Vermicompost Defeat

Rob and I recieved a worm-compost bin for a wedding gift, and I was really excited to use it. I've heard that a single pound of worms can chow through a pound of kitchen scraps each day! Since we don't have a yard, we'd otherwise have to dump our food waste in a plastic bag and send it to the landfill, where it wouldn't return to the earth like it should.

In October I bought a pound of worms from Eugene's local Dan the Worm Man, and everything started off great. We kept the bin in our storage closet, with Rob's bike and packing boxes. It's right outside our apartment door in the hall. The worms were pretty slow at eating their food, but eventually I saw the recognizable food scraps turn into little brown flecks of fertility. This being an upward migration bin, you are supposed to add new food to a bin layer above the first, and they will go up there when they're through with the first bin layer. Well, they never did. They are still living down below, and seem to be pretty happy there.

The devastation occurred yesterday, when I noticed quite a number of itty bitty flying bugs lining the cracks on the outside of the storage closet door. And the hallway. And the door to the laundry room. Noooooooo!!! I knew there were some bugs in the compost--you expect that, but the population is out of hand and they aren't staying localized. So, I scooped out all the untouched, rotting food on the top layer and took a bleach-solution soaked paper towel to kill every bug in sight. We'll see what happens in a few days. If it's still a threatening pest situation, we might have to put this on hold till years from now we have our own outdoor space...so, so disappointing.