Hey there- I recently became cricket independent for the first time in my life!
Before I mostly bred lots and lots of roaches and mealworms and bought crickets occasionally.
I've now gone the complete lifecycle from eggs to adults producing eggs again, so now all my crickets are produced right here. I'm on a larger scale, but here are my tips considering you are on a budget.
Tip1 Keep your eggs moist. If I were you, I'd save airtight food containers like cottage cheese containers, yogurt with resealable lids- that kind of thing. My family and friends all know what I like, and tend to save these sorts of containers, cardboard tubes, egg crates, etc for me and give them to me when they have saved a bunch up for me.
For crickets- I purchased rectangular rubbermaid food storage containers (I think they are called "sqaures". If you start with the right moisture content, you can put the container in with your crickets to lay in, remove in a day or two, put the lid on and forget about it until the eggs hatch without adding more water. I bought a gigantic bag of vermiculite at the local garden center - about 3' high- for $30. It should last me most of the year, I think. I add 4 parts water to 1 part vermiculite by weight. I swap my container for a new one every day. I never have to add moisture doing it this way. I considered using dirt from the yard because it is free, like you are doing, but I couldn't figure out how to get the moisture consistent without experimenting for a while and learning how to eyeball it. I think that is what you will have to learn, so if you aren't successful hatching them right away- maybe that would be the thing you will need to tweak.
I don't use tape, Instead a bought 30 gallon clear rubbermaid storage tubs with smooth sides. Pinheads cannot climb these walls. I use coarse sandpaper to rough up the sides of the tub about 2/3 of the way up. This allows the crickets to climb that far and stick, but no farther, increasing the usable surface area in the tub. The tub only fits 4 hatching egg containers at any given time and it takes a week or so for all the pinheads to climb out of the containers. So every four days I have to start a new tub (I forgot to mention earlier that I also rough up the inside of the egg containers with sanpaper, and over the lip as well so the pinheads can climb up and out and jump off). I have lots of tubs now, but also about a gazillion crickets of all sizes. I keep the tubs on heat tape set at 85. My son just finished a school science project on growth rates at 85, 90 and 95 degree settings for the heat tape. 90 had the fastest growth rate of these three temperatures over a 3 week period. But 85 had the lowest mortality- probably because I use fruits and vegetables for moisture sources and they dry out quickly at the higher temperatures. I was a little surprised that growth rate was faster at 90 than 95.
I realize that your demand for crickets is less and you are on a budget- I'm just explaining how I do things so you can get ideas to apply to your situation.
I incubate the eggs in an incubator set at 85. Incubation time is around 12 days give or take a day or two (strangely- might depend on what time of day I remove the container from the adults).
I suggest while you are learning you forget about doing things small and growing from there- get as many adults laying eggs as you can, swap your container out daily, and make lots of eggs and try to hatch lots of babies. You can always feed lots of small ones to your lizards rather than a few big ones, and this way you get lots of trys to you get things right and tweak them.
