Titanus
L3
Living in western Washington state is definitely not the best place for ready access to proper beetle breeding materials! There's virtually no oak other than those planted for ornamental reasons, so I've been thinking about a method to combat this.
While I still have to make a ten hour round trip drive to get my oak wood, there's several very large white oak trees at a church up the road from my house that drops massive sums of leaves each year. Why let some landscaping company take all of the leaves when I could use them for coleopteran purposes?!
I've been thinking about composting the leaves down to a good usable level but the traditional composting method can take up to a year (and I need leaf compost now!). After some searching I came across the "compost tumbler" method, which allows consistent aeration of the products being composted thus yielding quality compost in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the effort!
is the video of the system I'm going to try and replicate. A simple 55 gallon barrel slightly modified and laid sideways. Supposedly these can turn leaves (as well as other things) into compost in as little as 4-6 weeks. Now obviously this will greatly depend on the product being composted and the outside temperature. With winter fast approaching I would imagine it'll take a bit longer, but still half the time (at most) as the standard method.
I'm thinking about making 2 tumbler units on a custom fabricated wooden rack to double production and make it easier to feed an army of cetoniinae and dynastinae! I'll turn this into a picture/build thread once progress gets started
What do you all think?
While I still have to make a ten hour round trip drive to get my oak wood, there's several very large white oak trees at a church up the road from my house that drops massive sums of leaves each year. Why let some landscaping company take all of the leaves when I could use them for coleopteran purposes?!
I've been thinking about composting the leaves down to a good usable level but the traditional composting method can take up to a year (and I need leaf compost now!). After some searching I came across the "compost tumbler" method, which allows consistent aeration of the products being composted thus yielding quality compost in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the effort!
I'm thinking about making 2 tumbler units on a custom fabricated wooden rack to double production and make it easier to feed an army of cetoniinae and dynastinae! I'll turn this into a picture/build thread once progress gets started

What do you all think?