Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[vehve]

The insect hotels are supposed to attract more solitary insects, honeybee's you won't get in one. But carpenter bees might move in, and lady bugs.

 

[leanna1120]

So it would be reasonable to fill up 3 bins during the winter to start composting when it gets warmer out?

 

[vehve]

Sure, better than hauling it to the dump. That's my opinion at least.

 

[lazy gardener]

Leanna, are you in a residential area or, far removed from your neighbors? If I was wanting to get a head start on composting, I'd get a couple of old trash cans with covers. drill some drainage holes in the bottom, set them up outside my back door. Dump my kitchen debris as it's generated, add a light layer of hay, and keep going until that first can is full, then fill the second one. If it's very cold where you are, odor won't be a problem. Then, when things start to thaw out in the spring, you can roll those cans to where you want to do your serious composting. Do you have a garden? What is your gardening style? Rows, beds? How much snow do you have? If you don't have a lot of snow cover, you could even start to build up a compost in your garden.

 

[leanna1120]

I am in the country with neighbors about 300 meters away. It's VERY cold here right now...in the 2-15 degree F range and lower with windchill but not a ton of snow currently. I do garden. I have a vegetable garden with rows as well as raised garden box. I also have lots of flower beds in my yard. I like your trash barrel idea. Sounds easy enough to start that way. If I started composting right in my garden wouldn't everything freeze and and then get really gross when it starts to thaw?? Or would the gradual thawing process lend itself to gradual breakdown? I have lots of chicken poop right now that I could be using as I have sand in the coop and run so there is virtually no waste except for the chicken poop. Thank you so much for letting me pick your brain

 

[hennible]

The insect hotels are supposed to attract more solitary insects, honeybee's you won't get in one. But carpenter bees might move in, and lady bugs.

I find that solitary bees of numerous varieties are attracted to the flowers on radishes lettuce, musklun ( how ever that's spelled) and other crops of greens... you wouldn't believe how many will come.

 

[HennyPennyCO]

Hi Leanna,
Your WI climate won't be too different from our CO one, and I compost all through the winter.
Here's my method:
I have a compost collection bin in the kitchen. I've tried plastic and don't like it because you can't clean it properly. I use stainless steel bathroom waste bins - the all-in-one construction types, no seam between the sides & bottom to collect stuff. I got mine for $4.99 from Ross Dress For Less, and I got another one from a thrift store for a similar price. I took it to the thrift store (talked to the cashier first!) and matched it up with a glass lid, another $1.99. It's probably about 8 qt capacity (8 litres). Since you're in America's dairyland, you could use one of those beautiful stainless steel milk buckets, expensive but very very nice.
You don't need the bins that have the charcoal filter in the lid since you'll be emptying the bin before anything gets smelly, or if it's smelly, you take it out to the compost heap ASAP. (I have a separate bucket in the kitchen for waste water.) If you keep your indoor compost collection bin as dry as possible, it won't smell.
Since the more cut surfaces there are, the faster that things will decay, EVERYTHING that goes into the kitchen bin is chopped/shredded/cut/torn into SMALL pieces. You can add: eggshells, peanut shells, pet hair, mouldy bread and shredded/torn used paper towels, paper napkins, coffee filters, as well as coffee grounds & tea bags.
Your Valentine's Day flowers are probably getting a bit tired by now and into the compost bin they can go, all nicely chopped up into those SMALL pieces. If you've been washing pet bedding, you can add the hairy lint from the dryer. Also add the human hair that you clean out of the hairtrap in the bathroom, or clean out of your hairbrush.
That takes care of inside. Very simple.
In brief:
Chop everything
Have a lid
Empty frequently
Penny

 

[RichnSteph]

You don't need the bins that have the charcoal filter in the lid since you'll be emptying the bin before anything gets smelly, or if it's smelly, you take it out to the compost heap ASAP.

We made the mistake of buying a beautiful SS bin for the kitchen that has the charcoal filters in it. Huge mistake. The charcoal filters hold whatever little smells are in there and compound them over time so that once every couple of months I open it up and almost yak in the sink. The crazy thing is when this happens the kitchen waste that's in the bin has no odor at all, its the charcoal filter that stinks.

 

[HennyPennyCO]

OUTSIDE:
Some of this has been discussed earlier if you have the saintly patience to go back to look, so here's just a brief list of my winter compost procedures:
1. Locate the compost heap close to the chicken run to make run cleanup easier.
2. Keep the path to the compost heap shoveled so there's no excuse not to empty the kitchen scraps. Since you have to check on the chickens and do cleanup there anyway I do both tasks at the same time
3. I do have a couple of those perforated drain pipes across the bottom of the compost heap for aeration purposes. You can buy it pre-perforated at places like Lowe's. I get 3 pieces out of a 10-foot long drain pipe.
4. After a full layer of kitchen scraps, old bedding & chicken poop is put down (mostly nitrogen = N = "greens"), I cover it with a couple of inches layer of shredded leaves (carbon = C = "browns"). I keep the (covered) trash bin of shredded leaves near the compost heap.
5. Repeat 4 as many times as needed.
6. The heap will freeze & thaw as temps change over the winter, but decomposition will happen, albeit slowly. On unseasonably warm days you can give it all a good turn. When spring comes you turn it more, and the process will be ready to go full steam ahead - and we mean steam.
7. IMHO, having a better ratio of N to C in place in the compost heap right from the start beats having to manoeuvre (sp?) bins of heavy, sometime-frozen lumps of high-N kitchen waste, possibly smelly, at winter's end. Spreads the work-load out more evenly - there's just so much else to do when spring finally comes.
Others will have their own techniques.
Cheers,
Penny

 

[vehve]

All good points that have been raised here. I empty the kitchen waste into the bin daily too, I just have an open container sitting on the counter. In the summer I might empty it twice, but my compost is only about 10 meters from the door, so it's no problem.

One thing that comes to mind though, since you're using sand instead of bedding. You will have a very nitrogen heavy mix with all that chicken poop. Hopefully you have a leaf compost somewhere that you can get carbonous matter from to add to the mix, because it will otherwise smell pretty bad. Plus, mixing it in with the compost will speed up the break down process of the leaves significantly. If you don't have leaves, shredded paper would work too.