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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Good worms vs. Bad worms

15 years ago

I have a compost in my little window outside of my apartment here in China. Recently, I went to go turn it and to get some of the good soil from the bottom to use in transplanting some baby plants into bigger pots, but when I went to turn the compost it was really wet, full of little white worms, fruit flies, and it smelled awful (like rotten urine). What is happening? What should I do? I have added newspaper to it to hopefully take out some of the moisture and have stopped adding scraps to it for the last week, but I'm a bit worried my compost bin might be ruined. I don't add acidic fruits and I think the nitrogen levels may be okay, but I must have done something wrong.

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Comments (4)

jean001
15 years ago
The stuff on the bottom is too wet. Don't use it for plants until the bad smell is gone.

To do that, you might mix the entire pile now and then to help it compost.

Or you could remove the stinky stuff and begin another pile with it.
greenwood85
15 years ago
Compost needs to breath, so you ought to either work aeration into your pile or turn it every now and then to ensure that doesn't happen again. Also, too much water forces out the air.
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If they are the bright green tomato hornworms, you can pick them off and crush them or put them in soapy water to die. If you see any with white things sticking out of them - the white things are wasps that will kill the hornworms - LEAVE THAT WORM! The wasps will multiply and you won't have too much of a problem next year. I had a terrible problem until I learned how to see the worms (you can spray plant with water and that will make the worms move a little - easier to see) - but I left the ones with wasps and the next year only had 1 or 2 and lots more tomatoes.
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shebear
15 years ago
If it smells, you add a carbon....newspaper, leaves, straw. Add enough until it's just like a damp sponge when you mix the pile. You generally need more carbon than nitrogen (newspaper to food scraps) so every time you add food scraps, spread some carbon over it.
joepyeweed
15 years ago
It was probably too high in Nitrogen and moisture. That urine smell is ammonia formed from the N.

Your addition of paper should solve the problem.

You want to keep your compost mixed and full of shredded paper. The compost should be three parts brown (shredded paper, junk mail) to one part green (kitchen scraps)... and it should only be moist, not wet.

Keep mixing in dry shredded paper until you get rid of the smell. The compost doesn't need to be tossed, it just needs a bit of tweaking.

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