Customer Reviews

Worm Factory DS5TT 5-Tray Worm Composter - Terra Cotta

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have had worm farms before, but this is the easiest way to actually seperate the food from the castings. You use a system of trays, intially placing the food in the bottom tray, and the tray above it is mostly fiberous material. Then you stop feeding them on the lower tray and then start adding food to the tray up above, and then adding another more fiberous tray.

This system eliminates the feeding the worms in one spot and then pulling out the castings, trying to leave all of the worms in there you can. I like that the worms have more mobility so just in case your feeding area is too wet they can move around. I also like there is lots of air in this system so everything doesn't get too wet.

The tray system was easy to put together, it took only a few minutes. It also comes with your initial bedding of coconut husks. Ideally you will want to put your farm into place, and wet down your bedding, and then get your worms. There are instructions on the top of the lid of the bin to tell you what to feed your worms with, and a great guide that also comes with the bin. I highly recommend this worm bin.

I purchased this system 6 months ago and I have been very happy with it. I previously had a homemade worm bin and I have found that this stacking system is much more efficient. I was very suprised with how quickly it was able to generate "worm tea", a very good liquid fertilizer for your garden. My system generates at least 1 quart of this fertilizer every two weeks. (In the same time period my homemade system produced less than 1 cup).

It is also very good for producing waste free castings. By the time I added the 4th tray to my system, the 1st tray was completely converted to castings. This took about 3 months.

I use the system in a very "low maintenance" fashion and it works well for me. I don't microwave any of the scraps (microwaving is completely unnecccary), and I generally don't do any extra cutting before adding food to the worm bin (sometimes I even put in whole fruits or vegetables that have gone bad). The worms eventually eat the food. The worms don't eat anything until the bacteria in the bin have broken it down. If you cut up the vegetables small, the bacterial will break it up faster, so the worms will be able to eat it faster. If you don't cut it up it just takes longer, so you might need more trays. I have found that 5 bins is sufficient to compost 3-5 lbs of vegetable waste per week using the "low maintenance" method.

I have only one small complaint about the system. The manufacturere claims that the worms will eventually separate from the castings. After 6 months I haven't found this to be true, the worms are still present in significant quantities in the 1st tray. Since the worms have greatly multiplied since adding them to the system, I'm just going to proceed with dumping both the worms and castings into the garden. I'm confident that there will be sufficient worms in the system to keep it going. If you need to have your casting free of worms, I'm afraid you'll be separating by hand.

the construction of the bin is fairly sturdy, and seemingly utilitarian--will find out the true value after steady use and gaining more experience. After a month he worms are happy but one needs to go VERY easy on adding starchy scraps!

*****what was left out of the manual:
when you set up your Worm Factory with the wiggling guest--cranky after the long trip--freshly arriving, leave the lights on for the first few days at night until they get comfortable and do not have the urge any more to find their old environmental conditions by crawling out the bin! (I had later found out that some vendors sell bins with tiny, permanently on lights over the bin to ensure that the worm stay put)

*****what was wrong/misinformation in the manual:
the spigot is to drain the _leachate_, that may accumulate if you overwater; it is NOT compost tea--if anything --it should NOT be used on plants because with the occasional drowned straggler it becomes anaerobic (you can smell it)

I've used the Worm Factory 5-tray for about 8 months now, and i had previously also used a can-o-worms. Both products seem to work about equally well. I like the Worm Factory because it just seems like a sturdier design - the legs on the can-o-worms are a little wonky and require it to be set on a firm (ie concrete) pad or they sink unevenly into the dirt, and seemed ready to fall over. So the Worm Factory legs are a lot better. However, the Can O Worms top was much more rain resistant. The worm factory is definitely not rain resistant, it is practically open on the top, which lets in too much water when it rains.

Some other notes:
Either product, it does take a little extra time to run these things, every few months so often you need to collect some leaves, empty a tray, etc. daily, i find myself cooking and crushing my eggshells and finely chopping up my fruit peels, but that is probably more from obsession than necessity. i've never microwaved the scraps ... it seems a little nutty to use my 'green' worm farm as a power consuming device.

The 5-tray is not quite enough to keep up with the scraps from 2 people who cook a lot, but it probably keeps up with 75% of it.

You need to keep the Worm Factory under cover to avoid rain, but my experience is that it will attract a plague of fruit flies if you put it in a basement. I think optimally you want it in a garage, or in a mild climate, a carport or covered porch.

it seems to put out pretty nice dirt, though i haven't had it long enough to tell if it really makes the plants grow better. but it does reduce the trash load a little. And, basically, it is surprisingly fun to put trash in one end and pull black soil out a few months later.

i tried making my own worm bin. both of these products work a lot better than my home made one ever did.

bottom line, a little bit of work to figure it out and get it going, but once you are in the groove it's pretty effortless and seems worthwhile.

I have had this bin for a year now and I have only good things to say about it. If something went wrong - it was me; the bin is designed very well to allow oxygen in and extra water out.

A feature worth mentioning is that unlike systems with just one bucket or bin, the worm factory allows you to easily correct mistakes. At one point, I dumped the contents of two trays in my backyard because of maggot infestation. Nevertheless, I didn't lose my worms that remained in the other two trays.

And please don't give up on your composting efforts if you make mistakes. And you will make mistakes. Make sure to keep the bin out of the summer sun or your worms will attempt to flee their housing complex. Also I made a serious mistake by overfeeding the bin. And adding shredded paper is not always enough - it compacts and gets wet too easily. In this case, I would recommend using some older castings or soil.

If you do everything properly, collecting castings should be very easy. If you have a tray with food right above, worms typically won't stay in the tray with castings and no food.

It is great that a well designed system such as worm factory allows apartment dwellers (like me) with little space to divert their food scraps from landfills and compost them with relative ease.

I just bought my worm farm and it's not the composter I expected. Perhaps my opinion will change in the next few months of use, but the instructions lead me to believe I am more raising worms than making compost. The purpose of the worms is to speed up the process--I should have great compost/worm castings in 3 months; however, to get the great compost I'm expected to chop up the food scraps (and note: no citrus peels)--some people actually use a blender. (I haven't figured out how big the little red worms mouths are, so I'm not sure how small I need to make their bites.) Also, the instructions suggest you can microwave your scraps to make sure you kill bacteria, etc. Maybe I'm an overly cautious new owner--I'm definitely lazier than all this expected compost-work! Anyway, time will tell just how tolerant my worms are of my lazy ways. Rest assured, though, I'll do what I can to keep them alive.

Like the other reviewer, I was worried about all the rules and chopping. Believe me, you don't have to chop everything up super fine. It will probably be faster if you do, but I don't bother. I do run fruits through the microwave to kill fruit flies though.

The system works great and it is easy to harvest the castings.

My kids and I love our worm factory. I have it in my kitchen and it is not obtrusive or smelly. I have had it for about 3 months and it already has a few trays of usable compost. I feed the worms about 2 a week and I can go on long trips and they will survive off the left overs as well as newspaper alone. It's a great learning experience for my kids as well. I'm looking forward to this new planting season coming up so I can use the compost.

There will really be no smell with this if you use it the way that the directions say to. I was a little leery of buying worms through the mail, but they arrived safely and went to work right away composting the food and bedding that I gave them. They have done wonderfully and I'm looking forward to having enough to put on my square foot garden next year! We keep the worm factory in the bathroom right next to the master bedroom and I haven't had a single complaint from my husband about the smell of rotting food because you can't smell it!

My short (2 month) experience with the Worm Factory has been quite successful. It was easy to assemble, had sufficient starter materials, and clear instructions for establishing a healthy worm habitat. No smell and no escapees in my basement, so far. I look forward to having plenty of "black gold" to apply to my seedlings during the coming season. The worm tea drainage is a big, early bonus - my houseplants are thriving.