you be careful! i watched a vid on that recently. the guy claimed that mulching the walkways actually loosened the soil down about 18" IIRC. ill see if i can find it.
You're gonna have critters in the compost no matter what you throw in there. Rats , mice, possums, raccoons will be attracted to vegetables and seeds anyway so not putting animal parts in there because it will attract them is kinda dumb. What you might not want is bigger animals like your neighbor's dog and cat digging animal parts back up. And maggots are kinda gross. Even they are short lived part of nature sorting down to basics. You might not want your lawn clippings in the compost if they are loaded with weed killer and germination inhibitors. Some of them take a LOT longer to break down than the manufacturers claim. Especially breaking completely down.
I've been composting for 30+ yrs. No critters obviously rooting around in my compost. I'm sure a chipmunk or squirrel might explore it, but nothing else. I'll continue to keep bones and meat trimmings out of it.
Not intentionally, kitchen scraps go in a bucket and it gets brought out. But with the snow you can go out and look and you can see the deer tracks. I mean yes they eat the vegetables too but they really demolish the egg shells.
My soil and compost piles are frozen as of this afternoon here . We are supposed to hit the mid to upper 60s this weekend so I anticipate some reheating of the piles taking place by early next week, as well as first plantings of kale, radishes, spinach, lettuce and onions. Then it will be rhubarb and garlic shoots up past the mulch, and the first asparagus within a few weeks .
Stacking the shed and cleaning the deck I remembered this thread. Usually I’d toss it back into the wood yard. Grabbed the wheel barrow and filled it nearly full and brought it over to the compost pile. And I’m tossing the bark sheathes into one pile for later. Nice tip! Thanks.
If you go big enough for high temperatures, the diversity of nutrients imparted by using animal waste from one's hunting/fishing/backyard pest control is well worth it for your garden. Plus it satisfies a desire to not waste any valuable resources for one's homestead. Once my brown materials (leaves) run out in July. My fish and backyard pest control materials get buried deep around plants with a post hole digger. You don't have to worry about animal carcasses, chicken bones, steak bones, deer bones and fish remains, etc in a well diversified compost system...that is if you are hot composting in large piles that reach internal temperatures reaching 160f, up to 170f. I have at least 50-70 lbs of fish remains from the past winter's spearing and angling at the bottom of one of my piles right now. They are covered by 2-3 feet of fall leaves and semi-finished compost. By the time I turn it, there will be nothing left but a few of the largest bones with no odor. We have fox, possum and raccoon, as well as a few feral cats. There is no evidence of any disturbance in the garden. I did it this way for years in the big woods with every critter imaginable, including a lot of hungry bears, and still do it to this day. If you are using commercial compost tumblers or small piles...you will be inundated by pests, unless you have a good outside dog, but even in that case, you might be stressing your dog, and getting woken up at night up by a lot of barking. We had a Chesapeake/lab mix up north on guard outside 24/7, but she was mainly keeping bears from our deck and her food, versus the compost, which was never touched by critters. She was a good dog, fearless and a fierce protector of our yard and family. Another guru: Joe Salatin. Granted my piles are not as big as his, but big enough to avoid the problems with pests that many people might have otherwise. The key to using grass clippings and other high nitrogen materials is having a lot browns to mix in. This is where my 40-50 bags of stashed fall leaves come in. I am usually out of dry leaves by the forth of July. At that time grass clipping are used for my mulch around established plants and my foot paths between my 22 raised beds. I also a big believer in the benefits of coffee grounds, and take the opportunity to obtain 5-10 gallons of coffee grounds and filters from work and our church service per month. This material is a semi-green material of about 2% nitrogen. Fall is prime time for collecting a perfect mix of grass and leaves in the mower bagger during yard clean up before winter. Wood ash is also a good compost material, and I add at least 10 gallons to my piles every spring.
Another tip to consider is to add a one time a bag of composting worms to a finished pile, even in colder zones 3 and 4. I did this on a whim three years ago one summer, and still find the critters that must over-winter in my piles despite temperatures colder than -25f. These worms really get to work on breaking things down, and add a lot of castings to your finished compost. They are in all my beds by the end of the summer. They seem to make short work of my top layers of compost and grass clippings, turning it all into fine soil.
For anyone interested relatively large scale home composting on their homestead: This method will not work with small piles or tumblers. Here Rick Larson is hot composting fish and deer remains in an aerobic bio-diverse system. The main ingredients are still carbons/browns and nitrogen rich materials such as manure, kitchen scraps, and grass/plant clippings. I have similar results over about a month of turning the pile every 3-4 days. The pile I have going now is cooking at 150f with only a faint rather pleasant odor of rich humus and leaf mold. There is no physical evidence of the well over 50lbs of fish remains from this past winter. I find the odd deer bone or small game skull. But they just keep getting turned in, and eventually get broken down over time in the main garden after the finished product is used to mulch all my beds.
My current state of the compost pile....... thinking that the pumpkins are taking advantage of the soil conditions.....
Same kind of plastic pallets I have. Are you using T-post to hold them up? I'm thinking of building a bin to put shorty chunks in since all my drums are full. Think that would work?
