Common Problems with a Home Wormery
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Three most common home wormery problems and solutions:
My Wormery Smells
Your wormery may smell for a couple of reasons. Make sure that the material you are adding is all food waste except for meats, dairy products, grains, and especially oily foods. These types of food wastes are known to create a problem with your worm bin smelling. The other problem may be that you miscalculated the amount of worms that you would need to consume the volume of household waste added to your worm bin. Too much food in the wormery will lead to a situation where the worms can’t eat the garbage fast enough. You may need to slow down on adding garbage to the wormery for a while until the worms are able to catch up with what you have already added. If the contents of your bin get too wet, your worms may die. If this is the situation, make sure that the wormery is draining properly.
Worms Are Escaping from My Wormery
Worms will run away when the conditions in the wormery aren’t a good environment for them. This can happen if there is too much liquid in the bin or if the environment has become too acidic for the worms. Check the fluid level first as this is the most common problem. If the moisture level seems right, the environment may be too acidic. If you are adding a lot of orange peels or similar types of food at one time the pH balance of your wormery will become more acidic. You can counteract this by either moderating the ratio of acidic food waste you add or by adding a natural product like garden lime that will help offset the acidic nature of the foods you eat most.
My Wormery is Attracting Flies
You may get unwanted flies or fruit flies attracted to your wormery if it isn’t covered properly. Check the cover and make sure everything is in order. Make sure that when you add food to the bin that you are burying it appropriately. If you aren’t, the flies will be attracted to the food. If the fly problem continues, you may want to consider a better location for your wormery.
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2 Responses to “Common Problems with a Home Wormery”
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i have ants nesting in my wormery, is this a problem? or should i just leave them alone?
Whether or not ants nesting in a worm bin are a problem for you will depend on where you keep your wormery. If it is outdoors, slugs,snails, ants, spiders, soldier fly larvae, fruit flies, pill bugs, centipedes, even frogs, salamanders, and rodents can be attracted to the worm bin. Outside, ants generally are not a problem and won’t hinder the production of compost in your wormery.
Indoors ants create a household pest problem and should be eliminated. You can choose to move the bin outdoors and keep it there. However, if you want to keep the wormery indoors, the best way to eliminate ants is to keep the environment one that is inhospitable to them. Start by keeping your wormery moist. Stop feeding your worms for about a week or two, and make sure to sir up the bin every day. These steps should eliminate ants in a wormery naturally.