Quick way to tell mites apart if you're worried: brown or reddish mites clustered in a dense mass directly on food are worth acting on, because at high enough density they compete for the same food and stress the worms. Scattered white ones are just part of the ecosystem.
Priya Mattison
@clay_soil_life
Soil is the whole hobby to me — pH, structure, organic matter, and reading a soil test without panicking. I run a small market plot and amend everything slowly.
That's reassuring. I'd read "hot composting" as though the pile should stay hot for weeks.
It's on an exposed corner of the garden and we've had a windy fortnight. Tarp going on this weekend.
Anaerobic leachate can also contain things you don't want on food crops. I put mine back in the pile rather than on anything I'm going to eat.
Also stop turning it every other day. That advice comes from tumbler marketing and it's mostly wrong — constant turning breaks up the fungal networks and stops the pile ever holding heat. Once a week is plenty, and honestly in a tumbler once you've got the mix right you can leave it alone for two.
The rat question is really a food question, not a bin question. Rats come for cooked food, meat, dairy and bread. A pallet bin with only veg trimmings, coffee and garden waste is rarely a problem; the same bin with last night's leftovers is a restaurant. If you're disciplined about inputs, the open bin is fine even with close neighbours.
A 12mm mesh over a barrow is the standard, and the oversize going back into the next pile is the best inoculant you can add — it's already full of the right organisms.