Leaf mold - composted leaves - is not a product that is typically found from commercial sources. IOW, it is virtually impossible to find 'bagged' leaf mold for sale in the US (in the UK, much more likely). It is typically a homemade product. But since most commercial composting operations are based on yard waste collections, it is very likely that there is a reasonable percentage of leaves included in that compost. But you will not know what kind or in what percentage.

But very few plants require any specific type of leaf mulch. Any organic mulch will do! If you can let us know what types of plants you are contemplating, maybe we can help with mulch suggestions.

As to your potting soil dilemmas, all I can say is you are not looking hard enough :-) The ingredients to the custom, engineered soil mixes (like 5-1-1 or gritty mix) can be found just about anywhere. Cocoa coir, sphagnum peat moss, perlite or pumice, bark fines, even Turface or other calcined clay products are readily available at places like Home Depot, landscape supply yards and at many better garden centers. And in the case of bark fines, even pet supply stores.

In SoCal, you should have easy access to Kellogg's soil products (based in LA county). They sell soils and soil amendments under various labels depending on retailer. Look for Gardner & Bloome Organics (G&B Organics) and find their Acid Planting Mix. That is a nearly perfect soil mix for growing blueberries in containers or for amending garden soil to accommodate other acid loving plants. They sell an almost exactly identical product under both the Kellogg and Master Nursery labels as well.

Just an aside but specific mulch types tend to be very regional in their availability. Pine straw or pine needle mulch is pretty much restricted to the east coast and specifically the southeastern states, as that is where the pine trees - slash pine, longleaf pine, loblolly pine - supplying the mulch tend to grow. btw, it may be helpful to know that pine needles or pine straw will not contribute to soil pH in either direction so recommendations for use of them with acid loving plants is really a non-issue and promotes the myth that they are overly acidic. They are not!! Redwood bark will be common in your area as is fir bark in mine.......and either will work perfectly well with blueberries.

If you've been collecting leaves, and presumably piling them up or something, you have all you need for leaf mulch. Just spread it. If you want, you can partially compost them or shred them with a lawnmower or whatever, but you can also pretty much apply them as is. You don't have to wait for them to be leaf mold even if that might be better in some way.

Not the "right" kind of pine trees, annpat :-) Needles are not long enough to generate proper pine straw (although still perfectly acceptable to use in your own garden) and make it a commercially viable product.

I wondered the minute I posted it. (I deleted my prideful comment that Maine, the Pine Tree State, had more pine trees than any other.) Now that I think about it, I may have seen pine straw once—-much stiffer, and longer, needles than ours.

Many years ago Sunset magazine had a bit about a Los Angeles homeowner that had been getting free yard debris from neighbors all around him and spreading it on his place for years, resulting in it becoming this locally amazing lush oasis that didn't have to be watered much.

Thank you all! I remember seeing that GB Organics acid mix before, however, it was neither at the two Home Despot's nor the Lowe's. In fact, all three were pretty light on inventory, as were the nurseries, so I'm venturing a guess the fact that I'm exploring this mid November may have something to do with it. I'll keep searching. I've seen perlite and pumice, and I have seen moss in the past, which is what had me stomping around like an unhappy two year old. I have not seen coco coir yet (is it supposed to be very coarse?).

Speaking of which: is coco coir coconut or cacao bean? I could look it up myself, but then that would remove the need for this potential tangent discussion: I make chocolate from cacao beans as a hobby, and I've kept the shells from winnowing for no reason other than being lazy to dump them. Can I use this stuff as mulch or mix into soil? I wonder what sort of impact it would have on the soil.

I have saved a construction bag full of leaves from work. My goal is to add more when it starts to break down, I suspect the bag won't be much. It's purpose is to improve my chances that ramps will grow. Don't judge me :p A few sources on growing ramps presented that commercial mulch doesn't work (which doesn't exactly make sense), and further recommendations included specific types of hardwood. This almost suggests ramps behave like mushrooms, in that they require specific trees.. but.. well, we'll see. It'll be a fun experiment if nothing else!

Coir is the fiber from the husk of a coconut. And you can mulch your soil with pretty much anything you want. Cocoa bean shell mulch was a big deal a number of years ago but went out of favor as it is toxic to pets who are strongly attracted to the sweet, chocolate-y smell.

In SoCal, I'm not sure the time of year should have much bearing on locating landscaping/gardening supplies. In my area, gardening is a year round activity and so gardening supplies are available year round as well

One caution. Years ago when we started a big vegetable garden, we collected neighbors yard waste. In that material were the seeds of Bermuda grass, a terrible pest that we never could completely get rid of in the garden.

make your own mold, grow a cover crop. It is much better than leaf mold, and your back will love you.

Thank you for the information on coconuts and cacao shells.. I totally forgot about the potential toxicity of cacao beans to pets! Odd, I saw bags of the stuff at the nursery.

Thank you also for the info on the grass seeds and cover crops. I'm actually about to abandon the idea of the leaf mold, primarily because majority of the leaves are from my office complex, and I was reminded this morning about the airport jet-fuel fall-off as the stench took over. I may still go to neighbors, not sure at this point. Being in an urban area, I have a very small yard that's shaded, albeit very bright (indirect sun). I have a few "full sun" areas on my porch and patio, where I'll be growing some container veges and the blueberries. Don't know how well cover crops would work?

Another tangent: I read this composting thread for one: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1656715/composting-ideas-for-single-person

I am wondering whether I can even compost? Being coastal, it doesn't get too warm, and the only spots where I have sun are precious so I would put a planter there, hoping the HOA security patrol won't fine me. That, and I don't get too much in way of any actual trimmings (most of my landscaping is comprised of low maintenance succulents). I have very few table scraps, since I eat nearly everything.

The research into composting then led me to worm composting. Will the worms even survive? I'd have about 900g coffee grounds monthly, and lots of cardboard boxes and copy paper with black ink destined for the shredder at work. Occasionally there'd be tea bags and some lettuces I don't finish in time, and rarely stale bread. Hmmmm. Suppose I could talk to neighbors and ask for their table scraps ?! Doesn't sound like I really have much to go on here. Thoughts?

@J, I'm unclear on what you want to do. If you want lots of extra organic materials for mulching, vermicomposting will have far too little output for your needs. The worms can survive on very little - and while you may not have much table scraps, things like banana peels and carrot tops and broccoli stems etc can add up quick. (Note when we say table scraps for worm food, it doesn't really mean leftover food, but veggie and food scraps from preparing food).

What do you want the compost/mulch for?

(Side note, I kind of doubt that jet fuel contamination is a big issue, but that's just a gut feeling)

Armoured: Hah, sorry about that. Originally I was looking to mulch a few of my container plants/experiments.

This diverted in my head into what seems to be a rather common question, what to do with left over coffee grounds. Typical answers include things like just throw it out, mix into the soil, compost, grow mushrooms, etc. Since I'm in the process of planning out my first fruits and vege garden this next season, composting (or worms) not only seemed kind of interesting, but also appropriate. It has been fun to learn about. Make sense?

I thought composting and worms are kind of the same thing.. results are not for mulching on top, but rather something to mix into the soil (ground, container, etc), right? Would it help to share everything I am trying to do?

Understood regarding specifically veggie scraps for worms :)

Fruit parts placed outdoors in a coastal area will need to be housed in such as way that wharf rats do not get into them. If you have raccoons those are also likely to be interested, often contain parasitic worms that are a hazard to children in particular. (Known cases each year are few in number in the US but like shark bites and lightning strikes are so nasty as to be best avoided whenever possible).

Except when growing flowering annuals and annual vegetables organic matter should not be dug into ground beds, with it instead being used as mulch when dealing with longer term plants.

If you're starting new beds what I suggest is google "horse boarding" with your town and state in the search phrase. Make a list of places near you. Call them and ask if you can haul off their excess horse manure. You want to visit a few near you. You want to look at how easy it is to get back out of the dump site. And you want to judge the manure. Mostly based on what they use as bedding for the horses. Wood chips are the worst. Straw is very good except that you need a fork not a spade to dig into it. The site I use has no bedding, which means there is a dirt floor in the stalls.

It's my opinion that compost should be used as an amendment to existing plantings, not to improve raw dirt. Only because very few people will have enough compost to make much of a difference.

I started a large new garden this past season. I started last fall amending the bed (hard clay) where I planted potatoes, because my rule is not to plant root crops or leafy veggies in freshly amended soil with manure. As a guide to how much to use. I dug in 3 inches of old black horse manure. My potatoes plants were 5 foot high and my tomatoes were about 8 feet tall and very lush. This year I'm digging new beds again. I'm working on the potato beds now and am digging in 2 inches of mushroom manure and then digging it a second time incorporating well composted wood chips mixed with leaf compost.

J: if it's left over coffee grounds, my view is they can just be spread on the ground as is. Don't cover your entire yard foot deep in them, but modest amounts hardly noticeable. They're already ground and basically ready to mix into ... well, 'the' ground by just leaving on top.

@armoured: what happens if you run out of space adding the coffee grounds? Go back and start again, or, just throw out the grounds until it appears they've been.. fully incorporated... and start up again? Sorry to belabour the point, I'm just looking for a way to, well, try something new. I didn't learn about this kind of stuff growing up :p

On the other soil topic, @gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9), I called all nurseries within about a 45 minute drive from me, including hardware stores and commercial vendors. Several had either Dr. Earth brand or EB Stone brand. Both list redwood as one of the first ingredients. All who answered the phone told me it was okay, I could use it for blueberries. I asked about the G&B product, and one guy at Lowe's said they stopped carrying it earlier this year. I did, however, find one nursery with a single bag left, and then another just a bit further out of reach that had about a dozen. We're have wonderful weather right now, so I did not mind the drive and trip, although, there's probably no hard using the soils here in my neighborhood haha. It's part of the adventure.

WOW. That.. uhm... I'll sit down now. Wherever your "here" is, it's beautiful :) I'm going to do a whopping three or four blueberry bushes in self-watering pots. :p

The last place I lived at was a large acreage near here. There was a patch of blueberries about 75'X 200'. Very small berries but delicious. I never saw them look like the picture here but I'm posting this because there were never any weeds. My small patch here gets lots of weeds.

edit:

The deer didn't eat the plants.

Hey J, I live in the foothill wildlands of LA County and would be overjoyed to share whatever leaves or pine needles you might want. Your composting interest and my fire clearance interest could be mutually beneficial?

@J: you would have to drink enormous amounts of coffee to 'run out of space' even in a small yard. Let's worry about that when the time comes. I toss coffee grounds into my yard from time to time, after a week you'd have to look very hard to find a sign of it.

I’m in the middle of blueberry country Maine. Our berries are small, wild, native and DE-Licious and bear almost no resemblance to the fat, near flavorless, high bush blueberries most of you are familiar with. We get to brag about our blueberries, because Maine is almost uninhabitable, without much to brag about.

Deer don’t eat the plants, but they, and every other critter in the neighborhood, definitely eat the berries. To add insult to injury, birds will leave droppings of my own blueberries on my deck. The reason you see such gorgeous expanses of weed-free blueberry fields, John, is glysophate. I have a constant battle keeping goldenrod, milkweed and black-eyed Susan out of my formerly pristine field now that we’ve gone organic. Our only weapons against weeds are burning and mowing. This is my organic field. I have absolutely no idea who those trespassers are, and oddly, I felt shy photographing the lovely group trampling my plants.

annpat, we can discuss the pros and cons of regional blueberry production at another time, but here in WA state, with the largest commercial blueberry production in the country, there is nothing flavorless about our berries!! That's what 99% of the population is buying when they purchase blueberries at the grocery store. The Maine berries are just a different and lower growing rhizomatous species :-) Equally as good but you might get a fight with an insistence on being "better".

j, I would not worry about mulching any container plantings. They don't require it and it can interfere with proper water percolation and drainage. However, any inground planting will benefit from being mulched but as long as it is an organic product - one that decomposes over time like bark, wood chips, leaves, grass clippings, compost, etc. - any readily available mulch will work.

btw ramps - wild onion/garlic - do not require any specific type of leaf or tree mulch. But they do have rather unique growing requirements that could easily limit their adaptability to southern California. They require cool soil temps, consistently moist (not wet) soils and prefer some shade. They are by nativity woodland plants, which may be where you are getting the notion that they require a certain type of tree mulch to thrive. They are also spring ephemerals, so have a very short harvest window. I would think them to be a bit of a challenge to grow in SoCal :-))

With all due respect, gardengal, I always feel sorry for people who have only tasted grocery store blueberries (what we scornfully call Jersey Berries), because the ones available in our grocery stores are a watery version of what grow in Maine. It’s rare to see native blueberries in our bigger grocery stores; they’re primarily found at roadside stands.

I will grant you that Washington State has the best peaches, pears, blackberries, and grapes I’ve ever had (I visited the Olympia marketplace) but I won’t concede on the blueberries. You’ll have to visit Maine so I can show you. In July, the only half-way decent month we have.

I've had Maine blueberries.....but only canned. They don't sell any fresh ones here :-) And while they were good, they were not discernibly "better" than any other blueberry :-) So we may have to agree to disagree. And I can't think of many types of fruit that WA state doesn't do very well......you omitted apples and cherries, which are exceptional here!! I live in a very fruity state!! LOL!!

No, canned and frozen berries are no good. You can’t judge our blueberries by those perfumy canned ones. You’re making me very upset that I didn’t have any cherries while there. I wonder why I didn’t. I was there in August.

I actually took four quarts of blueberries with me in my carry-on and they got rave reviews, but, I admit, Polly is a Mainer and may be prejudiced.

Polly—-our acquaintance in common—-dehydrated her own grapes, and I have never had raisins even remotely that delicious.

I was struck by the beauty of annpat's image of the blueberry field. And I noticed that there were no weeds, and there were no weeds in my old patch. However unless you've picked the small berries off the bush and tried them you won't know how delicious they are. I have noticed with my current 5 varieties that the smaller they are the better the taste. The same thing with store berries. If you compare a package containing small berries they will taste better. Doesn't seem to matter where they're grown. I would guess that if annpat planted larger fruited blueberries in the her field that the small ones would taste better and vice versa. But I find it hard to believe that a commercial grower in the PNW would consider planting the small fruited berries. Taste be damned.

The problem with the small berries is that they are hard to pick. I tried once in my old field to pick them. Took maybe an hour to pick a half cup. I recently saw a blueberry picker. Looked like an old metal dust pan that was repeatedly run thru a bologna slicer. I wish I'd had one in those days.

@annpat and @gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9): I have heard wild blueberries are delicious, and I hope to try them some day. I've got a few low-chill varieties that will hopefully work out.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9): I understand the difficulty with ramps, and I'm not expecting to be successful. Some hope, however, because the following makes this project at least seem worth trying:

1. there's a no-sun shaded nook between the houses surrounded by concrete that remains cool throughout the year

2. I believe a sub-irrigated container system will maintain a moist soil - tall, deep buckets will help keep the gradient of the wet portion lower

3. I am coastal, and though we had a few days that breach 90F here this past summer, we've got a cool breeze most of the time and only get a few weeks of temps in the mid 80s. If temps get too warm during the summer, I can quickly relocate into my spare room which rarely exceeds 72F.

4. If it's necessary to get colder (low to sub-40F), I have a spare fridge connected to a temp controller for other projects, and it will easily fit one or two of my containers

I've already ordered the ramp bulbs, so... I'll report back at some point if this works out. Maybe I'll change the industry :)

On another note, today I did some cleanup in my tiny yard, resulted with a small pail filled with gardenia flowers, a spent hydrangea bloom, rose trimmings, lavender stalks, and a few houseplant leaves. I also have a daikon radish in the fridge that's gone soft, some persimmon peels, and about 900g of used coffee grounds (~1 months' worth). These would be perfect for compost and/or worms, but.. this is a highly unusual haul for me. So, into the trash they go :(

LOL!! I forgot that you knew Polly!! And I would have loved to have tasted some fresh Maine blueberries. You should have messaged me and we could all have met up! And you might have missed the cherries by August...that's when all the Yakima Valley stone fruit starts to ripen and they take over........nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums. OMG, are they good!!

btw, small fruited blueberries are not restricted to Vaccinium angustifolium. Top Hat - a hybrid between V angustifolium (the Maine berry) and V. corymbosum - is very popular and Blue Jay also produces smaller berries.

Flavor of horticultural blueberry selections is to a large extent determined by which particular kind they are in each instance, same as with other fruit cultivars.

I hope this won't offend anyone, but I wonder if what some are comparing and referring to as wild blueberries are actually blueberries or possibly in fact bilberries or whortleberries (allowing for wildly inconsistent naming of berries in English by region), sometimes called bog bilberries, bog blueberries, etc) - Vaccinium uliginosum. And as @gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) notes, there are a host of other vaccinium familiy berries and crossbreeds and cultivars (I see dozens referred to as blueberries). I've definitely been given/fed 'wild blueberries' that I'm quite certain were bilberries, and in Europe there's the bilberry often called Euorpean blueberry (V. myrtillus), etc. There's a lot more variety than implied in the 'mainstream' blueberry commonly found in shops.

John, Maine’s wild blueberries are farmed commercially. My brother and I are commercial blueberry growers. Fields are strung off with string, each worker is given a strung row, which they bend over and rake with the tined rake you describe, dumping the contents of the rake into a five gallon bucket as they move down their prescribed row. It’s hard on the back. I have a sweet antique blueberry rake sized for a child. When I was a kid, at least half the workers in a field were local children. This was the first year we used mechanical harvesters in our field. The very sun-weathered, 30ish year-old harvesters told me they were train riders who were headed next to Washington state for grape harvest. I was in the field actually picking the berries I was taking to Washington the next day. Why picking, not raking? Because raked berries get roughed up and are always a little softer from abuse than hand-picked berries.

Gardengal, Polly tried to guess who you are. She made one guess, which would really surprise me. I’d have loved to meet up with you! If we gather there again, you’ll have to come meet up with us. We had a great time camping three nights on Mt. Rainier and kayaking and motor boating around Harstine. I’ve been to Washington once before, and, as everyone must, think it‘s just the swellest place on earth.

armoured, the majority of my berries are augustifolium, but we have at least three other wild species in the field—-including a tall, high bush species, which the harvesters tend to walk around. I don’t know if we have bilberry. I think they might be found in the West. We do have a small black blueberry in the field identified as nigrum. They all get raked up together.

annpat-My big blueberry patch was wild. My seller was an estate, and the son lived on a lot out of that tract. They never asked to pick berries, which I'd guess they would have had they planted them. I never put down any herbicide and the only fertilizing was done by the deer, which I did see in the patch. I'd guess the deer were also responsible for what planting got done. The patch was on a definite slope so it wasn't a bog. I have no idea what variety they were. They were all about 18" tall.

Now that I'm retired I'd sure love to still be living there. The blueberries, room for a big orchard, a vineyard and all the veggie garden that I could keep the deer out of. And another opportunity to raise a steer. Grain fed beef!

We collected some 9 bags of fallen leaves bagged up already outside a church after asking for permission. I shredded them with a lawn mower and it took me 3 hours solid to do this. The finer they are shredded, the faster they will decompose. Now that I have some shredded leaves up and running, the next batch will not be shredded. I would either find an area or bag them up using black bags and piercing some holes around the bag and spray the leaves with water from time to time to speed up the process. I did this last week.

For blueberries, you can gather Christmas trees discarded and use the pine needles to raise the acidity of the soil. You could even add a bit of coffee grind which you can get free from coffee shop. Not too much though. You certainly need to start with ericaceous compost though.

For other compost, I add kitchen waste, hoovered waste, horse manure, coffee grinds, newspaper, cardboard waste, chicken poo, ground egg shells, garden waste and let them decompose. If you live near the sea, seaweeds are brilliant as the juice from them contains other minerals and vitamins for plants. I also added some compost activator into the bin last year. They have turned out to be woodlice like creepers and they really worked hard 2 months ago. I was so happy to see crumbly compost falling down to the base of the compost bin. Now it's a bit cold, the process has slowed down. You don't really need money to buy coir and all that. Now that recycling is all the rage, you could put an advert in these sites and sometimes get things for free. I also have 2 wormeries, obtained for free via recycling sites, and when I had no more chicks, I dumped their fine feed into one of them. Any rotten bananas, ground oats can be added to the mix. I didn't even bother to buy worms. I just picked some from my compost bin. The juice is good for gardening and then I can add the worm cast near the bottom tier to my borders

I try not to buy. Poor but optimistic garden enthusiasts like me have to be resourceful. I'm only sharing my experience and I hope it could be useful to others.

Incidentally, if you could use a drum roll-able bin to instead of an upright or an open heap, it might even be more productive. Something like this.

" For blueberries, you can gather Christmas trees discarded and use the pine needles to raise the acidity of the soil. You could even add a bit of coffee grind which you can get free from coffee shop.

Both of these statements reflect a rather pervasive but inaccurate garden myth........neither conifer needles nor used coffee grounds will have any measurable effect on soil pH. Fresh - green - conifer needles are indeed acidic but once they dry and fall off, they have lost much of that acidity and approach a neutral pH. And even if very fresh, you would need truck loads of them to alter pH appreciably. And all the acidity in the coffee is in the expressed liquid itself - the spent grounds also test out at neutral or nearly so.

And neither ingredient will be of value in a container potting mix and will negatively impact the aeration and drainage capacity of the mix as well.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9): thanks for confirming acidity about the pine needles. I'm aware of this with coffee, but wasn't sure about the needles. I always thought majority of "acidity" in compost was created through the process of the organic matter breaking down, anyway, not necessarily related to the material itself (which I'm sure can contribute).

@MYAL plantLOVER: if I do compost heap, then in my situation, I would probably need to use one of the "prettier" tumblers, and it'd have to be on the smaller side. This thread has become long so what I mentioned earlier likely got lost: I'm just not sure I get enough heat year-round for composting to work, have enough actual stuff to put in (minimal garden waste and eat almost everything) and then whether I could control the smell and not get in trouble with the HOA. That's why worm composting seemed interesting, as I could keep that in my second bedroom where heat and smell won't be an issue, and maybe I'll get by somehow with coffee and cardboard when I don't have enough vegetarian scraps. However, someone else here asked me what I'm trying to do with all this, and, well, I'm not sure :) Maybe I'm just trying to further explore new hobbies.

Actually, the decomposition process itself neutralizes acidity....compost that is essentially "finished" - ie., no discernible pieces left to identify - is also very close to a neutral pH.

And you do not need year round heat to get a compost to work properly - gardeners in much colder locations than coastal SoCal are able to generate compost even through the winter months. With the right proportion of ingredients and any necessary turning or aeration, compost generates its own heat!!

One other minor point to MYA’s post, which I admired for her enthusiasm:

if your worm bin is producing enough liquid to pour off, you are either over feeding or over watering.

j, worms can live fine on relatively small amounts of food - and bedding is food to them as well. So go ahead and give it a try. Once you've got it under way, you can likely find some stuff to add.

My point before was, don't expect huge physical volumes of completed compost from worms for use in your yard, especially to start with. Since you have a small yard and are new, I'd suggest just buying in some soil amendment/mulch as needed to start. Keep your eyes open and you'll find some stuff in time within your budget (threads here have many examples, like getting wood chips from companies that trim around utility lines). Maybe you'll also meet neighbours and get some sense of what's feasible in your area.

(I think a lot more people have got disappointed by trying to rush into composting all at once, it's not a race).

MYA plantLOVER

I shredded them with a lawn mower and it took me 3 hours solid to do this.

In a carbon neutral manner?

@armoured: thanks. My yard's already amended and mulched up, I guess all this is mostly for the continued amendment, and maybe supplanting any container fruits/veges I will try in the spring (e.g. the aforementioned blueberries, then I plan to try a couple container tomatoes and strawberries, and whatever else) - thought maybe getting a head start would be good :)

@j, ah, okay, clear now! Yes, go ahead and try worms. It's kind of fun, and they don't really require that much food. As in other thread, it's actually best to not overfeed - they can get by for quite a while with small amounts (they also consume the bedding).

Regarding needing tons of pine pins to raise acidity, it's like people saying putting plants indoors will purify the air. You literally need tons to do that. But I will still do it.

annpat Thank you for the advice! They are not doing much as it's so cold and I have no intention of bringing them indoors.

rifis That's why I said I wouldn't be doing that again. Not that it's not carbon neutral, but that I am too lazy! LOL! And I do keep an eye on my electricity bill! I've got to start somewhere.

This might be unrelated. You could put in an advert, asking for spent mushroom compost and see if you have any luck. It's ideal for mulching. Earlier, some company wanted to get rid of the leftovers of their juicing materials. You really never know!

Thanks, @armoured. I ended up with more than enough plastic 3.5 and 4.2 gallon buckets* from last weekend's grocery store romp so I can try a no-cost** worm bin approach. Doing research now. Although buckets can be used, seems the commercial units have wider, shorter bins which look a lot like the super cheap restaurant bus boxes. Those look easier to work with, although, the buckets' taller sides might dissuade the worms from climbing up and I've already cleaned them out.

* can't seem to find anyone with 5 gallon buckets, but the smaller ones will do for my purposes

** several were frozen egg buckets, those took a few hours to clean out, and oh I don't know if I'll ever forget the stench of rancid egg enveloped in fermenting marmelade and sweet sweet chocolate icing... the horror... the horror...

This pile is now in Delaware. My nephew thanked me, and then said to his wife, “My aunt once gave me all the bedding from her cleaned-out chicken house!” I thought to myself, “Damn. That was generous. I should examine this evident need to buy my nephew’s love.”

Too bad you don’t have an aunt, j.

You're to young to be my Aunt but if i lived closer, I'd adopt you as my sister! :)