This forum is for pictures; you may want to post on the compost discussions forum to get replies. Good Luck!

Ignore those rocks! I am living on a rock ....literally! The area was blasted before the house was built and you cannot put a spade into the ground w/out hitting a 50lb (at least rock) anywhere. I have mulched and lasagna'd (is that a word?) a large area in order to cut back the stiltgrass and where I had to, I dug up boulders but otherwise stones like yours provide excellent drainage and I remove them only while digging holes for planting trees...so just remove them as you go.

Fast 'hot' composting requires a good mix of green (Nitrogen) and brown (Carbon) materials along with moisture and air. Fast hot compost can be finished as soon as 2-3 weeks. But if the mixture isn't right, you have cold compost which will break down in time, but may take a year or more. Now there's nothing wrong with cold compost - it's every bit as good as hot compost - it just takes longer...a lot longer. Vermicomposting is really a form of cold composting. Worms will process finished or near finished compost and it can make an excellent bedding material. However, it is important to also provide materials that are [more] actively decomposing to provide an ample feedstock. You 'can' purchase a COW, but you might want to begin with a simple rubbermaid/sterlite 10g or 18g bin. Your basement will be a bit cool at 50F as worms do best at 70F. They will be very slow, almost dormant at 50F, but they would be 'okay'. Also, as Bill points out, these won't really handle the volumes of material I think you're talking about. What you might better do is add worms to your outdoor compost heaps?

I always have good luck with Nasturtium, California Poppy and Larkspur seeds. I've not ever planted seeds for these, but they seem to reseed well in my garden: Impatiens, salvia coccinea, purple coneflowers, pigeonberry, turks cap, gold columbine, pavonia, Mexican petunia (watch out for this one), purple skullcap.