Worm Café Worm Composter

Yes. The Worm Café is happy in a kitchen, pantry, basement, or garage, and it can also go in the yard or on a balcony, as long as it's protected from intense heat. Several customers keep theirs on a balcony or covered patio all year round.

• Place it in the shade and shelter it from rain, which would waterlog the bedding.
• During a heat wave, bring it indoors or move it somewhere cool.
• Below about 23 °F (-5 °C), cover it or bring it indoors.

Its raised legs help protect it from ants. The Worm Café worm bin has no wheels, so choose its spot before filling it, because it gets heavy.

All our tips: How to protect your worm composter from cold and heat

For the Worm Café, plan on 1.1 lb (500 g) of worms (about 1,000 worms) for a household of 3 to 4 people, 2.2 lb (1 kg) or more for larger households, and 8.8 oz (250 g) for 1 to 2 people. In fact, the Worm Café's manufacturer recommends starting with at least a thousand worms.

Put them all in a single tray, the first one, on moist bedding. They will then breed on their own and adjust to the space available, so your next trays will be colonized naturally. With a bin this size, starting with more worms shortens the startup period.

All our tips: How do you set up your worm composter, step by step?

The Worm Café comes with a lid, 2 or 3 trays, a leachate tray with spigot, 4 legs, our vermicomposting guide with detailed instructions, and a video training session. You can order it with or without worms; our worms ship in their own transport bedding, developed right here on our farm.

You'll also need bedding (a coconut fiber block or cardboard) and a rectangular hemp mat. Designed by Tumbleweed, an Australian pioneer in vermicomposting, the Worm Café is made in Australia from 100% recycled black plastic and comes with a 2-year warranty. Extra trays and a replacement spigot are also available.

In the Worm Café, your worms eat about half their own weight in food scraps every day, sometimes as much as their full weight. That means 1.1 lb (500 g) of worms digest about 8.8 oz (250 g) of scraps a day. Their population doubles every 3 to 4 months, then adjusts to the space available. With its large 3.7-gallon (14-liter) rectangular trays, the Worm Café worm composter handles the food scraps of a household of up to 6 people and stacks up to 5 trays high.

Bonus: your cardboard, paper, and egg cartons get recycled too, in equal parts with your peels, and it's this balance that keeps odors away. Depending on the household, that's 30 to 50% less organic waste in the trash can.

All our tips: What can you feed the worms in your worm composter?

To get your Worm Café off to a great start, we recommend:

• our Eisenia composting worms: 8.8 oz (250 g) for 1 to 2 people, 1.1 lb (500 g) for 3 to 4 people, and 2.2 lb (1 kg) or more for 5 to 6 people;
• a 2.4-gallon (9 L) coconut fiber block, as starter bedding;
• our rectangular hemp mat, shaped to fit its trays, laid on the active tray;
• extra Worm Café trays, up to 5 in total;
• our graduated 1-quart (1-liter) leachate tray, which slides under the spigot.

To get everything at once, our Pack of 5 essential accessories includes 2 rectangular mats, WormFood, RegulaWorm, WORMboost, and a mini rake.

All our tips: Which accessories for your worm composter?

On the Worm Café, add the next tray on top once the compost in the active tray is high enough to touch the bottom of the tray above it, which is about three-quarters full. This contact lets the worms move up toward the fresh food. According to its product description, the last tray even has a textured bottom that helps them climb up.

When all your trays are full, harvest the bottom one. Move it to the top, leave the lid off, and place it under a light. Then scrape off the vermicompost in thin layers every 5 minutes. The lid hooks in place so it stays open while you work. The Worm Café worm composter holds up to 5 trays.

All our tips: How and when should you harvest vermicompost and compost tea?

The Worm Café worm composter produces two natural fertilizers for your plants:

• compost tea (worm tea), after about 2 to 3 months: there's 9.1 in (23 cm) of clearance under the Worm Café's spigot, enough room for a bottle. Open the spigot and the tea drains into it on its own. Dilute 1 part tea to 9 parts water;
• vermicompost: first harvest after 3 to 6 months, then roughly every 1 to 2 months. Use 30% vermicompost to 70% potting soil; it keeps for 2 years.

Find all our tips in our guide: How and when to harvest vermicompost and compost tea