The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: egbert on April 11, 2011, 03:15:24 pm
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I have a growing pile of chicken poo, mixed with wood shavings/hay from their beds. How long does it need to rot down for to make fertiliser for my veg beds? Is the wood shavings a problem?
Ta
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Ooooh you lucky lucky thing Egbert!!!
I would give it eighteen months if you are just "cool" composting it.
Ours had a year in the heap and now they are for a year in the bins and even now - before the summer warmth has got to it - it's looking and smelling absolutely beautiful.
The wood shavings will not be a problem if you give them time, mix with plenty of green and keep the whole thing damp. You really can't rush a good compost heap in my opinion.
I layer mine with grass cuttings once DH gets mowing.
Mmmmmm - yummy :-)
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I've two chickens and stick the sawdust and poo in our black plastic compost bin with kitchen waste and leaves. It really gets it going - it gets roasting hot, literally steaming, and composts down in a few months.
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My hens are on straw and I put it all in the placcy compost bin too - I have two and they are both stappit fu'. will it take longer to rot down being straw?
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We've decided to stop recycling our paper and just shred it all and use that in the chickens.
It'll rot down even quicker
Recycling only gets the shiny paper and magazines now.
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I was gonna do that - but we don't have enough newspaper these days - I tried asking for some on freegle and got no replies!
what about the inks? I'm sure i read somewhere that the ink in newspaper is baaaaaad... is that's a problem?
not that I'm that worried, I've potted all my seeds in pots made from newspaper...
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Yeah - I can't get too excited about the ink thing at the mo.
I've got loads of paper from courses, projects etc plus any mail that comes through the post.
At the moment I am shredding all my MSc notes and have got a black bin-liner full
DH says - "don't you want to keep them?"
What for??? :o
Realistically - am I ever going to spend time "browsing" through old lecture notes????? ::)
Pronblem now is - chickens aren't due to be changed until next week and we've still got a bale of chippings :-\
Susanna
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I would give it less than that if it is turned weekly and moistened I would give it around 6 weeks. Seen it done with straw and chicken manure on a mushroom farm,
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DH says - "don't you want to keep them?"
What for??? :o
Realistically - am I ever going to spend time "browsing" through old lecture notes????? ::)
Pronblem now is - chickens aren't due to be changed until next week and we've still got a bale of chippings :-\
Susanna
Susanna if you have a real fuel fire why don't you think about making firelogs the machines are really reasonable on amazon etc and I have found that shredded paper works well for this.
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Ellisr
I can't BELIEVE you just wrote that today :o :o :o.
I was sitting on the train this morning and a couple of people were talking about that very thing!!!
And I was thinking - with our new paper management strategy - I could justify getting one.
So that clinches it for me - it's clearly Jungian serendipidy. I'm off to Amazon now.
:) :) :)
Oh look - even more of a clincher - there's a link at the bottom of the page. I'm already on one-click ordering - lethal ::) ::)
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Eko-mania paper log maker (and - couldn't resist tin can crusher aswell) - in post
Thanks Ellisr
:bouquet: :bouquet: