You could say that I have been interested in raising worms my entire life. Starting out in my adolescence, I gathered earthworms and a salamander from nature and put them in a fish tank only to find the tank empty of worms after a couple weeks. Needless to say, I murdered them in a pit of lions, but the salamander always had a smile, whoops.

On to my high school years, I tried again with a homemade approach of composting straw and dried hog pin manure. This was probably my worst attempt. The worms (1lb red wigglers) fled for the hills. The (dry) straw and (dry) manure were poorly moistened and in such vast quantities they really had no chance. If I recall, they lasted 3 days.

Shortly after college and my last failed attempt, I purchased 1lb of red wigglers and followed some instructions for a compost bin for totes. If you've made it this far into the review section you've also thought about using the totes and drilling holes in them. I must say the totes are a pain to manage. They constantly are leaking, you have to watch the moisture I eventually became tired of maintaining the bin that I left them in my apartment balcony closet and let them drown/freeze. Again I cold blood murder these things.

Now to the worm bag. So my last failure was about 3 years ago. I have been raising worms in the worm bag for about 3 months now. Likely my longest stent, for sure my healthiest. My advise to those with brown thumbs for worms. They can take a beating but you need to give them somewhere to hide. I purchase 250 red worms for this attempt. The logic is that I'm not out too much if I kill them. Well so far it's been good! The worm back solves alot of the moisture issues that other systems have. I have not had the need to clean it but from what I have seen the lack of a leaky bin should keep itself fairly clean. The worms are having a great time. (I can post when they make some of that black gold). One thing that I struggled with was worm management and nothing to do with the bag itself. Always keep some dry matter around in the case of a wet bin and DO NOT OVERFEED THE WORMS. Self control here is key, given bedding the worms do much better starving that overfed.
The construction of the bin is solid. I believe the bag will last a long time and is a great starters container. If my population explodes I will likely build another flow through bin but keep this one aground as my stock. When it comes to experimenting with worms you can trust this bag to keep a healthy worm environment for you to pull from should your other experiments fail.

Edit:
After having a while I did notice that the bottom is filling up with liquids and stinking. I've added a huge amount of bulk material so far it mitigate this. The bottom zipper is impossible to harvest from. Unfortunately, us version 1 customers have to deal with our investment.

Edit 2:
I was able to get my hands on version 2 of this bin and the excess liquid issues are solved! Also the pull strings for unloading are pretty handy. Version 1 can be improved with grommets and strings/rope to wick the water away, though that wont help solve the excess weight on the zipper. It helps to start with more worms if you are impatient and would like to see progress. Those who are inpatient might still have issues with this bin (and really worm farming as a whole) if they overfeed a small population of worms in a cool basement. Wait till things warm up and your population grows then the water shouldn't be an issue!

I have tried multiple worm bin set ups in the past and it resulted in bad odors, flies, dead worms, and not much vermicompost. A podcast I follow recommended this bag and I decided to give vermicomposting one more go. I purchased my first one in December and it has worked so well that I am setting up a second bag this month. If necessary, I may add a third one, with a 2020 goal of having zero compostable food waste go into the trash. I do a lot of home cooking and have quite a high volume of vegetable peelings and odds and ends.

1) The bag extremely easy to set up and can be ready to add bedding in under five minutes. When full, the bag gets quite heavy and the frame seems to hold the weight better than you would expect.

2) I have been using a mix of composted horse manure and bedding, coconut coir, shredded paper, and cardboard. For the most part, the bag has breathed quite well. I freeze my scraps, which adds moisture content. The moisture content got a bit excessive this summer and I had minor dripping from the bottom of the bag. After my second harvest, I have left the zipper open, using the drawstring to keep the bag shut. I have had no more excess liquid. For reference, I live in the Seattle area where it is generally cooler and a bit humid. Your bag may run different in Arizona.

3) My red worms have seemed happier than in any other setup I have tried. I think I have my first bag running at about peak capacity and they are making quite a bit of food scraps disappear quickly. I just keep adding bedding to keep them happy and they just keep eating.

4) Harvest is quite easy. I mucked it up the first time trying to use too tall a container and made a bit of a mess. But that was a rookie mistake. I just did my second harvest into a cat litter tray and it went perfectly.

5) This company has great customer service. Because I made a mess of my bag in my first harvest, when I close the zipper, some leachate basically froze the zipper shut. This was entirely user error, not a flaw in design. I posted a comment to the blog and had a response back in under two hours. I followed the suggestions, got the zipper open, cleaned it up with some vinegar, and have had no problems since.

6) I have had a few little bugs here or there but nothing resembling and infestation or causing a problem. It's been quite pleasant.

Overall, this product is working great and I would love to see more people using them. They are a massive step up from other products for sale or crudely built home bins.

* Please note that this review is for the first version of the Urban Worm Bag *

I bought this worm bag slightly more than a year ago after stumbling on several YouTube videos extolling the virtues of this continuous flow through vermicomposting system. Pros and cons listed below is after more than 1 year of using it continuously

* Pros:
1. Super simple to assemble - you don't need any tools to assemble it, just bang a few rods into the connectors and you're good to go.
2. Very little maintenance needed when feeding the worms (but not when extract the compost; more on that later). Unlike other vermicomposting system where you need to rotate the trays/properly harvest the worms etc, all you need to do is dump food and bedding in - much less complicated! You just need to make sure that you have adequate bedding AND to err on the side of underfeeding your worms when first starting out.
3. The material of the bag is extremely sturdy. After a year of intense using, there still isn't any rips or tears in the bag. The stand could be a little sturdier (it gets a little wobbly when there's a substantial amount of material in the bag) but overall, I'm happy with the build quality.
4. Small footprint for the amount of compost generated. We are a family of 5 that cooks almost dinner almost everyday and this worm bag can almost keep up with the waste produced.

* Cons
1. Extremely frustrating to harvest. The zipper is always stuck and quite impossible to unzip OR to zip up. After the first time trying to unzip the bag, I just left the bag half-unzipped so I don't have to struggle with the zip for future harvest. To prevent worms from escaping/compost from leaking from the hole, I try my best to stuff it with beddings to seal the hole from half-unzipping the bag.
2. Compost at the bottom of the bag is always wet. No matter how much bedding I use and how little I feed, the compost at the bottom of the bag is always a lot wetter than the compost at the top. It's not so wet that it drips (on occasion, it does leak a little) but it's wet enough that it starts to go anaerobic and smell really bad especially when you're trying to harvest the compost. I am using thinly shredded newspaper as bedding and have tried using completely dry bedding/not feeding the worms as much but the problem persisted.

The main reason why this gets a 3 star instead of a lower rating is because the experience of using the bag is positive on a day to day basis. The only time it really disappoints is in the harvesting process (which doesn't happen that often! maybe once every 2 months or so)

EDIT: Jan 2020
I've changed the rating of this bag to 5 stars (for now), just to reflect the incredible customer service that Stephen provides. He reached out to me to explain that since my purchase was still within the warranty period, he will be sending me one of the version 2 bag. I've not had the chance to set up the worm bag yet and will update the review once I have a chance too.

I had issues with my first purchase. Not because of the seller, but because of amazon. Sending me a used product.
Seller corrected this issue, WITHIN 24 hours, and shipped a new bin priority mail. STELLAR PERFORMANCE IMHO

Since buying the first initial one, I am now up to 3 bins. Plan on buying 2-3 more.

I only wish that they had more styles. Longer(width), holds more. Otherwise, from a chinaman factory. Good quality. Which is shockingly surprising nowadays

There are a few things I really hate. I hate touching worms and I hate touching fish. I also hate plastic and I hate buying things made out of plastic. Two months ago I bought two dozen worms from a bait and tackle shop. I drilled some holes in a small one gallon bucket, filled it with bedding and put it inside another bucket to catch the liquid. After two months my worms were still alive and looking really healthy. I started thinking about the future. What would I put them in next as this bucket is really small. In addition, I live in Florida and it will get too hot outside for the worms but I do not want plastic containers full of worms in my house.

While researching worm bins I learned about flow through worm bins. I watched a video about a really nice one that costs about $350. Like I said, I hate spending money on things made out of plastic. I watched several DIY flow through worm bin videos. I do not have the skills nor the patience. Further research brought me to an article about how to use grow bags as worm bins. This is an interesting concept but like most plastic tray and container systems, you have to entice the worms to migrate to the next level or manually sort them out of the casting layer. This may involve having to touch them. No thanks. In addition, I would not want this type "system" in my house. Nope.

This article was part of the Urban Worm bag site. I started looking at other pages and decided the Urban Worm Bag 2 looked exactly like what I needed. I spent a few days doing research. I read reviews and watched a lot of YouTube videos. The more I learned, the more I wanted one. I finally decided to order one as I was never going to find another type system I would want in my house. I was not about to spend money on a plastic tray system that required switching out trays and enticing worms from one level to the other. The idea of using a bag which required little work on my part was really appealing. All I would have to do is feed them a proper diet and maintain adequate moisture levels.

I placed my order late Tuesday afternoon. . On Friday I was hoping to get a tracking number in an email saying it was on its way. Instead I got a knock on the door and there was my worm bin! Talk about exceeding expectations. It came in a really cute box and took ten to fifteen minutes to put together. I didn't even have to read the instructions. I added some bedding that I had prepared ahead of time and tested it for leaks. Once I was sure everything was as should be I added my worms. Only one worm tried to climb up the side. I knocked him back down and he disappeared into the bedding and I haven't seen any since. So now my worms are in the house safe from the heat. They cannot escape so I am happy.

About a week later I was shopping on Amazon. On a whim I decided to order a second bin. My yard is full of really sandy soil and needs all the help it can get. The more castings the better. The second bag arrived as fast as the first.