Sunday, May 3, 2009

Compost Help!!

Tonight I tilled the land in our backyard for one of our gardens.  I planned on mixing my compost with the soil (if you can call it soil).   When I started scooping out the dirt from the compost bin, there were a lot of fruit flies.  As I dug deeper there were TONS of larvae!  

From a simple problem solving wheel I have on composting (thanks Patricia!), it mentions that this is often from food scraps, especially if the scraps contain meat or fats.  I am very careful not to add any such scraps!  I do admit to not turning the compost in the past few months.  But, most of the compost is really wet, dark dirt and some leaves that haven't composted b/c of sitting on top all winter.   There are very few pieces of food, if any that I see (a pumpkin rind and a few corn husks).

The quick guide said to cover the larvae with ~6 inches of compost and mix to increase temperature.  This will hopefully kill the larvae/flies.   

I need to do some more searching on the topic, but thought I would put out a cry for help!!!
I guess this means months until my compost is finally ready??

Any suggestions from my composting family/friends?
Help!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know much about composting...but a picture would be gnarly ;)

hope you found your solution :)
steve0