Can I compost bones? Can I compost bones that I have used for bone broth? Can I compost bones that are left over from cooking, the dog, etc?
We do not personally have too much experience composting large quantities of bones, but we have done some research into composting bones, and we have also considered the material bones are made out of. We therefore think that you can put bones in the Subpod system, however much of the “bony” material (mineralised calcium and phosphate) is unlikely to break down readily in the vermiculture system in the same time frame as the rest of the waste added unless crushed into small particles or powder, or are the tiny bones of a small animal, bird or fish.
It will also depend if the bones being composted have been made into bone broth and are already disintegrating or they are totally whole and large like a beef bone.
If larger bones are cracked open to expose the marrow, this interior part of the bone can provide nutrients to the system.
There are a couple of solutions for slow composting bones.
- If you find leftover bony material in your Subpod when you are collecting the worm castings to spread around your plants of mix with the soil, you can remove the remaining bony material and dispose of, or also spread around with the worm castings.
- Have a second Subpod so that you can leave the bones for longer periods of time to break down and compost. Or with one Subpod, you could take out the worm castings when the Subpod is full and leave the bones inside to go through more composting cycles until they are completely broken down.
You may like to do a search online to see which plants prefer bone meal and the optimal ways in which you can break down bones. Below is an interesting article about composting which discusses composting bones. The benefit of Subpod will be the fact that rodents and other critters won’t be able to get into the system.
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