The Essential Living Composter, Worm Composter (Black)

This is my second box. Works great. I added some holes at the top for extra aeration.

The media could not be loaded. Easy to use, but easy to screw it up too. There's lots of fruit flies and I don't know how to control that. I have an electric fly trap nearby it. The first time I got fruit flies I stuck it outside and I ended up killing all my worms because of the heat. I once let it get too dry and a bunch of ants set up camp in there. But I learned that if I just kept misting it with water everyday and turning it, the ants would find it an unpleasant habitat and move out. That was true. Right now it's back in my kitchen next to the trash bins, the worms are fat and juicy, busy making compost and compost tea. Wish the fruit flies would go away. The appearance is modern and the black color blends in with my black appliances and trash bins.

I love this product! I am new to “worm farming”/vermicomposting, and this has made it such an easy process to successfully have a worm farm inside my small apartment! It was actually smaller than I had envisioned, so I’m planning on buying a second one because I like it so much (and because I create a lot of veggie scraps on a mostly raw vegan diet)! I did a ton of research online and watched videos and read reviews. This one is the best out there for indoor use, as well as price and size and ease of use. I’ve seen a lot of reviews posted about “it smells” or “my worms escaped” etc—and those people aren’t using the product right. If you do your homework you can successfully have this worm farm and it won’t smell and your worms won’t escape—you can’t just stick worms inside and toss a couple veggie scraps in and hope for the best without learning how to correctly keep your farm from becoming anaerobic or unhealthy. With that all said, I live in a small one bedroom apartment and I have my worms inside my apartment and there’s never a bad smell! The smell is like the inside of a forest, it’s great! The worms are happy and working on breaking down the “greens” and “browns” and soon I will have incredible composted dirt that I can use for growing my own lettuce and flowers on my outdoor balcony. Like I said, I love this product so much I plan to buy a second—but do your homework and read the FAQs online or watch YouTube videos to learn the do’s & don’t’s of vermicomposting. It’s not the products fault if your worms aren’t happy, working, and thriving—that would be user error.

Rien à redire.

This unit is great. It’s very effective and allows a wide variety of foods and materials to be composted quickly.I want to address some of the negative reviews associated with this product. Many people complain of worms constantly escaping. It is true that the seal between each level is not worm-proof. But what I learned is that you should be focusing on why the worms are escaping rather than trying to encase them in the system. When I first began using this system, I did not have enough substrate in the sump tank to allow worms to crawl back up. As a result, any worm that crawled to the bottom had to escape from the side to avoid drowning in worm tea since they couldn’t tunnel back upwards within the system. I was seeing 3-5 worms escaped every morning. After more substrate was added, I never had another escape.If worms are escaping from your system, maybe things are too wet, maybe too dry, maybe too much food spoiling inside, maybe not enough food at all. If you’re running the system properly, the worms will never try to leave.