I was cleaning up my pinestraw beds around the trees outside and decided to collect all the little bugskins I could find in a 5gal bucket... After two hours and a few acres of being carried away I have nearly ten gallons of those strange bug skins to compost... Would this add anything beneficial specifically? Or would it be good to use at all? BTW day 9 of the new compost pile and the center is sitting at 113 degrees and I haven't chopped or mixed the pile at all so far the ingredients are... 200lbs of peat humus and manure Huge mound of massive dandelions Yard clippings Brown paper alfalfa pellet bags 20lbs of alfalfa pellets Over 100lbs of cat tails Wood chips (very small) Threw some worms from the bins around. There's more but I'm at a blank out now lol
I think the bug skins (exoskeletons) are going to bring a nice diversity to your compost pile. The chitin and the amino acids/proteins will add some real biofuel to the heap. Nice thinking IMO. Is there more variety than different size balls of pill bugs?
I knew there would be some goodies in them, I also managed to talk a neighbor into letting me scoop his barns and got a few hundred pounds of composed horse and chicken manure