We just had a discussion on this topic and a wide variety of opinions were expressed but no there is no reason to add soil to the compost material. Once it was thought that putting good, rich soil on the material to be composted would add the bacteria that would digest that material. Today we know that all of the material we put into be composted already has the bacteria that will digest them in place, that is why the foods left out develop the fuzzy stuff on them. Mycorrhiza refers to a relationship some fungi have with plants and not to any specific fungi. That relationship is most often symbiotic, mutually beneficial, in that the fungi get sugars from the plant in exchange to providing necessary nutrients to the plant. Mycorrhiza is not a specific fungi that you can add to soil or compost no matter what the sellers of products may tell you. Each plant develops this relationship with different fungi.

Squeeze Bill: My bins are on sale so I'm planning the harvest. There are so many different (and conflicting) info about harvesting. I did read a tidbit on a kid's site that you can just let your bin go for 3-4 months and not do a thing but then you will have committed VERMICIDE since the worms will all die. I am NOT going to do that!! At the workshop I attended we did do a harvest the cone-way but that was just a mini-bin . . . I graduated to the 10-gallon plastic bin so it is going to be a lot of work! To spare my back I think I'll use the picnic table and I will cover it with a tarp and hope my harvest day is not windy. So I am going to do a combination of the cone and the one-bin-in-another! 1) DUMP the bin and do the cone & scoop. And because I want LOW VERMICIDE rate I am going to put everything back in the "old bin" and the wormies tha I cone & scoop will go in the new bin which will sit in the old bin. . . 2) The new bin with holes on the bottom and with some bedding on one side (so I can see the migration and tracks on the bare plastic) and yummy food ready for baby wormies & the ones who hid from me during the cone & scoop to make their move. 3) I am going to let the original bin "dry out" a bit and not add anything to that bin to promote the migration. and do I fluff up the bottom bin, maybe once a week to see if it is drying out nice and there are no stragglers? Worm Nelly

Congratulations! It took me about 6 hours over a few days because I ran out of daylight. I've only done one harvest, but when I had started I wanted to make sure I got every single egg and worm. After a few hours I got more laid back and separated the adults from the vermicompost that contained the juveniles and cocoons. A few days later, I went through the harvested vermicompost and removed the baby worms and cocoons. I checked it a week and then a few weeks afterward for any baby worms that may have hatched. I didn't use paper bedding on my first bin. I had a mixture of different types of bedding. I used 1 to 2 inch squares of cardboard, American Sphagnum moss (very tough & stringy), and some torn and whole coffee filters. My vermicompost came out like a moist dark cake. Yours is a lighter color, but I've seen others with lighter color vermicompost. Did it smell earthy? How many months did you give your worms before you harvested? Charles

Thanks, everyone!! I think I will go with the green bin approach, since I worry that the perlite will just blow around and be a bother around the building. It already happens in my pots! Funny how it seems to end up on top, I guess bc it's lighter. Since the balcony gets so hot, I think the soil just gets baked into oblivion and I don't feel comfortable reusing it in my pots, no matter what else I put in. Just out of curiosity... how does it get composted by the big composting outfits? Is it that it gets put in with such a large amount of actual compost in the making, that the fact that the structure has been ruined gets so diluted that it doesn't matter anymore? Maybe it somehow reclumpifies or something?