Indoor Worm Composting

Common Worm Composting Problems and Solutions

Trouble in the Worm composting Bin

Worm composting with Red Wiggler worms is a really easy, low-maintenance way to generate rich organic fertilizers for your organic gardening needs. Worms are very easy to get if you know where to find them. If you do not then it is best for you to buy worms from a local supplier.

Red worms are also easy to feed, easy to keep comfortable and worm composting fertilizer is very easy to harvest. Maintaining the healthy welfare of your worms almost amounts to doing nothing! That is why so many home garden farmers prefer worm composting! It is cheap, easy, and it somewhat rejuvenates your lifestyle! But there may come a time that you find something quite odd about your worm compost bins.

It may be that you find moldy food inside the tumbler, or you detect an offensive odor coming from your compost bins, or you may find your worms trying to escape from the tumbler! When you notice any of these things, do not panic. Your worms are not going to die. But there is something wrong about your compost bins. And if you do not fix it, this might affect the environment inside the compost bins.

Worm Composting Problem #1: Moldy Food

Sometimes you may find the food inside your compost bins covered in molds. This is a very unpleasant situation for you and for your worms.

Molds are fungi which aid in the natural decomposing process of organic materials. But their presence in your worms' food is not going to help in the worm composting process! Worse, worms do not eat moldy food so it does not get processed and decomposed as fast as you want it to be. This can cause infestations of the worm compost bins with other microorganisms which can disrupt the natural cycle of the system.

Worm Composting Problem #2: Offensive odor

Another problem that you may encounter during your worm composting is offensive odor. There are some cases wherein your compost bin becomes a home to bad odor. This happens when the food you left in the bin becomes anaerobic. Food becomes anaerobic when there is a lack of aeration to provide air to it. When this does happen, the advisable thing to do is to make sure that there is a hefty layer of cardboard or damp newspaper covering the food. You should also stop giving food to your worms for a period of one week. And for added measure, add rock dust or crushed oyster shells to the worm composting bin.

Worm Composting Problem #3 : Worms climb on top of the bin

This problem causes some level of panic among those who do worm composting. Sometimes some people find their worms trying to climb out of the compost bins. This happens when your worms find the environment inside the compost bins disagreeing to their preferences.

Although very few worms actually do escape from inside the tumbler, it is necessary that you mend this problem as early as possible to prevent it from hindering the worm composting process. Usually, worms come out of the tumbler if they find it too wet or too dry for their liking. If the bin is too wet then adding more dry bedding should solve the problem. If the bin is too dry then moistening the bedding inside can do the trick.

Worm composting is generally and easy task to do. But you have to watch out for these problems as any of these can make your worm composting fail.

Camille Joyce Lozano loves to learn and write about organic gardening. She is also a big fan of using Red Wiggler worms for worm composting.

Indoor worm composting bin update: Week 2 (Dec 2011)

Next page: Composting With Worms

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