Have you started to notice unpleasant smells coming from your wormery? Whether you keep it indoors or outdoors, there are a few reasons why your wormery might be starting to stink. It’s natural for wormeries to have an earthy smell when you lift the lid – but if it starts to smell like rotting food, it could be a sign something is wrong. In this blog post, we’ll be looking at some things you can start doing today, to keep bad smells away, and prevent them from happening.
Keep it Aerated
Without proper air flow, a wormery can quickly develop bad smells. Many people choose to keep their compost bin completely enclosed to prevent smells – but did you know this could be doing the opposite?
While worms naturally aerate compost themselves, by moving through it, it’s also important to keep the bin well ventilated, to keep stale air from building up. We recommend putting holes in the top and side of your bin, to make sure air is flowing efficiently.
Don’t Overfeed
A common reason why worm compost bins develop bad odours is overfeeding. While it can be tempting to use them to get rid of large amounts of food waste, giving worms more than they can eat leads to food rotting down. As well as polluting your environment, it’s not good for the worms either – so, when feeding your worms, make sure you are only giving them what they need.
Worms tend to eat around half their weight of food in a day – so, a good guideline to follow is feeding your worm farm half of their combined weight in food – for example, if you have 1kg of worms, feed them 500g of organic waste in a day. This way, there won’t be a build-up of leftovers rotting, and emitting smells.
Moisture Control
A build-up of too much water in your worm bin can cause smells to take over. Worms breathe through their skin, so too much moisture in the soil can be bad for them, causing them to drown. If your worms’ bedding tends to be too wet, adding paper and cardboard can help to soak up that extra water. If this is a problem for you, making sure the water content in your food scraps isn’t too high.
We recommend that the soil in your compost bin is around the same level of moisture as a wrung-out sponge, with a crumbly texture.
If your wormery hasn’t got a drainage tap at the bottom, turning it on its side can help to drain any water that might have gathered at the bottom.
Whether you are new to worm composting, or have been doing it for some time, Yorkshire Worms’ online shop has everything you need to keep your worms happy and make your project a success. Discover our range of wormery starter kits, worm food, coir bedding, and worm colony packs. Click here to take a look.