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- #991
Pests aren't really a problem, the way I've built my box keeps them away. We had some mice in the feed cabinet (about 15 feet from the compost), but after I got a mouse trap and caught 3 of them, I haven't seen any more mouse poop accumulating anywhere. The smell isn't a problem that often either, it depends on how moist the pile is. As you say, avoiding food in the compost would eliminate that issue completely, but as the point of my compost is to not only be a way to get rid of spent bedding, but also to be a way of not having to send something I could process at home to a landfill, I won't be switching to just garden waste. Also, the foodstuffs in the compost make the process a lot quicker, and probably add a lot of nutrients to the soil.
What I see as my main issue at the moment is that the bottom parts of the pile are subject to anaerobic breakdown. That means it's not completely processed by the time I empty the box, and it does get a bit smelly. If I were to build a new compost today, I would make it with at least three compartments, possibly even four, and then I would adapt a system where I would dump the decomposing stuff through all compartments, starting at one end, and then emptying at the other end, playing musical compost compartments every time the first box is full. That way I would get the bottom parts on top a couple of times through the cycle, and it would break down more evenly. It would also allow the resting stuff to leach heat off of the hotter piles.
What I see as my main issue at the moment is that the bottom parts of the pile are subject to anaerobic breakdown. That means it's not completely processed by the time I empty the box, and it does get a bit smelly. If I were to build a new compost today, I would make it with at least three compartments, possibly even four, and then I would adapt a system where I would dump the decomposing stuff through all compartments, starting at one end, and then emptying at the other end, playing musical compost compartments every time the first box is full. That way I would get the bottom parts on top a couple of times through the cycle, and it would break down more evenly. It would also allow the resting stuff to leach heat off of the hotter piles.
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