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What if you have already started with dog poop on the surface of a garden area? Will it be safe if I scoop it all up and maybe a few inches deeper? I started about 2 weeks ago putting our dog feces where I intend to garden (vegetables).
How bout we just get rid of all the sewage systems in the US; since human waste is OK to fertilize with, it surely will not harm our drinking water, right? I mean, when has a little raw sewage ever hurt anyone?
I am being VERY sarcastic.
Anyone here aware of what killed the majority of the Yankee prisoners at Andersonville?
No, but heard some horror stories about that prison
back in Civil War days...
how did they die?
Dog poop can contain bad diseases which is why you would NOT want to live in Connecticut if you had no fence & needed to walk your
dog in your town.
Dog poop can contain Salmonella poisoning if your dog
accidentally is fed dog food infected with Salmonella
poisoning.
now if you are FORCED to pick up your dog's poop
daily, you could easily come down with Salmonella poisoning
& end up dead, sadly.
there were people down in Kentucky & Tennessee, i belueve last year who died from eating cantalopes infected with
Salmonella poisoning.
that is an idiotic law, in Connecticut, in my humble opinion.
i don't see how a state thinks it has the right to put people's
safety or life in danger by FORCING them to pick
up their dog's feces daily when they take their dogs for a walk??
really dumb & dangerous law imho.
i have a right to say that too, because freedom of speech is STILL one of our rights in the U.S. along with remaining
alive!
think i wud suggest dog poop, for ornamental plants instead of veggies, if it is fresh dog poop...
i have put dog poop near flowering bushes & they seemed to grow
pretty well, from what we saw.
Trouble is that dogs evolved alongside humans and our physiology is similar enough to share a lot of pathogens(not to mention that puppy shares a lot of our food). I'm not sure how many nasties survive the heat of composting, but why chance it with your family's foodstuffs.
Long ago, I had a friend who was an amazing gardener. He grew prize winning vegetables, but he wasn't all that into ornamentals. He did love his trees, though, and he would dig holes just outside the dripline of his trees, spaced about 5-10 feet apart, and would dump a week's worth of his dog's poop in one hole, and the following week, he'd do it with another hole. His trees were amazing. I am thinking of doing that here.
You can use it. People do use it all over the world. And it does work.
But.... Americans in general have lost their resistance to many bugs. Unlike the guy in Africa who can get a drink from the dirty gutter and it would never effect him, we get sick from drinking water from a bottle that happens to have a single stray bacteria in it.
Composting kills most of the bad bacteria such as ecoli. But it has to be done properly and for enough time to get the heat up and keep it up. There are many different bacteria that do this and break down the soil. It also has to be aereated. Which means work and many small gardeners dont want to turn the manure from time to time and the piles can be too small to reach the proper temperature. It really needs to reach 130F for at least 5 days. Hard to do in a small pile.
If you leave the compost sitting long enough (and your climate is agreeable) it will form a white crust on top. This is what you want for fertilizer. It is Potassium Nitrate. It is also almost free of anything that will effect you. Potassium nitrate is a great food preservative. Have you heard of corned beef?
To create more, add wood ash or potash. This will create a thicker crust so more potassium nitrate. Which is what you want anyhow. It does take a few months. So if you live in a colder climate, ive found that by adding aquarium bacteria such as fritzyme 7 after the heat first dies off the crust is formed a lot faster.
Dog poop can be composted. Like others have said mix plenty of roughage with it and I have found that finding some decent darker brown soil and a lot of rotting wood is great for the mix. But, dog poop can contain parasites and bacteria so I've found the key is to mix a WHOLE LOT of citrus fruit and banana peelings. The bananas contain potassium to balance the amount of phosphates & nitrogen that the dog poop has. Also the citric acid has great antimicrobial benefits. Finally, and here's the part that sucks, you have let it set awhile. Usually atleast 6 months, but i usually have several piles and bins so i compost mine over a year. Cover the pile with black plastic on warm days and that will speed up the process.
From what I've always heard, you should not compost animal feces with the intent of fertilizing food crops.
Interestingly, our dogs have pooped all over my perrenial gardens for years, and it did more damage than good. But here's some links to the dangers of composting dog feces:
Pet waste often contains dangerous pathogens that can cause serious diseases and the average garden compost pile or composter does not reach high enough temperatures to reliably kill them. Therefore, it is best to compost your pet's waste underground and not risk using it as fertilizer or plant bedding. Pet waste should never be added to compost that is intended for fertilizing vegetables or other edible plants.
Seriously, we are social distancing and dying from a zoonotic disease that jumped from animals to people.
Why would anyone use raw feces in a veggie garden? About the same as a Chinese wet market.
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Dog poop can contain bad diseases which is why you would NOT want to live in Connecticut if you had no fence & needed to walk your
