We're reader supported! This article contains affiliate links, which means we might earn a small commission if you purchase one of these products. Don't worry, though - there's no cheap Amazon products here! We prioritize small independent brands that we trust, who offer high-quality sustainable goods.

‍

🌿 My Pick: Worm Factory 360

• Odorless, compact, great for kitchens or apartments
• Continuous composting -- no waiting between batches!
• Harvest nutrient-rich worm tea, too!
• Made in the USA from recycled plastic
• 5-year warranty

Check Price & Reviews on Eartheasy

Affiliate link – we're reader supported, and it's no extra cost to you. We only share small, sustainable businesses.

What gardener doesn’t love finding an earthworm in their soil?

Gray earthworms are an excellent indicator species — a sign of a thriving garden. They usually only hang out in healthy soil, and favor regenerative practices like no-till and organic inputs.

Worms aren’t just for garden beds, though. I am always happy to see Red Wrigglers enjoying themselves in my compost piles, too.

Whether I’m composting goat manure, food waste, or yard debris, it’s fascinating how they can turn a pile of “waste” into something so valuable for our vegetable crops.

Seeing how good worms are at what they do, I wanted to lean on their ecosystem services a little more.

So I started to research worm bins, interested in adding a new “pet” to my household.

While I can easily buy bagged vermicompost (aka worm castings), making my own meant that I wasn’t only saving money, but I also was totally certain of what was going into my worm bin.

Keep reading to learn what I’ve done differently with my worm bin, and get step-by-step instructions on how to set up the Worm Factory 360.

Why I went with the Worm Factory 360

There were a few advantages of this system that in the end, made the decision of which bin to get pretty easy.

• Stacking system makes it simple to keep the compost processing going continuously. I didn’t want to have to wait for my compost to be fully “cured” before adding in more kitchen scraps.
• You can expand the system with more trays, and the system gets taller, but it takes up the same floor footprint. This makes it work even for apartment-dwelling gardeners. I like knowing that if everything continues to go well, that I can have a few more layers going at a time.
• You can use it inside without it taking up a lot of room. This was important to me, as other systems that I’ve used in the past were really big and so I needed to keep them outside. This was troublesome for the worms in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter.
• There’s no smell when it’s set up in a balanced way.
• You can easily harvest worm tea from the spout nozzle at the base of the system. It’s a nice bonus to get a “second harvest” of nutrients to feed to my plants!
• It’s made in the USA from recycled plastic, and has a five-year warranty. I didn’t want something that was poorly made that I was going to need to replace frequently.

👩🏻‍🌾 Fun Fact: Vermicomposting reduces methane emissions from kitchen scraps that would otherwise end up in landfills. Since methane is a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO2, setting up a worm bin is a great way to reduce your emissions from home.

What You Need to Get Started with a Worm Bin

1.Worms

400-1000 worms, or 1/2-1 pound

Of course, you’re going to need worms.

Not just any worm will do though — they need to be Red Wigglers — in the Eisenia genus.

There are three main reasons why garden earthworms aren’t ideal candidates for living in a worm bin:

1. They prefer to live deeper in the ground instead of the shallow layers in a worm bin.
2. They won’t go through your kitchen scraps as quickly as a red wiggler. So you’ll get a lot more production out of your bin with the right species.
3. They also won’t reproduce very well, so your system won’t be sustaining.

Most folks will order worms for their worm compost bin. This works well if you don’t have a compost pile to search through, or have an urban garden with a smaller yard.

But I wanted to try something different.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a few compost piles going in my yard. If you have red wigglers in your area, it’s likely that’s where they’ll be spending their time.

There are a few tell-tale signs for identifying red wigglers:

• They have darker stripes along their bodies
• They’ll be in a compost pile
• If they’re in a garden bed, they’ll be close to the surface
• They’re smaller than your average gray earthworm

Tip: On a sunny day, I couldn’t see the stripes on the red wigglers in my compost bin. But I took a photo of them with my phone, and in the photo was able to see this feature.

Getting worms from the compost pile meant that some of my compost inherently went into the worm bin. I see this as a good thing, since helpful bacteria and other microbes are also present in the compost pile. They’ll work together with the worms in the bin to process my kitchen waste.

2.Bedding

shredded paper (if you want), torn-up cardboard (if you want), coconut coir, organic chopped straw, organic rice hulls, dry leaves

The Worm Bin 360 comes with some coconut coir and shredded newspaper to get you started with bedding.

They also recommend using cardboard and newspaper to balance out the moisture levels in your bin and provide bedding for the worms.

Bedding has a lot of benefits for the worms, including:

• It’s comfy
• Helps balance moisture
• Provides airflow
• It’s tasty (to worms at least)
• Reduces smells

Is it possible to not use cardboard or paper in your vermicomposting system?

Here’s another area of research that I did before buying my vermicomposting system.

While the prospect of having built-in paper and cardboard recycling in my home sounds nice, I personally don’t want the potential for any kind of chemicals from the ink or the paper to be added into my garden.

PFAS is like UV rays from the sun — you can't avoid them completely if you go outside.

But adding more PFAS to my garden on purpose would be like skipping sunscreen and then sunbathing at the beach all afternoon.

You can't eliminate all exposure, but you can avoid making it worse.

So what am I using instead of shredded paper and cardboard?

• Coconut coir: I use this regularly in my seed starting mixes, so it’s something I buy anyways.
• Straw: I purchase organic straw from a local farm for my animal bedding and as mulch in my garden. Before adding it to the worm bin, I chop it up a bit.
• Dry leaves: I haven’t done this yet, but in the autumn I’ll be adding dry fallen leaves as bedding material.
• Rice hulls: This is an uncommonly mentioned alternative to paper products in a worm bin, but I’ve found it to be a really useful material for worm bedding. It’s another product that I use when making seed starting mixes — it’s a perlite alternative. I have a 2 cubic ft bag from Organic Mechanics, which will last me quite a while even though I’m using it for two purposes.

3.Grit

Sand, egg shells, rock dust, bone meal

If you have chickens, you are familiar with the concept of grit.

Since both chickens and worms don’t have teeth, they need some help breaking down materials for their digestive systems.

In the wild, worms naturally find things like sand to help them with this.

But in your worm bin, you’ll need to provide something for them. Otherwise, they can get something called “string of pearls” — which looks just like how it sounds. It’s essentially protein poisoning from not being able to fully break down the materials in your bin.

Worms don’t need a lot of grit - it only needs to make up a small fraction of your bin’s total materials.

Your Worm Factory 360 will come with some mineral rock dust to use as grit.

You can purchase this in a bag, or get some sand or bone meal to use too.

I personally just crush up egg shells and add them to my worm bin regularly. It’s a “kitchen waste” product so I see it as one less thing that I need to buy especially for the worms.

4.Worm Blanket

While we talked earlier about bedding, your bin’s system overall will stay more balanced if you also have a “blanket” or covering to go over the top of your worms, bedding, and kitchen scraps.

The standard worm blanket is a thin layer of moistened newspaper, but I’ve been using other materials with pretty good success.

Essentially, anything that you use for bedding can become a worm blanket.

A good rule of thumb is to always have a good layer of something carbon-rich on top of your kitchen scraps. So that could be a layer of straw that you temporarily remove while you’re adding in scraps, and then replace again.

You can also get 100% jute, hemp, or coir worm blankets that are long-lasting and made just for this purpose.

👩🏻‍🌾 Fun Fact: Did you know that vermicompost can actively reduce soil-born plant diseases? According to Cornell, this is because the worms encourage beneficial microbes, which antagonize the harmful disease pathogens!

Day-by-Day Setup Diary

Day 1: I got my Worm Factory in the mail!

• I spent a lot of time reading the online manual and exploring the bags of materials that came with it.
• I assembled the bin (took just 1 minute).

Day 2: I got my bin set up for the worms.

• I started out by soaking half of the coir block in water.
• Since I wasn’t using paper, I lined the bottom of the tray with a layer of organic straw.
• I then mixed the hydrated coir with 1/2 the bag of minerals and 1/2 the bag of pumice that comes with the Worm Factory.
• I applied this mixture on top of the straw.
• I added kitchen scraps from dinner (kale stems, herb stems, eggshells and broccoli stems finely chopped up) on top of the coir-mineral mixture.
• I covered everything with another layer of organic chopped straw.

Day 3: I confirmed that the worms in my compost pile outside were indeed Red Wigglers and counted out around 1000 to bring inside.

• I moved the top layer of organic chopped straw aside.
• I added the worms with residual compost to the bin.
• I replaced the organic chopped straw.
• I put the lid on the bin itself, and placed it next to grow lights that I left on for 48 hours.
• I did not lift the lid or disturb the worms during that time.

Day 5: I checked on my worms, and they seemed like they were fairly adjusted!

Day 7: I added some more finely chopped kitchen waste.

• I continue to do this 2x/week, keeping scraps covered with either rice hulls, coir, or chopped straw.

Vermicompost Nutrient Levels

Ways to Speed Up Decomposition in Your Worm Bin

I wanted to have my vermicompost ready to harvest quickly, so there are a few action steps I’ve been taking to speed up the process.

• Chop of Blend Food Scraps: The Worm Factor manufacturer’s guide book suggests cutting food into small pieces, so it will take less time for the worms to break it down.
• Add an inoculant: The manufacturer also recommends adding in some finished compost, healthy garden soil, or leaf litter to bring helpful microbes into your bin system. This helps the worms in the decomposition process.
• Start off with more worms: The more worms in your system, the faster they’ll be able to break things down. Aiming for 1 pound of worms instead of the minimum 1/2 pound will help things move along quickly.
• More kitchen scraps isn’t always better: It’s important to keep a balanced amount of food and bedding. While it might seem like adding more food would give you more compost, it won’t speed up the process and can lead to moisture levels that are too high.

It should be noted that the first tray is likely going to take a few months to decompose no matter how optimal everything is in your bin. The microbes and worms need some time to get adjusted to their new home and the conditions of the bin.

Subsequent trays will break down faster, though. Microbial populations will be higher, and the worms will be more settled. It’s likely that your worm population will be higher at that point, too.

👩🏻‍🌾 Fun Fact: Worms need microbes in order to process food! According to a study in the Journal of Bacteriology, microbes are actually the ones who kickstart the decomposition process! From there, the worms eat the microbial-decomposed material, along with the microbes themselves.

Essentially, worms are eating microbial pre-digested material. The worm castings — or worm poop — is the end result.

Helpful Worm Bin Tips

Here are some other things I researched before setting up my worm factory:

What to do about mold in the worm bin?

It’s actually okay for there to be some mold in your worm bin. Mold is fungi that helps the decomposition process along. According to a study published in BioTechnologia, the worms eat the mold itself!

Excessive mold could be a sign that there’s too much kitchen scraps in your bin, or too much moisture.

If you see a lot of it, add in more dry leaves, coir, or paper (if you’re using that) to get some dry material in there.

How can I prevent pest/odor issues?

Keeping a bin full of decomposing kitchen scraps in your home likely sounds like a setup for some uninvited guests to help themselves to a feast.

So far, I haven’t had any issues like that - not even flies. I think this is because of a few different practices:

• My system is well balanced, in a goldilocks zone with the amount of kitchen scraps that I add.
• I always keep the kitchen scraps covered with a layer of chopped straw or rice hulls. I had read on forums that keeping everything covered was a key way to eliminate any unpleasant smells.
• I only add raw unprocessed food - like things that grew in my garden. Aside from the eggshells, I don’t add in things like meat, bread, or other items that would take a while to decompose and potentially attract pests.
• I always keep the lid to the Worm Factory closed, and have some worm gear sitting on top of the lid so it stays put.

Will it take up a lot of time?

Like most of us, I’m pretty busy as it is. I wanted to make sure that the worms wouldn’t become something I needed to devote a ton of time to.

I was pleased to learn that they really don’t need much in terms of check-ins. As long as I add a handful of food to the bin twice a week, they’re pretty self-sufficient. I don’t think I spend more than ten minutes a week in total working on the bin.

Can the worms escape?

I was worried about my worms escaping, since I had read on some forums that could happen sometimes.

This never ended up being an issue for me, for a few reasons:

• Lights: I think a big part of this is that my bin has always been stored in my seed starting area, so the grow lights deter them from escaping.
• First 48 hours: For the first 48 hours that I brought the worms into the bin, I kept the grow lights on even at night.
• No Travel Stress: I also wonder if the worms liked that they didn’t go through any sort of travel to get to their new home. I just walked them from my compost pile to the bin inside.
• Compost: The fact that I was pretty liberal with how much compost from outside went into the bin inside might also have meant that they liked the environment straight away.

Make Your Own Plant Nutrients

If you’ve ever wanted to turn kitchen scraps into garden gold with almost no effort, the Worm Factory 360 makes it easy-even for beginners. Don’t overthink it; your worms will thank you!

‍

‍