Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[scottcaddy]

Quote: I have done horse pen piles 6' x 6' x 30', they can work when you mix in a fair bit of chicken poo.

Scott

 

[adventerousone]

Mine is growing daily but still on the small side probably 3 ft across and maybe 2 ft high... I bought a pitchfork today and am ssoooo excited to use it in the morning lol.. such a geek

 

[scottcaddy]

Mine is growing daily but still on the small side probably 3 ft across and maybe 2 ft high... I bought a pitchfork today and am ssoooo excited to use it in the morning lol.. such a geek

Do you need some horse poo to add to your pile? I know where you can get it by the truck load!

Scott

 

[gjensen]

Mine is growing daily but still on the small side probably 3 ft across and maybe 2 ft high... I bought a pitchfork today and am ssoooo excited to use it in the morning lol.. such a geek

It is fun, and I guess that you will find more and more resources to use. By the way . . .I was born in Wichita.

 

[vehve]

Quote: I think you shouldn't shock her husband with a truckload of horse poo just yet, he's only getting used to the idea of composting. Might be a bit extreme for him to come home to a mountain of manure in the driveway.

 

[vehve]

Batch 2 is building up some lovely heat. I measured at several spots, it seems to be pretty uniformly at 60 deg C (140F). The pile has gone down about 15 cm already (6"). I have a feeling this will be a quick batch.

 

[adventerousone]

..

Do you need some horse poo to add to your pile? I know where you can get it by the truck load! 
Lol no that's ok will stick to what I can find around my yard

Scott

 

[vehve]

There was a excavator working on the neighboring property, and after it was done we wen't over to look at what had been done and the neighbor's kid found some worms. So now I got her to collect some more of them, and added 6 worms to batch 1. She later cam over with 2 more, and now I'm hoping this will be enough to get them to start reproducing in there. We're finally getting some much needed rain too, so if it washes up some more worms, I'm going to go hunt them in the driveway. Hopefully the pile is a beneficial environment for them to live in. If they start to flourish, I won't need to get the compost worms I was planning on getting.

 

[lazy gardener]

They won't stay in a hot pile! If you want to get those worms without working for them, try placing a few layers of cardboard in a shady spot. After a week or two, there should be an abundance of dark worms: red or purple colored that you can pick up off the ground. You might even want to hasten the process by putting some potato, or carrot peels under that cardboard. Those worms seem to be more attracted to compost situations than the lighter colored earth worm.

 

[vehve]

They won't stay in a hot pile! If you want to get those worms without working for them, try placing a few layers of cardboard in a shady spot. After a week or two, there should be an abundance of dark worms: red or purple colored that you can pick up off the ground. You might even want to hasten the process by putting some potato, or carrot peels under that cardboard. Those worms seem to be more attracted to compost situations than the lighter colored earth worm.

Yeah, they're in the cooling pile. Even if they're "just worms" I think throwing them in a hot pile would be a bit cruel. I might try the cardboard at some point, but right now I don't have any good spots to do that, all the places with soil that could possibly harbor worms is in plain view, and I'm working hard on keeping the lawn alive in those spots. I have one raised bed that isn't in use at the moment, but I've done too good groundwork in that to expect worms to come through, at least in any larger numbers. I don't think they go through a layer of landscape fabric and leca gravel.