I don't have any pictures--my son is now 31. There is a lot of info on the web under the book 'Worms eat my Garbage' We had another teenager at church that made spending money with an old chest freezer that he had modified and grew worms in and sold for fishing if you want to get into it big time. When we had the rubbermaid set up I worked w/four 2nd grade classes that set up mini worm farms in their classrooms in cafateria ice cream buckets. They kept them from Christmas until the end of the school year and I brought them home to their rubbermaid friends.

hi there... dunno what part of CT you are in, but if u are in the tip connected to new york city and ever come to manhattan, the lower east side ecology center is awesome and cheap for worms. you can actually even get a subsidized bin for 10 bucks (bin+1lb worms) if you sign up for one of their workshops. or you can just preorder worms and pick up at the farmer's market in union square...i love these guys! i bring them my extra veggie scraps when the freezer overflows. they collect from ppl all over the city!

I guess I'll be the one to do the experiement to see how it performs here. I forgot to say this is the dark reddish chocolate colored one. It's very pretty and and I'm looking at the tag right now. It says it grows fast -- 12' high and 6' wide!!! LOL! I neglected to read that part before buying. That puts a whole new spin on planting it in the pot I had in mind. Anybody need a 12' grassy plant of a chocolate color? Oh well, it might work in the pot for a few months ... Here is a link that might be useful: Lowes photo ...

Since I have created a flow through bin with a similar design, I think I will jump in and answer a couple of questions. First, pictures. My bin has a harvesting system similar to Worms4Tracy's. Since I was concerned about the weight of the VC sitting on the harvesting rods, I decided to start with a PVC frame. I did not think that the bin walls would be strong enough to hold up what I estimate to be about 100 lbs of vermicompost. In these first two pics you can get an idea of the approximate size of the bin. The bin walls are made from HDPE corrugated plastic (old campaign signs). One thing I learned while making this bin is the there is no adhesive that will hold HDPE. I tried silicone caulking with only slightly successful results. The screws holding the frame in place and the wood frame around the top opening are probably doing more to hold this together than the silicone caulking. The walls are double thickness corrugated plastic with the seams in each layer as far as possible from the seams in the other. So far this has held up, though it does bulge a bit. Looking down into the finished bin, you can see the harvesting rods in place. I have screws, like Worms4Tracy, but I also screwed in fins of the corrugated plastic. I don't know whether they were necessary. They have held up through a harvesting. One thing I did notice is that they do not allow as much air flow as I think a good flow through should have. I lined up the pvc Ts with the fins so that I could tell which way the fins were turned inside the bin. Here the fins are turned up. OK, observations: This bin took a long time to fill up. I would have to do a little digging to determine just how long, but more than a year. Someone feeding a little more aggressively could have filled it up faster. The first harvesting worked, but it was hard to turn the rods. Now to answer the two questions I want to address: > my main question for this type of design... what prevents > the entire contents of the can from spilling out the > bottom once you turn the pipes (with screws). Simply this: The VC packs down pretty tightly in the bin. When you turn the rods, you are literally scraping the bottom layer off of the VC. Everything above that is packed in tight enough that it just won't fall. > You could make a box frame to support the bottom. Yes, you could, as you can see. I harvested for the first time several days ago, and the VC still has not settled enough to allow a second harvesting. I have even poked at the VC from underneath with my fingers and a letter opener. I cannot loosen up the VC enough to get it to settle. I have tried leaving the fins open for a couple of days to see if the VC would dry out enough to get it to fall. So far, no. My guess is that it is the frame that is preventing the VC from settling. Since the VC is a compressed mass, it wants to slide down an unobstructed bin in one big mass. I believe that the frame is preventing that from happening. I was hoping that harvesting would remove most of the VC from the center of the mass, and the rest would collapse under the weight of the VC on top of it. So far, that has not happened.