Two months of stinky kitchen before I realized my mistake

I was adding all my eggshells and coffee grounds to my little worm bin but everything just smelled rotten and the worms kept trying to escape. Last week I dropped a whole avocado peel in there and noticed the white mold was actually growing on top of soggy newspaper I never changed out. Did anyone else think you could just keep piling stuff in without replacing the bedding every few weeks?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark4922d ago

Wait, are you not replacing the bedding at all? I've had my bin for a couple years now and yeah you gotta swap out the newspaper or cardboard every month or two, otherwise it turns into this wet sludgy mess. The white mold you saw is probably fine actually, that's just decomposition doing its thing, but the smell means the bedding is too wet and packed down. I usually just pull out the old newspaper when it starts looking gross and add fresh strips, the worms seem to like that better. Your mileage may vary but I've never had them try to escape when I keep the bedding dry enough.

karen_shah5622d ago

My friend Tim had the exact same problem with his bin last year. He kept adding coffee grounds for about 6 weeks before he realized the bottom was basically anaerobic sludge, and @mark49 is totally right about the bedding moisture being the culprit. Once Tim started swapping out the newspaper every few weeks the smell went away and the worms stopped trying to bail.