| Can You Compost Pet Waste?
By Barbara, July 12, 2008
Where I used to live, I had to patrol the yard with a spade a special doo-bucket before I mowed if I wanted clean clippings for mulching the vegetable garden. I threw ol' Ruby's treasures into a wooded ditch, but lacking such a resource, more and more people have begun composting their pets' manure in special pits or buried buckets. Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture has assembled some nice pictures of a low-tech system made from a medium-size plastic garbage can that's been perforated with holes. It gets buried in a hole located away from edible plants.
A well-executed pet waste compost pit certainly can work, but please proceed mindfully. Under no circumstances should compost made from dog or cat feces be used in soil where edible plants are grown, or where small children are likely to play in the mud.
Want to know what's in there? Here's a solid example. An experienced pet owner and composter in Eugene, OR, composted her dog doo in a plastic bin. Every 6 months or so, she emptied the bin's contents into a container and let it mature for a year.
Compost specialists at the City of Eugene obtained samples and tested it for salmonella, coliform bacteria, and other nasties. "We then allowed the material to sit for another 6 months and tested it again, hoping time and microbial competition would bring the material into the "safe" level," wrote compost specialist Anne Donahue. "It didn't."
Eighteen months after the crumbly-looking compost was set aside to cure, it still contained enough microbial pathogens to contaminate a planting of leafy greens.
Dog and cat manure can be composted, and probably should be composted when it is practical to do so. Include a long curing time (pathogen levels in the Eugene study did drop steadily as time went on) and always wear gloves when you handle the material. Keep the project in a place that drains away from food crops. When the compost is ready to use, spread it under shrubs or ornamental trees, and then cover it with a biodegradable mulch.
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| Photo by Donna Chiarelli |
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| Frozen Treats
By Barbara, 2/12/08
Even when it's frozen solid as a boulder, a compost pile is making good progress. Can you hear the ripping and tearing of ten thousand rotting tidbits each time it freezes and thaws? Each meltdown and refreezing open new food supplies to fungi and bacteria. Ice expansion, or heaving action, leaves a thawed pile riddled with new air pockets, too.
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| Photo by Barbara Pleasant |
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| Photo by Donna Chiarelli |
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| Having a Soggy Summer?
By Deb, June 27, 2008
My wonderful kitchen scraps composter tends to get soggy and smelly with the arrival of hot summer weather. Juicy melon rinds replace the comparatively dry apple cores that went into the compost bucket through the winter months, and fresh, green trimmings from the spring garden’s crops of radishes, lettuce, herbs and squash quickly fill the container to the top. Insect activity also returns to peak levels during warmer weather, and the combination of slop and smell and bugs can make frequent visits to the compost bin a less-than-pleasant chore. Now’s the time to raid that stockpile of dried leaves you put aside last fall—layer them over each bucketful of wet kitchen glop and you’ll find that balance is restored to the pile and your nose is less offended during visits to the bin. If you lack a quantity of dry leaves, shredded paper or cardboard is a fine substitute that’s up to the task of soaking up the juices of summer compost.
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| Photo by Donna Chiarelli |
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| A Fool for Compost
by Deb, April 1, 2008
Like the cheery singing sunflower in the video on our homepage, I tend to be optimistic about the transformative abilities of my compost projects. As the song goes: “I can compost anything in my marvelous compost bin!”
April 1st seems an appropriate time to report an instance of optimism that didn’t go quite as well as expected. While I’ve never tossed a bowling shoe into the bin, I did put an old bath towel into one of my compost heaps with what I’d have to describe as mixed results:
After wiping tools and covering plants against late frost, this towel wound up tucked between the slats of my pallet bin. Its next assignment was as a cover for some curing compost, to help keep it moist during a stretch of hot, dry summer weather. Somewhat unexpectedly, the towel went rather quickly—in compost terms—from being ON the compost to being IN the compost. Rather than try to separate the towel from the compost, I chose to make it a part of the process and covered it with a layer of partly decomposed chicken manure/bedding, then forgot about it.
Earlier this year, a warm winter day gave me a chance to excavate some compost from that pile. It was lovely—finished and crumbly and earthy—a pleasure to dig in until my shovel became entangled in a troublesome mass of light blue threads. The remains of the towel came to light as I dug, wrapping around my shovel and dragging about half of every scoopful off the blade. My enjoyment turned to mild frustration as I repeatedly wrested my shovel out of the tangle. Having literally thrown in the towel, the towel was now getting its revenge, and I finally reburied its remains and focused on another part of the pile.
So many people ask: “Can I compost [blank]?” As the tale of the towel shows, almost any organic material CAN be composted. A better question to ask may be “Am I prepared to deal with the results?"
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| Pulled weeds, gathered in a piece of cloth, dry for a while before being added to a perpetual compost pile. |
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| An old towel enhances the cold and wind resistance of milk carton cloches. Just don't try to compost one! |
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