Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[vpatt]

I may give it a try....thnx. my F-I-L shreds his or at least still did a coulpe years ago......I got some once and it was nice. Ill check with him too.

 

[lazy gardener]

Or if you have a tarred driveway, pile them there, and drive on them for a week or so.

 

[vpatt]

I would not have thought of driving over them.....but I'm not sure the chicks would leave them alone....our drive is gravel, too.

 

[RichnSteph]

I would not have thought of driving over them.....but I'm not sure the chicks would leave them alone....our drive is gravel, too.

Any time I pile leaves up to burn or just to get them off of the lawn our chickens start right in and scatter them. I don't know what it is about something piled up that they just have to dig into. They're like kids that way I guess.

RichnSteph

 

[RichnSteph]

I haven't turned our compost pile in quite a while. I stupidly put the pine shavings from our coop floor in there last month and the darn things just refuse to break down so I've stirred it up really well and added all the used brewers grain from our BSF bin and am putting the chicken droppings in there every week and watering the heck out of it. So today I head out there to look at it and I have a forest of pumpkin seedlings growing in there and (here was my big surprise) a few of the kale stalks that we tossed in there have made little roots and are sprouting leaves as are the onion bottoms that are in there. That compost must be some fertile stuff if everything we throw in there starts to grow.

RichnSteph

 

[vehve]

We've had a bit of a cold snap, it was -15C last night. The compost is keeping warm, but I'd like it to stay warmer. I think the longer cold weather we're supposed to get will freeze it. This morning it was 8C in there though, and I'm seeing some signs of it starting to warm, so we might make it without it freezing. Exciting times.

RnS, sounds pretty fertile. If you don't want them to grow there, you can just turn them back in and they will break down. It is a clear sign that your compost isn't cooking hot enough though, if it hasn't killed the seeds, so be careful where you use the soil. How's the moisture in there?

 

[henless]

Just finished reading the entire thread. Took me a while, but great reading! Thanks for posting this vehve. It has inspired me to start working on my own compost bin. I'm not going to insulate it, but I have decided on a 3 bin system. I've got it started, I just need a few more boards to finish it.


I started working on it Friday. Each compartment is going to be 3x3x3. My corner posts were a little short. They were left overs from an old deck we had on our trailer years ago. I had DH cut them off with his chain saw for me. The side boards are a mix of old and not so old boards. Left overs from various projects and such.

I used my raised bed in front of my coop to help me build it. I have Rheumatoid Disease, and I really can't "get on the ground" and do projects. It's easier on me if I have them raised up some. It also takes me a while to do things since I run out of energy a lot quicker than I used to.





This is what I have done so far. Everything is recycled, except for the screws and the wire that I will be putting around the outside. If you click on the pic, you can see where the posts were about 2 in short, so I extended the top boards to bring the height up to 3'. That way the wire would fit better. I had thought about painting it, but didn't know if I should or not? I didn't know if the paint would hurt the compost post.



I hope to get the wire up today so that I can start composting in the first bin at least. I need to put up one more partition and try to gather up some boards for the front.

I was going to use some 4x4' metal corral gates we had, but since the posts were so short, thought it would look funny have the gates up so tall above the bins. I still may make swing out doors instead of slid boards for the front. It just depends on what I can scrounge up. I really don't want to get new boards for the bins.

 

[vehve]

henless, that's going to be a nicec compost.

My box is heating up now, the air in it was 20C this morning, with outside temperature being -7C. Now the outside temps are getting colder, but when we just got home I could smell the compost from 50 feet, so it's heating up. I hope it gets through the smelly burn part quickly, I doubt the neighbors will enjoy it too much otherwise. And the better half is complaining too.

 

[henless]

henless, that's going to be a nicec compost.

Thanks! I was able to do some more work on it yesterday, in between the rain showers.



I've got the wire up and one bin is working. Still need to put up the 2nd partition and cut some more fronts.

 

[vehve]

-17C outside, +17C in the compost, with even higher core temperatures (I assume). And it's putting out quite the smell, which really carries in the cold air.

Henless, is the net attached on the inside of the horizontal parts? If not, I'd be a bit worried about it coming undone, a cubic meter of compost does weigh a bit... Other than that, looking very good.