Have you been having issues with the soil in your garden bed?
Are you finding it difficult to maintain the plants, flowers, fruits or vegetables you may be growing? The Little Rotter could be just the solution to your problem…and we got our hands on it to review for you!
Perhaps you are finding that it is hard to increase the nutrient content of the soil without using expensive and potentially not eco-friendly chemical fertilizers that never live up to the expectations, and when they do it’s often at a cost.
If you share any of these sentiments or are just curious about alternatives to traditional fertilisers and composts, then you may want to consider a miniature worm farm.
If you are unsure where to start, we may have the solution for you right here with this review of the Little Rotter Worm Farm.
As it is one of the most popular and easy to use worm farms on the market, let’s see if it lives up to the hype.
What is the Little Rotter Worm Farm?
Our Little Rotter Worm Farm is reportedly one of the easiest worm farms to use available at a competitively low price.
It comes with a flip-top mini garden bed worm farm and the extra addition of a so-called compost worm bomb.
The farm’s main components act as miniature feeding stations for composting worms.
How Does the Little Rotter Worm Farm Work?
The Little Rotter Worm Farm is designed to offer in-ground composting.
That name is more than a little self-explanatory.
Simply put, the compost worms in your garden that inhabit the ground beneath and come up to the farm to fed and in turn, recycle all kitchen and organic waste from your household.
The worms will eat everything, including cat poo, horse manure and dog poo too! (we wouldn’t add dog poo from a dog that is on wormer medication to this compost bin though, for obvious reasons!)
Once they have had their fill, they deposit nutrient-rich cast into your garden beds to feed any plants, veggies, and flowers you may have grown.
Features of this Worm Bin
The Little Rotter Worm Farm has several key features that make it stand out from the rather crowded compost bins marketplace.
Sits on Top of the Ground
The Little Rotter Worm Farm has been designed to sit on top of the ground.
That means your native worms eat and collect any food that is placed inside the farm from the surface.
As is the nature of worms, they leave their cast in the same spot they ate the food, to level the ground and spread all those nutrients into your garden.
When you have a worm tower buried like the popular DIY option made from PVC piping, where the food is placed under the surface of the ground, the worms still eat the food and kitchen waste.
But because they have a natural tendency to leave their cast in the same place they took the food, the nutrients may not be spread throughout your garden.
This may not be a problem if you’re happy to harvest your compost, and may actually be an advantage if you want to spread the good stuff around yourself.
Pros and Cons
One of the best ways to judge whether a product is right for you or not is by also looking closely at the pros and cons picked out by customers who have used the product before.
Let’s look at some pros and cons for the Our Little Rotter Worm Farm.
Pro’s
- Affordably priced
- Incredibly easy to use
- It’s a small worm tower that sits on top of the surface of the ground, which means the food sits there and is eaten there and then the worm lays its cast in the same spot
- No harvesting is required as the worms come to the bin for food and kitchen scraps
- No need to buy worms like red wigglers and European nightcrawlers unlike other closed worm factory and worm towers. Worms from your garden area will do the job.
Con’s
- It takes time for the quality worm castings required to develop. It is usually a minimum of a few weeks to 90 days but could be as much as a year depending on how many worms live in your soil.
- Although more eco-friendly, worm castings are much more expensive than chemical fertilizers.
- Less control – It’s not as easy to scale up with worm castings, as it is with traditional composting and worm farming due to baby worms not necessarily staying put.
- No worm tea or leachate – some worm farms come with a worm tea tap, but this wasn’t too big of a deal for us.
Are There Any Alternatives to The Little Rotter?
There are many alternatives to the Our Little Rotter Worm Farm on the market right now.
In fact, you can check out our guide on the best worm bins.
From Kookaburra Worm Farms, there is the larger brother to the Little Rotter unit, known, unsurprisingly, as the Big Rotter Farm.
Outside of that brand, there is also the likes of The Maze Worm Farm Composter, which is small enough to fit underneath a counter in your kitchen.
The downside of that particular model is that because it is so small if you are a larger family or household and generate a large quantity of food waste and kitchen scraps, it may not be the best option for you.
There is also the Basic Worm Composting Farm which is another indoor (or outdoor) option that benefits from a simple setup that involves four stacking trays.
While it’s easy to use and scale up when necessary, the major downside of this farm is that it can be easily opened by curious and hungry vermin and critters who may want to feast on the worms and their castings.
Last but not least, another alternative to the Our Little Rotter Worm Farm is the Urban Worm Bag which looks to eliminate the time-consuming process of sorting worms from compost that you have to do with other products.
A couple of major downsides to this worm farm and composter is the fact that the frame is not particularly robust or durable and may not be able to hold up a full bag of compost with a heavy vegetable bed.
It may also be too big if you live in an apartment, but works well if you want to use it outdoors
Final Thoughts and Wrap Up
If you are looking to get into vermicomposting, there are many great options out there.
As this is Our Litter Rotter Worm Farm review, however, we are going to focus again on the product at hand in this conclusion.
It is incredibly versatile and easy to use, those were my main takeaways. It is also very affordable and effective.
It may be that you are completely new to vermicomposting and don’t want a product that is complex to set up and run.
Nothing has to be submerged into the soil or anything complicated.
As noted in our review, you simply place it on the surface of the soil you are looking to improve and enhance.
You then leave some food or other organic matter like grass clippings, shredded newspaper for the worms and they do the rest themselves.
If that doesn’t sound easy as pie, we’re not sure what will.
This little worm farm from Kookaburra worm farms did the business for us, but may not if you want a larger scale operation with more control.
In this case, go for a bigger compost bin and buy a worm bomb (a bundle of worms) to get it started.
Otherwise the little rotters does just what you need without taking too much space in your garden.
Read More:
- DIY Worm Farm
- The Ultimate Guide to Worm Farming
