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How should I manage my worm bin so I can keep it inside the house in my kitchen?
Avoid sulfer rich foods in addition to the normal vermicomposting no-nos. The best way to prevent odor is to ensure adequate air circulation and proper hydration. Most odor comes as a consequence of too much moisture.
As for the fruit flies, you can try placing cups of vinegar in the bin, but this will probably only reduce the quantity of flies rather than eliminate them. Some kind of predator may work, but you're better off starting over.
You'll lose some worms to stress, but you'll ditch the flies, too.
With an indoor worm bin, we're very strict about just putting vegetable and fruit matter into the bin. Much of it comes from our juicing. This kind of matter doesn't put off much of a smell as long as we don't over feed the worms.
We learned how much our worms could eat by trial and error. It'll be obvious if they're getting too much food because they'll be hard to find. We have the five tray system so once once the last tray is full, the first tray is hungry again.
We put thick damp newspaper on top of the worm bin. This really helps avoid the fruit flies.
