You can definitely compost sawdust, wood shavings, shredded bark, alfalfa bales, oat/wheat/barley bales etc with just urine. My main suggestion would be to make sure that is wet enough. Wood is very very absorbent. Which is why it is used as animal bedding. The second concern is if it can get enough air being in a plastic bucket. My daughter's father-in-law put cardboard down in one corner of his garage for composting I might suggest that to you opposed to the plastic bucket. You can even put biochar across the bottom. Yes of course throwing a cup or 2 of native soil or manure is helpful but not absolutely necessary if you don't have it. You can also leave the bale whole and throw urine on it. Some people let they're urine "cure" for 3 weeks or so.. they say because of pathogens and other reasons. I don't. After all you're composting it anyway. I will say not to use urine from someone on prescriptions or antibiotics. I do always let my bales sit for awhile anyway to help further kill any weed seeds.
Composted or partially broken down sawdust and shavings are wonderful for planting potatoes in.
s. lowe wrote:While cleaning out the garage I came up with an odd plan and I'd like to hear anyones thoughts or experiences on the matter. I have a big bag of wood shavings from madrone wood that was turned into bowls, I filled up a 10 gallon bucked with it and have been peeing in it as often as I can. It's been going now for about 2 weeks getting urine at least once a day. Will the wood compost? Will it get hot? too hot for the plastic bucket? Do I need to be concerned about off gassing in the sealed bucket? Any thoughts are appreciated.
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