Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[scottcaddy]

With our taxes it comes to about the same, yeah.

I'll try to remember next time I go near the place that sells them. I basically want an analog 16" probe, but those are hard to find. 8" is readily available, but that's a bit on the short side.

Do you mean something like this? https://www.google.com/search?q=ana...v&sa=X&ei=annuVIzfF4W4ggSMg4DoBg&ved=0CDQQsAQ

I had fun looking this up.
Good Luck Felix!
Scott

 

[lazy gardener]

Henny, your plan is definitely the way to go. Start the pile in spite of the cold. But, I was working with my paradigm: 4+ ' of snow EVERYWHERE except for shoveled paths! And, I definitely keep my winter pile handy to the chicken coop... kind of a one stop shopping deal! In the summer, it could be just about any where... where ever the gardening action is needing it.

 

[hennible]

Lazy Gardner you're on to something I need a mobile bin like Vehves. By the coop for the winter by the greenhouse for the summer...nope how about two both mobile so I can pull them to the greenhouse and empty them... just build it on wheels... Fold up handles for pushing...

 

[leanna1120]

Thank you all for the specifics....so very helpful!! I am so excited to get started with this process! Now to get the hubby to build me my bins

@HennyPennyCO I'm having a little chuckle because my daughters reading story for tonight was Henny Penny

 

[HennyPennyCO]

I do like the idea of a mobile bin, but I think to be effective, it would have to be at least 3'x3'x3' or 4'x4'x4' (1mx1mx1m), and thus too heavy to move, or so heavy the wheels would sink into the soft ground. But the Finnish-style insulated winter one wouldn't need to be as big, I'm thinking.
Snow is coming down briskly as I write, my having shoveled out the pathways several times already today. This month is shaping up to be one of the most snowy Februaries on record, ever, and we're nowhere near the snowfall of the northeastern US states. I've worked with 4' of snow before and all of you in that part of the country have my sympathy.
We had horses & chickens at that house then, and the trek down to the barn in thigh-deep snow was a trial for the kids whose turn it was to feed the animals that morning before school (and after school). The middle-school/high-school bus came at 6:15 AM. Very character-building.
Penny

 

[HennyPennyCO]

Thank you all for the specifics....so very helpful!! I am so excited to get started with this process! Now to get the hubby to build me my bins

@HennyPennyCO I'm having a little chuckle because my daughters reading story for tonight was Henny Penny

Yes, that's me - "HennyPenny, the sky is falling!" It's either that or Ms Moneypenny (but not JCPenney).

At present I use a 10' or so length of fencing wire (the green plastic-coated rectangular-mesh wire netting that is used to keep out rabbits, with the smaller mesh at the bottom), cut off so that you have ends to hook into the other side when the wire netting goes into a circle. You just unhook the wire ends to open out the circle (easier said than done, tho'). I line it with old cardboard boxes flattened out into sheets, loosely laid inside and with holes punched in for ventilation. I reuse the cardboard until it disintegrates. You can put one of these bins just about anywhere. I have about 6 of them, not all in use at the same time.
I've been tossing up about building the regular three-bin system because it is SO much easier to turn the compost in those bins if you have a removable front panel.
I have one open-fronted one that I built with concrete blocks held together with lengths of rebar hammered into the ground. It's used for the completed compost and it's not at all portable - but tons more esthetically attractive. I've filled in the holes in the middle of the blocks with potting soil and in the summer grow flowers in it, mostly portulaca (moss rose) since they are very hardy.

On the topic of what to put in the compost - I assume you know that meat & dairy products are not good to put in the compost.

Like the other contributors here, I just hate to put anything in the trash that could otherwise be reused, given away, recycled, composted, or fed to dogs, chickens or worms.

Penny

 

[vehve]

I'd say the insulated box also needs to be at least 3x3x3 feet. Bigger is always better. I don't think something small enough to be moved would be large enough to compost properly, at least not quickly. I'd rather have some sort of container I collect the stuff into, and then just dump it into the compost at once. Those net and cardboard things do sound pretty handy though, pretty much the same idea as the compost cages I like.



Then to HennyPenny's comment on meat and dairy being bad in the compost. You shouldn't make a statement like that without explaining yourself, because people will think it's actually bad for the compost, instead of the other reasons why you should carefully consider whether to put those in a bin or not.

The most common reasons are that if the meat is somehow infected, you might spread whatever's wrong with the meat. I'd say that if the meat comes from your kitchen, that isn't really much of a risk. But that's one thing to consider. Then we have the smell. If you have an inefficient compost, you can produce quite a smell with meat and dairy. You can also attract flies. So when composting meat and dairy, the compost should be running hot, and you should bury the stuff right in the core. Then we have the biggest issue. What kind of predators do you have in your area? If I had a large population of wolves, coyotes, raccoons and bears, I might not put dairy and meat in the bin. My main issue is foxes and rodents, and those can't get into my bin, so I put meat and dairy in mine.

 

[lazy gardener]

Lazy Gardner you're on to something I need a mobile bin like Vehves. By the coop for the winter by the greenhouse for the summer...nope how about two both mobile so I can pull them to the greenhouse and empty them... just build it on wheels... Fold up handles for pushing...

I don't have a portable bin, unless you count my compost tumbler, which does get moved around a bit: closer to the house/coop in the winter, close to the garden in the summer. As vehve says, the bin needs to be a minimum of a cubic yard to hold enough heat to be effective. That would be way too much weight to easily move. Better to shovel the finished stuff into your garden cart. A good way to make an insulated bin would be to use hay bales! Well insulated, and you could do hay bale gardening in the top, and at the end of the season, those bales would become a great start for next year's compost! (Hmmm.... I may have to do this! Perhaps set up 2 parallel rows of bales, and do a trench compost in the middle.)

Quote: Then to HennyPenny's comment on meat and dairy being bad in the compost. You shouldn't make a statement like that without explaining yourself, because people will think it's actually bad for the compost, instead of the other reasons why you should carefully consider whether to put those in a bin or not.

I'm one of those folks who sticks my tongue out at convention. I was the kid who sat in the front of the class room, and waved my hand in the air, asking, "But, why did you say that?" One of my college teachers got very frustrated with me! So, I let common sense rule. If I have a nice pile going, that's where the cat's many decapitated gifts go. I once killed a mouse in the garden. We were on our way to camp that morning, and everyone was waiting in the car, so I just left it, figuring that I'd bury it when we got back that evening. By the time we got back, the mouse was still there, but there was NOTHING left but a fluffy pile of fur and bare bones. Carrion beetles had devoured every bit of soft tissue. So, if that will happen on top of the ground, I have no qualms about burying smallish critters in the compost. Would I use compost to side dress my lettuce, if I buried critters in it last week? No. I'd not side dress with compost that was less than a year old. But, I'd amend the soil with fresher compost, and then plant my lettuce. I often do a trench compost pile, toss some soil over it, and plant directly on top of that. (In that case, leaving out the vermin!)

 

[RichnSteph]

Do any of you filter the compost before putting it in the garden? I've got some left over hardware cloth (1/2" or so in size) that I was thinking of using to make a shaker box so that I could filter out any large particles (bones, sticks, animal skulls) out of the compost and also break the soil up while shaking it before we use it in the garden. The pile I'm talking about has been done cooking for easily a month and is sitting outside in a drying bin while it completes its cool down phase.

 

[vehve]

I don't do it, but I should. Anything that doesn't go through can be returned to the pile.