I decided to play it safe and only throw coffee grinds on top of my working pile. I did this because I didn't want to attract animals since I couldn't cover the material I was dumping with older material due to it being frozen. Once we hit late February I was able to start adding normal kitchen scraps because I was able to bury it in the middle of the pile without exposing it to scavenging animals (I once found a rabbit's severed head right in front of the compost bin on top of frozen snow which totally creeped me out).

November 19, 2005 Week 15 I hope giving the worms the rotten strawberries wasn't a mistake. There's still a lot of bedding in there that isn't broken down, and aren't they supposed to use that as a Plan B food supply? I'd better check on them. No worms visible up here, they probably heard me coming, but there are clearly castings in this new bedding. They've been here. The rotten strawberries are gone, only seeds left and not many of those. I guess the worms haven't been overfed; they seem to have been hungry. Or maybe they just like strawberries. I prefer blueberries, but to each their own. The worms are looking healthier. Their colour is back to normal and they don't look so fat. But... something seems off. Jabba! Jabba, NOOOO! He's gone. Jabba's gone. There are only three worms in here. He can't have escaped; I take care not to let the worms wander while I check out the tub, and the air holes are way too small for his impressive girth. He must have died, broken down and been eaten. Why did Jabba die? What do I know? The others didn't murder him; they're detritivores, and they don't have knives, or guns, or teeth. There isn't enough population or money in there for them to have developed politics or unions yet. Jabba was huge, massive, one could even say overweight. The moisture and temperature of the bin have been kept within range. The worms have plenty of bedding that isn't broken down... hmmm. That bedding may still be intact, but the colour is awfully similar to the colour of their poop. The worms have been in there a hell of a long time with no bedding change or new feeding; I overfed the bin early and left it alone. They clearly prefer the new bedding and the "fresh" strawberries over what they already had. The worms got big, but they also got weird. Maybe... maybe the worms have done all they can with this old bedding. The system is close to being sealed, they don't have allies like isopods and stuff to shred things apart and ease processing. Maybe the stuff is so saturated with their leavings (toxic waste to them, same as everything else with its own excrement) that they can't eat or live in it anymore. Maybe Jabba was so big because he was bloated and sick. Okay big guy, I hear you. Your death won't have been in vain. Time to prepare something new for the survivors. Lizard unrelated, he just showed up while I was doing prep. Dig all that poisonous old bedding out, leaving just the new stuff. This is a good time to take inventory and see what I've got. Only three worms, but a little bit healthier, and one cocoon. No, make that four cocoons. I don't know whose they are, but I choose to believe they're all offspring of Jabba, knowing he had little time left and getting busy as possible. I'll take better care of your descendants, Jabba, your lineage won't end on my watch. New bedding will be a mix of egg carton cardboard, dry dead grass, and assorted shredded leaves and wood chips from a local tree trimmer's recent dump in my driveway. Wet it down with rain water, dump in a can of UCG for food, and a lot of ground egg shell for grit and pH buffering. Throw in the old bedding for microbial inoculation now that they finally got it balanced to stop stinking the place up. Mix it together, and... that's a lot of coffee grounds, this stuff is stained so dark it looks like it's already somewhat decayed. I'd better let it sit for a few days in case it heats up.