caracolina

We were doing the major cleaning thing this Sunday morning when John noticed that what I recently thought were “a few beetle-like things” on the worm box had turned into the beginning of a fruit fly infestation. He immediately shoved the box outside and I took the top tray to the garbage dumpster to peel off the worst layers while trying to preserve the poor worms hanging on. Back in the apartment I did some online searches for “fruit flies worm box” and found out that because of the fresh veg I’ve been feeding the box has gotten too wet (we’ve been able to drain fluids without adding any) and I should have used more bedding to regulate moisture.

Nonetheless, it appears that fruit flies are a common pest among vermicomposters and there are a number of easy traps you can make to keep their numbers down. Luckily, we haven’t advanced to the “clouds” stage yet. John vacuumed up the ones sitting around on the wall behind the worm box and we mixed dry soil into both trays (we still don’t have enough volume for the third tray).

It seemed that the worms were actually not unhappy with all the moisture in the bottom tray, there appeared to be quite a lot of them, which is a relief. I’m a bit nervous that we may be drying them out now, but I’ll be checking the consistency regularly and will probably do the next feeding on in a few days (I don’t really have anything to feed right at this moment, I just did it a couple of days ago).

Needless to say, I’ll be spending some more time researching on better feeding and bedding habits.