My worm bin went from smelling like a dumpster to smelling like dirt in about 10 days

I had a real problem with my indoor worm bin smelling bad for weeks. I was adding too many kitchen scraps at once, mostly orange peels and coffee grounds. I stopped adding new food for a full week and mixed in a bunch of shredded brown paper bags. After that break, the smell was completely gone and it just had that earthy forest floor smell. Has anyone else fixed a smelly bin by just leaving it alone for a bit?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_perry905d ago

Hot take: Worms need a diet break too. So you basically gave your bin a timeout and it worked? That's the secret for a lot of composting problems, people just don't want to stop feeding them. It's like they forget the brown stuff is the actual food for the whole system. Glad you figured it out, because a dumpster smell in your house is a hard no.

ruby4945d ago

My buddy had the same thing happen with his bin last month... it started smelling like rotten eggs. He panicked and kept adding more shredded cardboard, which just made it wetter. Finally he just put the lid on and ignored it for like two weeks. When he checked again, the worms had eaten through the mess and it smelled fine. Sometimes they just need to catch up.