Friday, October 22, 2010

Organic , No Panic - Direct Deposit Method.

I call this compost set up "The Direct Deposit Method" .

I designed this as part of an educational exhibit for the 1990 San Francisco Garden Show.

Last week I babysat a friends bunny while they were away on holiday and I received so much joy from having
"Little Gray Elephant" that I am considering adding a bunny to my house hold.

The "Direct Deposit Method" of composting consists of having an elevated rabbit cage with a porous screen flooring.
The high nitrogen rabbit poop falls down into a compost bin directly below helping to activate the heat process.
Fallen leaves, grass clipping and veggie food waste that the rabbit does not eat , goes into the compost bin along with the
rabbit poop.
Easy peasy pie .... fast and easy..... and back into the garden it goes .

From random photos

5 comments:

danger garden said...

And they are cute too! (sorry but it's true)

Hap said...

And if you have room in your greenhouse for the winter, the rabbits and the compost give off a lot of "free heat". Back when I lived in Alaska my rabbits and chickens spent the winter "cooped" under the greenhouse benches and their body heat helped keep it well above freezing. Their active compost had to be shoveled to the composter, but that was mostly because it had an air vent to the outside, which kept the smell down... so I could sit in the greenhouse and enjoy a tropical interlude during the cold dark February mornings when the winter seemed ridiculously long and epically dark.

Phrago said...

Trick or Treat...

Plants Pages said...

Sounds good...It sure will be easy if your have rabbits as pets.

Anonymous said...

I have to say, I have a few problems with this post. I think it's a great tool to show kids how rabbit waste can go directly back into compost (and how incredibly beneficial it is for a garden), but I hope that you are not serious with this method. There are many, many reasons that living on wire grids are unhealthy for rabbits. Healthy rabbits should not be letting any produce go to waste, so there won't be many food scraps for that pile. Perhaps most importantly, rabbits should not be kept outside, above a compost pile, in such a small enclosure.

I understand that this was a project you did back in 1990, but please realize that in those 20 years there have been many increases in rabbit knowledge. A great site for some quick info is Rabbit.org.

All this being said, I have an outdoor vegetable garden, and indoor rabbits. They are litter box trained, and it's an easy and simple process to take their droppings out once a week to the compost bin.