Is hot composted material still beneficial to worms, or have the worm suitable nutrients already been consumed?

Question

I have a sealed tumbler compost bin because I read that the high heat can help neutralize seeds from weed cast offs, that said I've also been considering the benefits of vermicomposting. As I pay more attention to what I'm throwing away I find I really do produce enough waste (junk mail, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, leaves) to maintain two separate, but preferably pipelined compost projects.

I'd like to keep the hot composter because it's high heat can kill weed seeds, I've tossed pretty much every weed in there since I started, it's nice to not have it filling my garbage bin. Having read that vermicomposted soil is generally better for your garden then hot composted soil, I'd like to look into that as well, but not as an alternative to hot composting. Would worms be able to make further use of hot-composted soil (after allowing it to cool for a minute), or do they need fresh veggie scraps?

Answer 1

Worms don't eat a lot of fresh veggie scraps. Instead, they eat "living organisms such as nematodes, protozoans, rotifers, bacteria, fungi in soil."

If you manage your compost pile so that it is teeming with these soil organisms ("hot composting" or "thermal composting" might do this or it might not, there are a lot of variations covered by this term and the processes and end results are quite different), there will be plenty of great stuff in it for worms to eat. Of course, it seems that they'd be just as happy eating it in your backyard as they would be eating it in a carefully managed worm bin.