Worm Factory DS3GT 3-Tray Worm Composter, Green
by Cascade Manufacturing Sales, Inc.
List Price:
Our Price: $70.50
You Save: $5.00 (6%)
Availability: Usually ships in 6-10 business days
Category: Lawn & Patio
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Product Details
Manufacturer: Cascade Manufacturing Sales, Inc.Brand: Worm Factory
Edition: Lawn & Patio
Model: DS3GT
Color: Green
Publisher: Cascade Manufacturing Sales, Inc.
Studio: Cascade Manufacturing Sales, Inc.
Music Label: Cascade Manufacturing Sales, Inc.
Product features:
- Made with post-consumer recycled plastic, Dimensions 16-inch x 16-inch x 13-inch
- Built in "worm tea" collector tray and spigot for easy draining.
- Year Round Production
- Odor Free Operation
- Expandable up to 7 trays
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Description of Worm Factory DS3GT 3-Tray Worm Composter, Green
Worm composting is an incredibly efficient way to convert kitchen scraps, junk mail and cardboard into nutrient-rich compost for your garden. Master gardeners agree that compost produced by worms will produce the best results and help your plants thrive. The Worm Factory's unique stackable, multi-tray design makes it the most efficient worm bin composter around. Worms begin eating waste in the lowest tray, and then migrate upward as food sources in that tray are exhausted. By allowing worms to migrate upward, the worms separate themselves from the finished compost that is ready for the garden. Besides the worm castings that are produced through this process, the Worm Factory also produces a second type of compost. As waste is broken down, moisture filters through your Worm Factory, taking nutrient-rich particles with it. This liquid fertilizer, know as leachate is gathered in the special collection tray of the Worm Factory and can easily be drained from the spigot. Simply add a handful of worms and your organic waste to the bottom tray. The worms will start processing the food. Once the bottom tray is filled add another tray. The worms migrate upward to the newest food source leaving the bottom tray full of nutrient rich compost. As waste is broken down, moisture filters through the system taking nutrient-rich particles with it. You can drain organic liquid fertilizer right from the spigot. It's compact square design gives the Worm Factory the smallest footprint of all worm composters. The Worm Factory's tray stacking system allows it to hold the largest capacity of compost in the smallest amount of space, making it the perfect composter for anyone with space limitations. The Worm Factory is simple to operate. When full, each tray weighs only 12.5 pounds making lifting and arranging trays effortless. The included 16-page instruction manual makes setup fast and easy and gives tips on how to best manage your Worm Factory composter year-round.Tools and Hardware Reviews of Worm Factory DS3GT 3-Tray Worm Composter, Green
Customer Review: Worm composting is good times!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this last July at the Cal State Fair so it's been 6 months. I now have one fully processed tray of compost and one in the works.
Some tips and observations I thought I'd pass along FYI:
It is true that you don't need to start off with a lot of food for them because it takes them a while to touch the food.
It's important to get some compost from a friend to start it. I used a gallon ziplock bag from a friend who composted and it had a few worms in it. It would be hard to start without that (IMHO).
It seems, at least with mine, that the worms way of dealing with new food is to lay eggs in the food and let their little babies grow in them (will see lots of little baby white worms) and then I don't know what happens, if the babies eat the new food or what - but the grown worms just seem to frolic in already composted material. They also frolic in coffee and coffee filters. But I rarely see them snacking on new or recently added food.
My first bin is totally processed, my second bin has been going for a few months now and I have found worms climbing up to the next bin and there ARE grown worms in the next bin BUT the bottom bin is still chock full of worms. I'm afraid to put it in the garden and lose all those worms!
It's not completely true that you can put worm compost out next to a pile of food and within 30 mins, the works will migrate to the new pile of food. I haven't observed that. Conclusion from that is that it is good to have this upwardly mobile system as opposed to just a big bin of compost that you throw new food into because it would be almost impossible to separate out the compost from the worms.
Also, paying almost 100 bucks for this thing is worth it if you plan to compost because I did try to make a normal compost (the kind that gets hot with no worms) and it is not very fun, it stinks, all kinds of animals try to invade it, and a lot of the organic matter I put in there is still sitting there doing nothing. It also attracts flies.
On the other hand, are you going to be making barrels and barrels of compost with the worm factory? NO! I mean it's been six months and I have one tray that worms still seem to be enjoying.
Also, if you cook at home and make a lot of compost, much of it you will not be able to put in the bin. You want to err on the side of not overfeeding or killing the worms just because in principle you bought it to eliminate landfill waste. Worms are expensive - I paid $20 for half a pound and I eventually bought another half a pound. So you don't want to kill them by being overzealous.
You don't need to check in on the every day. Once a week, put a few handfuls of food in there, make sure you throw in crushed egg shells every now and again and other paper/lint type of material. After a while you can almost dump a bowl or two of compost in there and wait two-three weeks and check it then. It takes about 3 weeks for them to half eat 2-3 bowls of food, i.e. it won't completely disappear.
The food really does completely disappear if you wait long enough. Even the egg shells - the bottom tray just looks like really rich dirt full of worms.
We have baby frogs that like to hang out in the bottom bottom were the liquid collects. They can be a little startling if they jump so be prepared to see other wild life.
Slugs like the tray. Me no like slugs so I try to get them out of there with the comb thing if I can.
Use a bungee cord. We used a brick and a deer came and knocked it off and the lid and ate some of the food. Be careful to not let the bungee go and hit you in the face!
Worm tea - I didn't have worm tea until about a month ago, so estimate it will take about 5 mos. And then I drained it once (spigot was closed completely and then turned on) and it made about a pint of worm tea. This last week I drained it again and it made like a whole gallon of worm tea! I don't know if it's due to rainfall or not but the only way rainfall could get in would be through the little openings on each tray. Seems unlikely that much rain fell. When you pour out the worm tea, lots of baby eggs will come out too. Hopefully they will hatch in the soil you pour the tea on and enrich your soil.
Finally, I started out clipping food and putting it in an ice cream bucket and microwaving it but my hubby was grossed out by that. And it does sort of leave a funky smell in the microwave and house. I do try to clip food to small pieces (i.e. if I had a watermelon rind, I would chop up the rind into 1 cm square pcs and I would only throw in half of the rind as opposed to the entire thing). At the beginning I would recommend microwaving to cook the food up a little bit to give the worms a break - they like to eat food that's already broken down, rotting, or cooked. But after a while, once I knew that I wasn't going to completely kill off my worms, I would just throw the food bits in without cooking them and just let nature take its course and they seem to do fine.
It's a pretty fun little project and I think it would be fun to do with children. When I was little I was deathly afraid of earth worms and gardening, etc. And I think if I had the experience of composting, I wouldn't have been so scared of bugs as a child. I do have to admit when I brought home my first bag of worms, I didn't even want to put the worm bag in my car or my house. But once I got the gumption to open the bag and start the whole process, it really wasn't that bad and you sorta get over it. I mean I probably won't dig my hands into the finished tray and hold a handful of worms, but they're not that scary. Fat earthworms I think are more freaky. These guys - no problem!
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