Are Maggots in Your Compost Good or Bad?

If you have ever wondered what the big grubs are in your compost...they're maggots. But more specifically, they're the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly, and they're actually not THAT bad for your compost...unless you have a lot of them.

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[lonelywolf]

Instead of compost bin mine looks like a conservation project for common house fly

[YevgeniyShcherbakov]

If you love to fish, fish loves them! I used them to catch trout, perch, carp, catfish, sunnies, bass. If you use kitchen scraps, then expect maggots. If you don't, then there will be no maggots. Once maggots finish their work and you don't add more kitchen scraps, they will die off. Worms will stay cause they don't care, they just need soil.

[haeason]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with them, and they accelerate the breakdown of the raw compostables. Just another part of the cycle. I saw a comment about using them for fish bait - great suggestion. I do it too and catch limit after limit of bluegill.

[martystevens]

Their castings are no different than worm castings...plus they breakdown larger pieces faster than microorganisms. I'd leave 'em.

[FDDLERSGREEN]

I probably have a thousand in my compost at any given time. I let the rain water fill up my bin about half way. Let that juice marinate for a couple of weeks. It smells like a cow farm when i take the lid off. Drain that juice into a 5 gal pail and then scoop it out of the bucket and directly onto my garden plants, banana mango fig papaya etc etc and follow it with a scoop of rain water from another 5 gal pail(if its not going to rain immediately or currently). Since i started doing this this year, my dwarf banana plants are growing to above 6' and theyre normally around 4ish'. But i only use the juice from my compost and let the maggots keep it from overfilling.

[johntan]

So I checked my compost bin like the video one and yes, I have huge maggots. I thought wow I've never seen maggots that big and wondered if they good to have in my bin. So I am a little confused from some posts: someone says to add grass clippings to discourage them, others say to use a layer of card board or cedar chips to get rid of them. I would think these maggots are doing a good thing decomposing the material. There's a couple posts about once the soil is ready to be used, will the maggots live in the new area - that is will they spread further, will they damage the soil in your already planted area? You would think maggots will become "flies" - no / yes? Depending on the conditions of its environment? BTW: this is my first attempt to make compost in this rotating bin like device. All your comments are appreciative. Cheers

[militaryhomes]

I have a slightly more open system and the maggots fall out the bottom. My thoughts on it is that the maggots and flies are more food for the local birds.

[penelopepitstop]

They are gross and I panicked when I saw them, which is how I ended up here. Most say it's ok (yet still gross). We are new composters so I was worried we did something wrong. Luckily, I have some more "brown" to add now that the everything is starting to die for winter.

[yeahrightbear]

My compost is literally a sea of maggots. They love watermelon.

[didthatreallyjust]

I don't understand why everyone is so upset/worried about the maggots in their compost lol. They don't stick around forever and they are literally doing u a service.

[boyar]

i did this in Phnom penh cambodia. I got a trash bin and started putting all my vegetable scraps inside. WIthin a few months it was full of maggot. They did make shortwork of whatever i would put into it. However a few months later i looked in the bin thinking it would be full of maggots. When i opened it this time there were no maggot and realized ants moved in. I guess once ants find out that there is plenty of mango being added than they basically made my compost bin their home and likely ate all the maggots. I learned how to make potash from charcoal ashe and added that. It eventually drive away the ants. I am guessing it changed the pH to a point where the insects could not handle it anymore. My girlfriend has brought her dying aloe plant and after giving it a little potash and compost it started growing like crazy. It started out with brown leaves and small. Within a few months it leaves were all green and were so strong i could almost sit on them. It also kept creating more shoots

[antoniocruz]

Black soldier fly help to reduce housefly population.

[lynnanderson]

What happens if there are a ton of them?

[MegaRobo]

I have this exact same tumbler and when I went out today to check it everything, and I mean everything was covered in the maggots. The compost, the walls, and I remember seeing half an eggshell was completely full of maggots. I immediately decided to shut the lid and rotated the bin.

[Inxx]

Are we just conditioned to think maggots are gross? Won't the maggots break down food waist before it goes anaerobic? So far on my search it seems that maggots do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to turning food waist to compost. What is bad about having too many? So far it seems to me, the more, the better. I used to think maggots are gross but now that I have a better idea what part of the nutrient cycle they occupy, I don't find them gross at all.

[girlletsgo]

Question number one, does the line kill the worms too? My next question is, if the maggots or larva help decompose the material in your compost, but attack your plant roots if added to your garden.... it seems you want to keep them in your compost until you have enough castings to add to your beds and kill (lime) The larve right before. how many days after adding lime should we wait before adding the compost to our garden beds? Thanks

[adjones]

I've got so many my compost bin could get up and walk off if it wanted to 🤢
I need to limit them, I practically have nothing to show for my compost.

[HolyCity]

The problem isn't maggots in the compost.

The problem IS they become flys in the home.

I would rather stop them at the source than run around snapping at them with a kitchen towel

[FunFacts]

I have also a problem with these maggots, that's why i dried my compost direct to sun and they died their bodies will added to my compost which is rich in nitrogen. My maggots were fried because the temperature here in the philippines was almost 42 degrees celcius

[wacomac]

BSF are not your common housefly. Actually, I don't know if I have ever seen a BSF in the house. They do love the compost!