The Essential Living Composter, 2-Tray Worm Vermicomposter Bin (HF-LC4000v2-GRY) Grey

This is my first time vermicomposting, so I don’t have a lot of experience but I thought this bin was perfect. Very easy to set up, comes with starter bedding and coconut coir to get you started. It also looks very nice, absolutely no one would know that I have 1000+ worms in my apartment. I’ve had this bin for about 3 months and my worms are thriving, I’m getting compost, and no smell! For context I live in a 2 person apartment so no leaves or yard scraps being added to the bin. Just weekly cooking scraps and some small garden trimmings.

This was extremely easy to setup and get going. It's pretty sturdy and built well. It was easy to get the bedding going, as you can see in the photo. I lucked out with finding a neighbor who was moving and needed to rehome his worms. I took them in and they're doing really well. It doesn't smell at all, and I've had no problems with escaping worms or mites. I'd just say that it does attract fruit flies, so we moved the unit into a shaded part of our backyard for now and have only brought it in when there have been bad storms. The spout is great for collecting the worm tea, though the filter can get clogged easily so keep an eye on it. But, the tea didn't even smell (I've heard that can be an issue for some people with vermicomposters.) This is so much easier than taking everything to our big compost pile and waiting months to use it on our garden. Overall, seriously happy with this investment and just need to figure out how to buy another tray or two to add in!

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.

Love this worm bin. Holds a lot of worms. Pretty sturdy. Didn’t love the filter area and how to use that part- it kept getting clogged with solids for me and then just being messy. But I love how nice these look and I felt like the price was worth it. To grow a worm farm this is easy to set up and use. I have recommended to people.

I waited to purchased this bin and caught a sale and I’m glad I did. I read reviews and saw maybe issues with venting and escape. In any worm bin when they are too wet or too hot the worms will travel to escape. So I did add air vents as I saw in review photos. I purchased 1” soffit air vents, and used 15/16 spade drill bit to put 3 holes on one side. Assembly was really easy. I didn’t use the cocoa coir that was included, I used the shredded paper and pre soaked it- personal preference. I plan to keep this in my basement if it gets too cold over winter it is really easy to move. You can expand this to a 4 trays so you can double your castings. I am starting with 250 worms, i’ll see how fast they process scraps and if I need to i’ll order more.

I will say, I’ve grown to love this thing. It was a rough start, though, and I think if this came with a good, comprehensive pamphlet on vermiculture best practices and tips, it would have saved me a lot of headache instead of having to do the research myself. I’ve had this for about three months now. If you’re thinking about buying this and you’re a first timer, like I am, I’d suggest a couple tips. 1. Take it slow. I know it’s hard to fight the urge to load it up with all your veggies, but seriously listen when they say to wait a week, then small bits at a time. The consequence of loading it up with tons of stuff, like I did, was an insane (like that scene in The Green Mile) infestation of fruit flies that took me a month to get rid of. I’ll be traumatized for a while from that experience. I was literally vacuuming them out of the air all throughout my house, literally hundreds a day (I counted) for weeks. So, don’t do that. It was disgusting and I very nearly threw the worm bin away. 2. Buy more worms. I went cheap and got a 250 at first, because I didn’t want to pay for more than that. But they just couldn’t keep up with our waste (two adults). I ended up buying 500 more, and after that, things have been going great because it can process my waste more quickly, which is another fruit fly preventative measure. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably have just gotten 1,000. I was worried to get too many because I thought there would be worms everywhere, but the self-contained system won’t allow for overpopulation. 3. Read up on fruit fly prevention first, and be proactive. Covering the top layer with a sheet of wet newspaper helped a lot, chopping waste into tiny pieces allows the worms to eat faster. I also have a small separate closed container to keep my scraps until I think my worms are ready for them—it’s way easier to manage the ecosystem. And neem oil is a good organic solution to prevent flies—I spray a bit on there once a month or so. Not too much. So, all that said, once I figured out how to actively prevent fruit flies, it’s really easy. Once you get the worms going, it’s very low maintenance. And fun to see baby worms and stuff. The worms don’t actually need to be fed that often. I feed them probably once every two or three weeks, and throw in paper scraps and stuff here and there. You can keep your scraps in the freezer if you want—just make sure they’re room temp before you put them in.

This thing is just fantastic. If you want a worm farm, this is it. Clean, easy to maintain, well made, unobtrusive kinda cool looking and it makes vermiculture fun. My worms are thriving!

Update: After using mosquito bits, moving the bin to the garage, and always freezing food scraps before feeding, I no longer have issues fruit flies. The gap is also big enough for worms to crawl through so if you have more temperamental worms such as the blue worm, they can escape. During rainy season I find a couple of dead worms on the floor every day. Other than the issue with the gaps, the bin is solid and well made so I have upped the rating to 3 stars. Original review: I have been worm composting for several years in a diy bin and was excited to finally get a proper worm bin. It was very easy to assemble and use. Unfortunately it seems to provide a very conducive environment for fruit flies! I always had a couple fruit flies here and there in my bin but never a big problem. After just one feeding in this bin it EXPLODED with fruit flies. It was an infestation. Thin bin has tons of gaps and openings for fruit flies to enter and exit freely. So. Gross! It caused me so much stress and I had to purchase several products to try to control the problem. In my DIY bin I covered all air holes with cloth. I don’t even know how to do that with this bin. The holes and gaps are between the lid and tray. Poor design.