keeping the smell down

[skysthelimit]

Has anyone tried any of the enzyme/chemical stuff or anything else to keep the smell down in a compost pile? I am out of places to put the manure for immediate use and it stinks. If I can't find something to keep the smell down I will have to start throwing it away.

 

[Zass]

You can cover your pile with very "brown" vegetable matter to hold the small down. A layer of straw overtop everything works pretty well for me.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

Usually stinky piles are too wet or have too much nitrogen rich material.

If your pile is made up of just bunny poo and hay, it has too much nitrogen. You will need to add "brown" material like dry leaves, straw, or even wood shavings or shredded newspaper.

I don't bother composting mine. I just spread it in the garden beds. It stinks for a couple days, but if you water it well to get the urine down into the dirt, the smell goes away quickly. I think it makes a nice looking mulch, personally.

This is the bed right outside our kitchen next to the entry door with 2"-3" of bunny berry "mulch":

 

[skysthelimit]

I have to compost it to store it for future use or throw it away. I'm out of garden areas. The garden piles are no longer ground level; it's caused flooding and the seepage is going into the barn. I've changed the gradient of the land around me and now I'm paying for it.

There is some shredded paper because I use it in the nest boxes. Not any leaves, there are only a few trees on the property, but I can get straw.

If I can store it, maybe I can find someone to take it, but I haven't had any success with that in the last three years.

 

[ckcs]

Do you have any yard that you need to level or build up lol? Our back yard only goes 10 feet behind our house then it drops off into the woods. The black barrier wall had come down a year or two ago and part of our yard washed down into the woods. I fixed the wall last fall and have been dumping all the waste in that area. I plan to level it off in the next couple of weeks.

 

[skysthelimit]

Do you have any yard that you need to level or build up lol? Our back yard only goes 10 feet behind our house then it drops off into the woods. The black barrier wall had come down a year or two ago and part of our yard washed down into the woods. I fixed the wall last fall and have been dumping all the waste in that area. I plan to level it off in the next couple of weeks.

No. I have a basic city lot, and Ohio is flat. Yard to curb, it's just a basic city lawn. What mud there is is level with the ground, and every time I put manure on it, I raise it above the concrete level, and that changes the gradient an causes rain water to flow towards the house and the barn. Last year when I added the side garden I started getting 2-3 inches of water in the barn, problematic because the barn has no drain, I have to get it all out by hand. <br /><br /> __________ Fri Mar 21, 2014 9:34 am __________ <br /><br /> I have neighbors on two sides, the back opens out onto the curb, and there there is the front. I have a chain link fence, the neighbors can see in. So the pile has to be inconspicuous and smell free no matter where I put it.

 

[MamaSheepdog]

I know you do four square gardening... do you use raised beds? If so you could (someday- I know you probably can't afford to right now due to your job situation) build them up higher. A lot of people like to have them at a height where they can sit in a chair and do their seeding/weeding/harvesting.

Of course, if your soil is clay with no drainage, that might not help much if the water runs through the beds and then just flows across the surface.

 

[RichinOregon]

I have found that White vinegar works well to neutralize the ammonia left behind by the urine.

 

[Featherhoof]

I put some PVC on the ground and placed an old sliding screen door on top. I place my bunny berries on top, spray with a hose to wash the urine off. It then dries for a day or two. I then shovel the dried berries into an empty 50lb feed bag, where it sits until I am ready to use it for gardening. The feed bag filled with berries has no stink. Gardeners may even want to buy it from you. I also vermipost and feed my worms the berries.

 

[skysthelimit]

I know you do four square gardening... do you use raised beds? If so you could (someday- I know you probably can't afford to right now due to your job situation) build them up higher. A lot of people like to have them at a height where they can sit in a chair and do their seeding/weeding/harvesting.

Of course, if your soil is clay with no drainage, that might not help much if the water runs through the beds and then just flows across the surface.

I've been having thoughts on how I could build retaining walls for the extra and to stop the over flow into the barn. Someone suggested a french drain some time ago, but I had to pick axe the compacted clay soil (which was covered in gravel at some point) just to scrap it enough to put the first garden bed down. I promised myself I would not use that thing again, axing down (insert smiley with a pick) 30 feet along side the garden is not my idea of fun, but seems there is no way to get around it. I need drainage for that run off.

The soil is clay here, heavy clay like the kind you pull from the earth to make those old Indian pots...

__________ Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:17 pm __________

I put some PVC on the ground and placed an old sliding screen door on top. I place my bunny berries on top, spray with a hose to wash the urine off. It then dries for a day or two. I then shovel the dried berries into an empty 50lb feed bag, where it sits until I am ready to use it for gardening. The feed bag filled with berries has no stink. Gardeners may even want to buy it from you. I also vermipost and feed my worms the berries.

That seems like a lot of work, lol. I still have over 30 rabbits. My dogs would make a messy of that in short order (insert dog digging in poop smiley :x )

I'm past trying to get someone to take the poop. For three years I've tried selling and giving the stuff away. There are lots of ads on CL for people giving manure away in the area. No one wants it. I think they'd rather use Miracle Grow. I know I did, before I started with the rabbits. No way I'd mess with manure if it wasn't from my own animals. (If I told people what I did with the manure, I KNOW they wouldn't eat the veggies I raise, been there done that.) City mentality prevails, and I understand it. To me, it's useful, to them, it's poop. <br /><br /> __________ Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:18 pm __________ <br /><br />

I have found that White vinegar works well to neutralize the ammonia left behind by the urine.

I have lots of white vinegar.


I'll put two piles out, one with vinegar and on with some type of brown matter I can find, and see which one s does the best job.

 

[ottersatin]

I have a very steep cliff/hill behind my house/Rabbitry.
If I don't have a place for the Rabbit Manure to go,
Like a Garden or Farmer, then over the hill it goes!
I guess I'm just LUCKY that way. I do often trade
bags of Rabbit Manure for Hay, but not always.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

 

[skysthelimit]

I have a very steep cliff/hill behind my house/Rabbitry.
If I don't have a place for the Rabbit Manure to go,
Like a Garden or Farmer, then over the hill it goes!
I guess I'm just LUCKY that way. I do often trade
bags of Rabbit Manure for Hay, but not always.
Ottersatin. ldtimer:

Lol. Now that would solve quite a few of my problems :lol: :lol:

My back yard opens up to a street. My neighbors front yards overlook into my backyard.

 

[Dood]

Perhaps try contacting a local garden club and offering them the manure.

I bag mine in plastic feed bags for easy storage and transport.

Normally I would have spread several bags on the lawn and in the garden but we haven't had a thaw this winter and putting it on snow and ice will just cause it to run off so my stack is now 4 bags high and I have had to start a second stack by the chicken coup

I get 6 bags a week and if the 4 inches of ice on the vegetable garden doesn't disappear soon ill have no where to put it and might need to start spreading it over the pasture

 

[BlueMoods]

Advertise it for a fair price on garden groups, like CL or FB. I'm sure somone needs good compost for spring planting.

 

[skysthelimit]

Advertise it for a fair price on garden groups, like CL or FB. I'm sure somone needs good compost for spring planting.

I dd mentioned that I've tried advertising for 3 years. On CL, Hoobly and everywhere else I could. Nobody wants it. I live 10 minutes from downtown, from the projects on one side and trendy cookie cutter 'burbs on the other. Not exactly a gardening zone. No one wants it. CL here is full of ads for FREE manure, so if they did want it, they wouldn't need to pay for it. Any anyone far enough away to want to use manure in there gardens, can get it free from the farms closer to them.

I know it's hard to believe that no one wants this black gold, lol, but I am serious when I tell you I am an anomaly here. Even with City ordinances, gardening and raising animals is not a big thing here, and I'm outside the norm with what I do.

 

[Dood]

That is bizarre to me.

The city is I live near is very high density, mostly lower income and industrialized with very little green space but the city has leased and/or given acres of park lands to community garden clubs, i was a volunteer at one for 4 years, and they'd love free manure

The city also has a terrific composting program. - "the green box" - that is picked up weekly and twice a year citizens can pick up free bags of the black gold for their gardens and usually there is a line up

 

[skysthelimit]

That is bizarre to me.

The city is I live near is very high density, mostly lower income and industrialized with very little green space but the city has leased and/or given acres of park lands to community garden clubs, i was a volunteer at one for 4 years, and they'd love free manure

The city also has a terrific composting program. - "the green box" - that is picked up weekly and twice a year citizens can pick up free bags of the black gold for their gardens and usually there is a line up

In a large, money strapped urban area like this, they don't offer those services. I was surprised they plowed this winter, usually they don't plow the side streets because it cost too much. This city doesn't pick up recycling or leaf bags. They don't collect leaves in the fall, nor do they compost organic matter. If you put them out there in separate containers, it all goes in with the regular trash. And they might take your containers too. I've been keeping metal cans and using them as mouse traps, I feel so guilty about throwing them away because they won't get recycled here.

The city sets aside space for community gardens, if someone sponsors the vacant lot, but there must be people willing to garden. In a city where the high school graduation rate is 38%, and teen pregnancy is over 50%, they would rather stand out on corners, than garden. The community gardens around me, they are vacant lots. No one's garden there for years.


The one garden I know that is functional, they want people to drop off composted leaves. They don't want manure. There are people who won't work with manure, nor will they want to eat things grown in manure (I've had that said to me). The mentality is so different ( the fresh meat conversation).
Remember, when I say I'm in the city, I mean in a major metropolitan inner city in a Northern, not quite Midwest state. Not the city limits of a nice town in the bread basket heartland of the country. 4H doesn't even exist here. I wanted to volunteer, but I would have had to go into the next country to find and active club. The mentality is pretty different.

Offering manure to these folks is like asking for cheese for a New York pretzel. No one does that. I tried that once. Walked around for 3 days asking for cheese, until I realized it's just not done and I wasn't going to get any cheese there. It was like the Twilight Zone.

 

[ckcs]

What about starting a worm farm at some point. I would like one myself but am broke. If it were not for rabbit sales I wouldn't be able to keep them.

 

[skysthelimit]

What about starting a worm farm at some point. I would like one myself but am broke. If it were not for rabbit sales I wouldn't be able to keep them.

I can't afford another expense that won't make any returns.
If I can't sell rabbits or manure, I don't think I'd be able to sell worms either.

 

[ottersatin]

Some people just don't know what they're missing!
They would prefer to use Chemicals over a natural form
of fertilization. I have a farmer friend who will trade me Bails of grass-hay
for an amount of Rabbit Manure. I guess that Farmers know what they're doing!
Oh well, I am sorry that you can't change their minds.
I time we will all see the light, we just have to wait for it to go OFF! :twisted:
Ottersatin. ldtimer: