No, nothing other then a THICK layer of Mulch. I seldom have any problems with Weeds coming up where I've Mulched. When creating a new bed I till(by hand), weed, add amendments, plant and Mulch. I think many people have problems because they don't put down the original Mulch heavily enough. For first time Beds I go a good 3" layer, maybe 4". Come early spring I always go around each Bed with a square Shovel and re-cut out the shape of the Bed. I do this because the Grass always grows several inches into the edge of the Bed. It's just a matter of cleaning up the edges. It takes forever but, it's only once each spring. Usually, but not always, I add a top layer each spring to dress it up a little. It always looks so much better. So, the trick is a REAL HEAVY first time layer. For me at least. Forgive me if I make it sound so simple but, this is all I have to do here in New Jersey. If you've tried this and it doesn't work, It's possible that the Weeds are tougher in your warmer climate. Good luck, Dan

I don't argue the min and max temps, I have seen from experience in my own bin though that they are very sluggish down around 40f and I've had it up to 90f last summer out side in the sun and never had a mass exodus or die off. My main point for the OP is that in an open bottom CP they will come and go as they please. The OP didn't say if they had an open bottom or tumbler. I wouldn't add worms to a tumbler, but wouldn't be concerned if a few ended up in there either. I should also state that my worm bin is larger than most bins. 18gal and I keep it nearly full to the top. Conventional wisdom says no more than a few inches deep but I've had no problems w/ mine, and I'm sure the added volume gives them more room to move around to find a desirable habitat.

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

I would put in some more friendly bedding. I put in some organic home made compost with the news paper and card baord. THey really like old wet cardbaord. having some soil in there helps. Where they came from probably had compost, soil or at least worm castings all over, so the new moist news print might seem like a foriegn place to them. you could put soil or compost in just half of your worm bin and see if they like it. Egg shells crushed up very fine and boil some leaves and put them in there too. News paper or any thing natural is hard to break down with out any soil in it or with out much worm castings in there. Once the soil is mixed in with paper, cardbaord or leaves ist will start to break down and end up as food stuff for the creatures in the bin and the worms too. The creatures are bacteria and stuff we cannot see. Newly wet news print is not food instantly, it is only a place to hide for now. BUt in time it will break down and get slimey or decompose and become food. Good luck BIll C