You may have trouble finding someone who will ship to SoCal this time of year. Worm suppliers guarantee live delivery, and they will not ship when the weather is too hot to insure the health of the worms.

Acme Worm Farm in Tuscon is a good source (you can find them on the net) but they are not shipping until September.

Hi Purpleclover,
We are located in NorCal and we will ship worms to SoCal as long the worms are delivered in the morning and someone is at the shipping address to accept delivery of the worms. Or we can have them left at the Post Office for you to pick up.
Beth

I'd recommend that you ask the worm seller to have the worms held at the post office for you to pick up. They'll avoid any chance of sitting in the sun on a porch, plus miss the hot delivery truck ride to your house. Better to have them hang out in the air-conditioned post office until you pick them up.

Thanks for the responses. I live in the SF Valley (hot summer) and no basement.

I was planning on having the composter outside. Should I wait until September to order worms and get started?

Thanks so much.

Is that San Fernando valley? I think that it is too hot to have a worm bin outside. Do you have a garage? If you wait until the fall when it is cooler, what are you going to do in the spring and summer when it gets hotter?

If you are doing everything correctly, worm bins do not stink. Many people have them in their kitchens or pantries and I have even heard of some people having them in their bedrooms!

If you want a worm bin outside and have a shady spot, I think it would be just fine if you're able to dig the worm bin down into the soil so that the top is just above flush with the ground. If you're using a standard Rubbermaid container, that would be about 15" of digging -- not more that a dozen shovel fulls or so. Even with daytime temps in the 100s, a bin sunk into the ground probably won't go above the 80s. This would only work in the shade, though. If you don't have reliable shade, you could easily make it with a piece of plywood on 4 cinder blocks over where you place the bin -- just has to be shady and have air-flow between the cover and the ground.

Cheers,
Jase - Wormy Acres of Vermont .

In thinking about this a bit more, my idea for creating shade for a dug-in bin with a piece of plywood may not be good. The soil outside the shady area will still heat up from the sun, and will slowly transfer heat laterally to the bin. It would be far, far better than a bin on the surface, but still maybe too warm.

If you have an area where it's shady all day (under a tree, or on the North side of something), that would be your spot. Digging down will give you a huge moderation in temperature. Your temperature of the soil will remain near constant day and night, and be something near the average of daytime and nightime temperature. So if your daytime temp is 95, and your nightime temp is 75, ground temp should be close to 85 -- at the upper range for red wigglers, but still workable. You could always just dig a hole and check the temperature a foot or so deep to find out.

I will ship to socal with a live worm guarantee as well. :-)

I started my first wormbin a little over a month ago. I got my worms at a nursery in Ventura (Green Thumb Intl, 1899 S Victoria Ave Ventura, CA 805-485-5487) since I wanted to get them locally and not wonder if they'd survive shipping. The worms they had were from Tip Top Bio (tiptopbio.com) in Westlake Village. You could try contacting them to see if they supply to any nurseries close to you. They were about $15 for a chinese-food-takeout container of worms (1 lb I think?)