Fruit Flies

Fruit flies can, on occasion, be a very annoying problem if you keep the worm bins in your house.  They will not be present all the time nor in every house at any time but when they are present they are a nuisance.  Fruit flies aren’t unsanitary, they don’t bite or seek out people to bother.  They seek out over-ripe fruit and fruit pulp.  Usually, fruit flies will hover around the food source that interests them.  In high summer we have accepted having a few share our kitchen along with the enormous spread of ripe and ripening tomatoes atop the kitchen counter.  When we’re making fresh “V-7” juice on demand throughout the day, they tend to congregate over the juicer’s discharge pail that holds a mixture of vegetable pulps.  If your worm bin contains these types of materials, fruit flies may find it attractive.

Appelhof suggests sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner hose if their numbers become annoying.  Fruit flies are a good reason for those of Teutonic tidiness to vermicompost in the basement or outside the house if possible.

Maintenance

After a new bin has been running for a few weeks, you’ll see the bedding becoming darker and will spot individual worm casts.  Even though food is steadily added, the bedding will gradually vanish.  Extensive decomposition of the bedding by other small soil animals and microorganisms begins to be significant.

As worm casts become a larger proportion of the bin, conditions deteriorate for the worms.  Eventually the worms suffer and their number and activity begins to drop off.  Differences in bedding, temperature, moisture, and the composition of your kitchen’s garbage will control how long it takes but eventually you must separate the worms from their castings and put them into fresh bedding.  If you’re using vermicomposting year-round, it probably will be necessary to regenerate the box about once every four months.

There are a number of methods for separating redworms from their castings.

Hand sorting works well after a worm box has first been allowed to run down a bit.  The worms are not fed until almost all their food has been consumed and they are living in nearly pure castings.  Then lay out a thick sheet of plastic at least four feet square on the ground, floor, or on a table and dump the contents of the worm box on it.

Make six to nine cone-shaped piles.  You’ll see worms all over.  If you’re working inside, make sure there is bright light in the room.  The worms will move into the center of each pile.  Wait five minutes or so and then delicately scrape off the surface of each conical heap, one after another.  By the time you finish with the last pile the worms will have retreated further and you can begin with the first heap again.

You repeat this procedure, gradually scraping away casts until there is not much left of the conical heaps.  In a surprisingly short time, the worms will all be squirming in the center of a small pile of castings.  There is no need to completely separate the worms from all the castings.  You can now gather up the worms and place them in fresh bedding to start anew without further inconvenience for another four months.  Use the vermicompost on house plants, in the garden, or save it for later.