I wanted to show you this bin because it unexpectedly turned into a worm bin (don't they all though, lol).
My wife made it last summer after reading on the internet about a 'bird's nest bin' composter - you fashion brush, sticks, old garden stalks etc. into a circle and fill it with your compost materials. The idea is that the walls will eventually compost as well. I'd been cutting spruce trees at the time. Using the boughs to make the bin seemed like a good alternative to burning them. DW sort of wove them into each other to make this surprisingly sturdy wreath about ten feet in diameter.

Realizing this compost wouldn't be easy to work or even access we started throwing in slow-composting stuff like weeds with roots. Besides which spruce boughs are long lasting. We thought it would be a long-term project compared to the pallet bins, one we'd keep adding to, maybe even for a few years. We also threw in a few shovelsful of manure when we had some and topped it off in the fall with leaves.

By this spring the wreath was brown. Half the needles had fallen off. The material inside had reduced from two feet deep down to about ten inches. I climbed into it, dug down and found it teeming with worms, and much of the stuff already very nice castings.

So...do you think we could manage this bin as a worm bin? It would be nice to have some castings for transplanting, and to make tea with. But I don't want to waste worms on the garden or drown them. Would it work to bury kitchen scraps in one end of the pile and wait, and if so, for how long?

But that's one of the coolest garden features I've ever seen. Really!

As for how long, I think you'll just have to watch it and see when it looks "done" enough for whatever your purpose is. You already know that compost doesn't have to be completely finished to be useful, although I guess for tea you'd want it pretty mature.

Cool idea! Will you add new branches around it this year?

I forgot to mention - because I plain forgot; winter tends to wipe the memory banks - that a bunch of shellfish plant waste also went into the pile, and that I purposely diverted shovelsfull of manure that had red wrigglers in it to this pile, so a worm village should not have been entirely unexpected.

The problem of separating castings comes partly from the fact that these fine castings are mixed with stalks and clumps of roots. So I think I'll keep adding to the pile this year, give it more time.

The perspective in the picture is odd - makes it look like the pallet bins are far from the bird's nest, which looks huge. The wall of it is about 2 1/2' high - a little higher than the dog on the right if that helps. :)

How about somebody try this bin using other stuff - sunflower and/or other stalks - and tell us how it goes?

What is pine straw exactly?

Thank you so much. I think it is very clever.