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

Easy enough for my 14 year old son to put together. He loves fishing. As expected. Simple & self explanatory.

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.

Looks classy, works well. As others have noted, the lid doesn't fit perfectly, but I haven't noticed any worms trying to escape from my bin.

Easy set up and includes all the supplies necessary to start the bin. Well-made and ready for use out of the box. Set up in minutes. Looking forward to using it for years to come. I also like that additional bins can be added if desired instead of buying the upgraded version.

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.

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.