Time flies like an arrow.

My composter has lately become home to many fruit flies. They are not hurting anything, but they make it less pleasant than it might be to open the container and add new scraps.

Please advise. Is this just an inevitable consequence of (a) fruit and (b) summer? Perhaps also (c) being in an early stage of composting, so lacking a critical mass of already composted matter? Would a big helping of someone else's lawn cuttings help? I spin the drum every couple of days, so I think everything is as well turned and aerated as it's going to get.

Comments

[avogadro]

This is indeed merely an inevitable consequence of fruit, summer, and the decomposition process.

To find out more about composting or testicular torsion, you can look at special medical books, or on the interweb!

[mike]

Our composter is also home to many many fruit flies. I find that they go down a bit when I put a load of "browns" on top, for which we've been using newspaper. Otherwise, they're probably helping things out.. right?

[Ray Davis]

I've been wondering the same thing. (Not about your bin, ours.) But at worst we're just distracting the flies from our delicious bowls of fruit at home, right? Right?

[redfox]

Thank you, I feel much better knowing that my compost is not alone! I'll throw some "browns" on the pile and see how it goes.

As per advice, I also pursued the question further on the interweb, and learned that sprinkling some lime (calcium carbonate) over the compost can also help to keep fruit flies down. The flies are apparently attracted to acidity, as found in nice tasty fruit, and making things less acidic doesn't harm anything else. Intriguing.