Hello all. Ive just discovered that my covered plastic compost bin is now infested with red mite. I put the hens used bedding in there before I knew they had them. I need to disinfect thoroughly and kill em all, but dont want to poison the compost. (I have just recently cleared a small wooden coop of RM infestation, by partly dismantling it and painting with neat Jeyes fluid. It was the only thing that seemed to do the trick, and I will of course scrub it really well before I put chooks in. I think I will also paint the interior with limewash. Hens have all been dusted and treated with invermectin, and are in a different coop, which is clean, and is regularly washed out and sprayed). But compost bin? Would a dilute solution of Jeyes fluid poison the compost? Boiling water? Its a bit damp to burn... any advice welcome.
Red Mites in Compost bin
- Thread starter Roisin
- Start date
I think you need to get it off your premises, redmite and all. I would bag it up and take it all to the composting skip at the recycling centre. If you treat it with Jeyes you will have to use toxic quantities, it will smell horrible, and I don't think the compost would be useable. And how would you distribute the Jeyes evenly through the compost anyway?
chrismahon
Well-known member
Perhaps you can put grease around the rim to stop them crawling away. Then just leave them. In 6 months they should all be dead, having eaten each other or died of old age.
Jeyes won't work without killing the compost microbes you need. Filling it with boiling water may work but can't be certain. As Marigold says the only certain thing is to move the whole lot in the bin to the tip. As soon as you open the lid they will jump out looking for a host.
Jeyes won't work without killing the compost microbes you need. Filling it with boiling water may work but can't be certain. As Marigold says the only certain thing is to move the whole lot in the bin to the tip. As soon as you open the lid they will jump out looking for a host.
Yes, they are definitely red mite. I dont think I want to bin em and transport to tip. Apart from anything else it would mean carrying a mite ridden bin bag through my house, which I dont want to do. I want to kill em where they are. Might have to go the boiling water route, followed by a weak solution of Jeyes fluid. That would kill all the good microbes too I know, but perhaps if I topped up with a bucket of good earth a week later? The compost bin is near some trees, though, and I really dont want to poison them....
06
When you add garden rubbish to the green bin it all gets mashed up and then composted at extremely high temperatures before being bagged and sold as soil conditioner, presumably for digging in nowhere near a hen coop anyway If you add it to the 'not for recycling' bin it goes to landfill. So either way there's no need to worry about passing on the mite to anyone else.
