Apologies for the graphic post but I am planning for my new puppies arrival in September and I am wondering what is the best way to dispose of poo in the garden. There are a few options I can see from just using the domestic bin to flushable poo bags and bio bins you bury in the garden and add some stuff too? I'm wondering if anyone has tried these options and what you would recommend is a good long term solution or pitfalls if its gone wrong? Our garden can flood on heavy rain so drainage isn't great here. Thank you for your advice
We have a separate poo bin. On bin days we just pop that in the domestic bin and it goes with all the rubbish
I put a very strong plastic bag inside our domestic waste bin and all tied poo bags go in there. Then on the morning of collection, I seal that bag. It's not ideal and as we only get collections fortnightly, it can get pretty smelly. Having two dogs, I clear up the moment it hits the ground .
I must say that I deposit all poops produced outside my garden into the public poop bins that are emptied far more frequently than out household bin. Not particularly good at picking up in the garden, but Lilly usually goes in the top part of the garden and we pick up once a week. If the poop is left for a bit the small isn't so bad (in my opinion) then we just pop them in the household waste bin outside.
I'm a bit disgusting. I pick up in the garden daily, but can't be bothered doing the short hop into the front garden where the domestic bin is, so it gathers in a mound of bags in the back until we either a) cut the grass b) have a barbecue (not nice to eat with bags of poo on the patio) or c) it's the fortnightly bin collection day. - Then it's all put into an empty carrier bag and binned. To be honest, there's no problem with smell - it's well bagged.....off to do my poo pick for the morning now.
I pick up in a poo bag and put in a public poo waste bin next time I'm passing one, which is mostly daily. Whilst waiting for that trip the poo bags sit atop one of my bins outside the front door so that I remember. I don't leave them long enough to be bothered by the smell.
I live in a city apartment with no garden for most of the year, so when here, I just put poop bags into the public bins as they get emptied daily. In Spain, I "double bag" - pick up with poo bags immediately, then put in a larger plastic bag and then weekly before collections put that in the larger community waste tip. I've not had a problem with smell that way. I do use the bio-degradable bags, but it's still a LOT of bags. There's probably a much more ecological solution that doesn't involve all the plastic bag action, but not sure what it would be!
A wormery! I'd always meant to do a thread on this but never got round to it. We have one round the side of the house, you pop the poo in and a load of little red tiger worms do their job. You stack up the layers and months down the line you get a perfectly fine compost. Absolutely no smell at all. It was a bit expensive at first but wiil last years. If anyone wants a picture I'll take one
Yes, pictures please! I am going to start composting but didn't think you could use dog poo. Anything that allows me to recycle my dogs' poo would be amazing Do you have a link to where you bought it, @leejane? At present, we collect every couple of days. We have an acre around our house; the older dogs tend to go in the same corner all the time, but Luna is a bit more haphazard. It dries out really quickly in the sun, so isn't smelly at all once dry. I just use a poo bag over my hand to collect it all into a little plastic bin (with a liner) that we throw out when we go into town. We don't have private bin collections; everyone takes their rubbish and recycling to public bins, which are positioned every couple of hundred metres around town and which are emptied daily.
Luckily for me Hattie will not poo in our garden or yard and Charlie only does sometimes so poos are done on walks. If there is a poo I pick up and put it in our rubbish bin for collection, no smell if you tie the bags tightly. However I do still pick up using biodegradeable poo bags on walks/field and pop them in the dog poo bins provided in and around our village. LOVE the sound of the wormery, so ecological x
We put it in our big, 5'w x 8'l x5'h compost. I once shared office space with a landscape architect and read some of his books on composting. Some said this was ok if your dog was healthy, some said not to do it. Most people have much smaller composts than we do, so we do it. Yes please, wormery pictures. I wonder if those worms would survive our -30C winter nights? Or colder?
Ok, here are some pics, beware, poo alert We have put some bricks up around the side as when we put it together monty was only just over 1 and we were worried he would chew it, its all plastic. I guess it also stops it blowing over in the wind and possibly insulates a bit against hot and cold. Lots of cobwebs, it's attracted some friendly huuuge spiders too. The tap at the bottom is for releasing liquid(worm wee?) There never seems to be much in it, but some sort of liquid clearly escapes, hence the staining on the base. Then this is the top layer, this was probably started about 6 weeks ago, you can see the fresher ones but the edges are already composting. Weird thing, absolutely no smell at all. A few tiny flies live in here in the summer, as well as some other little beasties which all co exist happily. A few close ups so you can see the tiger worms. And then magically, this is the layer underneath, poo here is 3 to 6 months old, and I guess it's now more worm poo not dog poo. Then the bottom layer would be pretty much ready to go on the garden now, thouh we'll wait for the top layer to fill before we start moving the layers. It will smell of normal garden compost. (to be on the safe side they don't recommend using on veg patches,) A few leaves often end up in there which is fine, and you can use it for normal composting too, though they don't recommend mixing up fruit, veg along with dog poo. If it ever gets a bit slimy, we put a few egg boxes in and it just self regulates. It certainly works faster in summer, and the worms just multipy to the size of the box or amount of food coming in. Think this would work for just about up to 2 dogs, but they do extra layers or other versions for multiple dogs. I think its quite pricey for what it is although it comes with live worms and worm food(they need a couple of weeks to settle in first)however I would 100% recommend it, no downsides at all, and though it looks a bit grubby now, it's survived two english winters with absolutely no deterioration. I got it from worm city i love the name. There may be other companies doing similar things but this was the only one I found when I started researching them. http://www.wormcity.co.uk Happy to take any wormery related questions, it would probably be my mastermind subject
Great photos! Who'd be a Tiger Worm xx I think this is definitely something to consider, thanks for your very thorough explanation. And for your first question …… x
The coldest it's got down to here was about-8 one night, I think they just go into a semi hibernation and stop eating at around this temperature. You can use a bit of bubble wrap but have to say I've never bothered . Not sure about -30, but you must have worms there which survive those temps? You probably wouldn't want our wussy english worms. I think extreme heat can kill them, though.
I've emailed to ask about this. It would be for use in Spain, and I would worry about the heat being too much for the worms.
