Fruit flies

[sventur]

Folks, my compost tumbler is literally swarming with thousands of fruit flies. Have to walk away when I open it as they come flying out like fighter planes! Any ideas what might have caused the over population and if I should do something about it? Are they beneficial for the compost?

[toxcrusadr]

I replied in the other thread on your tumbler, but I would add that fruit flies along with many other critters are part of the crew that turns vegetation into compost. They will not really harm the compost, they actually help it along. That said, I certainly don't blame you for not wanting clouds of them!

[cynthia_h]

I've sometimes had success reducing (not eliminating) the number of these flying insects--whatever they are--by mixing the top layers of ingredients in the compost, watering it pretty well, and then shaking a good amount of powdered eggshells over the top, covering up my bin, and walking away for a few days.

How much is "a good amount"? Enough so that no square centimeter is without eggshell powder, but not so much that the compost beneath the eggshell powder is invisible.

I make my powder by running dried eggshells through an old blender which is used only for this purpose. I then sift the powder through a hand sieve directly into the compost. The coarse pieces are returned to the blender for a later go-round.

Hope this helps; I thought I'd pass it along.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[sventur]

This might sound a bit stupid! This afternoon I checked upon the tumbler. What I did first was touch the tumbler to see if its warm. Strangely and this is the stupid part, I felt like a slight continuous vibration. As I said before I have thousands upon thousands of fruit flies and mites living inside the tumbler. Could this vibration be cause by the critters?

That said, when I opened the tumbler to check on the moisture level, I had to move away fast because of the large amount of flies!

[toxcrusadr]

Did you take any steps to change the conditions after you posted about the fruit flies a few days ago? I asked (in your other thread, Chicken Manure and Carob Browns) about the odor and moisture level.

I suspect the tumbler has too much moisture and/or too much nitrogen in it. This is the most common cause of insect overpopulation. I would suggest mixing in more browns, and don't add water for awhile. This will help dry it out and absorb some of the excess nitrogen.

[sventur]

Hello Tox, infact I added another whole sack of browns just this morning but I had to water it as after the mixing in, the whole pile seemed dry. The problem for sure is that I'm quite off the 30:1 mark! After adding this other sack of browns it turns out I'm somewhere in the region of 21:1. By mistake I threw in 20 Kgs of fresh laying chicken manure in the begining and thats a hell of a lot. Apart from that I'm restricted to how much material I can put in as this is a 55gal tank. Another thing is that my browns as stated before are made out of carrob tree debris. I am using the dry leaves ratio to calculate but most of the debris is actually wood bark and dry fruits from the carrob trees. So I am a bit unsure of the ratio to that!

[sventur]

Sorry, about the odour and moisture level. Odour is that of chicken manure but not too much as in the begining. Moisture, I need to add to it quite often (5 days) as it evaporates quite fast and when its windy it dries out much quicker.

[rot]

..
I'm unclear on how much water you add but consider adding less water at a time but with greater frequency.

I had bins on concrete once and the last thing I needed to see in our arid area was water running down the concrete deck out my compost bins. Just a waste and messy too but the teeny tiny critters doing all the work still need water.

to sense
..

[toxcrusadr]

Sounds like you are doing all the right things, so it should come into balance eventually (hopefully soon!).