Composting Next Level: The Dog Doo - 6 Months Later

Well, not everything works out as you'd hoped. Charley has, um, gifted us with two five-gallon buckets worth of poop in 6 months, and want to know how I know? Because it is not composting in the plastic half-buried bucket as we'd hoped. While I admit I'd taken a shortcut and used an existing plastic bucket (going against my own philosophy of putting plastic in the soil, argh...) instead of using a full size metal garbage can like we do for our food & garden scraps, it's just not breaking down fast enough for what this 90 lb Lab is putting out. Even when using septic starter and even when integrating a bit of food scraps, it was just too much for the worms to take on in that quantity.

So we - okay, my husband - ended up digging a deep hole and burying it, where it will eventually decompose and is in an un-garden-y spot where it won't be accidentally 'discovered' at a later date by an errant shovel.

So, what are we going to do now, you might ask?

Well, our food scrap composting is going like gangbusters! The metal buried can never gets close to reaching full capacity, and right now it's less than half as the worms are, as my honey likes to say, "Happy as Larry". I'm very stoked about that. Ironically, they are going through it so fast I'm not sure we'll really have any significant amount put on the raised beds, which leads to the question - can we just start putting the poop in there where it's hotter and where the worms are hard at work?

Well, I've been doing more research on dog poop composting and even the conservatives at the American Kennel Club (AKC) have given the thumbs up to throw it in there with a few tips, thanks to a professor at Deakin University in Australia who's been doing it for years:

1) Make sure it's just your dog's poop so you know what's going in it (our dog being on a homemade vegetarian diet means I know literally what he's expending - well, that and some 'duck roca' treats as good farm dogs are known for helping out with, heh). As long as they are healthy, your compost should be as well.

2) A well-tended compost heap (AKA: hot) is most effective. As they mention, "The heat generated in a large, adequately tended compost pile would kill off any pathogens anyway. Temperatures can reach as much as 160 degrees Fahrenheit in a fresh pile."

3) And if you're not planning to use it for your edibles, go crazy and don't stress if your compost pile isn't super hot!

So the plastic bottom-less bucket has been removed, and now we just have to figure out where to dispose of IT. Ew. But it's really really cool to not see it in the yard anymore, and to exhale a bit when cleaning up Charley's bidness.

Now if only there were dog poop composting bins at the parks here like they're doing in Colorado...!