OH,
put them in your pile and cover well with grass clippings.
they melt so fast its funny.
first time i saw the "goo "in my pile i didn't know what it was.
They rot quick!, in a hot pile.
If you see orange slime, it's them. the white teeth looking things too.
Laura

I don't know about the composting part, but did you boil 'em first to make the most awesome lobster stock ever?? 15 carcasses should make amaaaaazing soup later on. Just reading about a 15 lobster "small family gathering" makes me wish my ex and I would have somehow ended up back in his home state of Maine.

Lobster stock = best risotto on the face of this earth

HI there,,Thanks for the comments. YES, boiled first,,but didn't think to make lobster stock...DARN!!!.
We live in Maine,,and Lobsters are 3.99 per lb. The lowest its been in 10 or so years. Ok,,well, I will put them at the bottom of the pile.

One more thing: I forgot to ask, I also have a 55 gallon drum full of saw dust (cedar I think). I had heard once that sawdust could be bad for some plants,,and that it also takes a long time to break down (shavings and sawdust). I know shavings take alot of time too. Should I add some to the pile??

You know, I've never made lobster stock. Next time, I will. Lobster shells break down rather quickly, and become soft and crumbly. The eggshell grinding people will tell you to grind them, but you should never listen to anything that an eggshell grinder tells you.

You can compost those lobster shells and they will not take very long in a good, active compost pile to be digested. You can also compost that sawdust, in small quantities at one time because sawdust will tend to clump tightly when wet which can slow the bacteria that will digest that. You can also use that sawdust as a mulch in your garden.

Sawdust is a very strong brown, so make sure you have plenty of grass clippings or other nitrogen-rich material to mix with it. And cedar is naturally rot resistant. You might be better off using it as long-lasting mulch. It should only damage plants if tilled in, where it will deplete soil nitrogen.

Mmmm, lobstah!

What annpat forgot to suggest was to wrap each shell in stale bread. the goo from the shell combined with the soggy bread attracts monster planaria.

Totally off topic, but I kid you not, I had a DREAM about planaria last night, thanks to this forum (annpat, maybe I ⥠you a little less for that). I dreampt they were all over my cell phone, and because I hadn't known what they were to begin with, I'd been talking on it all day and periodically wiping them off, thinking it was just schmutz. I have to say, I awoke in a slight state of horror.

YAY !! My NEW compost pile was billowing with steam at 7:00 am this morning. The sun was hitting it just right so that I could easily see the steam rolling off. SO, I made a little hole in the top and put my hand down close and WOW !!!! HOT HOT HOT....YAY!!!. FINALLY. This is the new pile with the lobster shells toward the bottom. My husband has been adding alot of grass clippings from the lawn mower this week. That seems to have helped alot. I made a larger hole in the top of the pile and threw some brown in to balance out the greens a bit more. It also contains chicken manure mixed with shavings and some straw and lots of kitchen scraps, etc. Well, I just had to share.. =) and WHAT THE HECK IS PLANARIA ?????

They're hideous, tiny, bloodsucker-like things with flat, triangular heads, which appear in compost piles where wheat products are an ingredient. They're pretty much why none of us here compost bread-like things.

Here is a link that might be useful: planarian on a wheat product

EEEwwwwww!!!!...I KNEW there was a reason why I absolutely refuse to put bread or any wheat products in my compost pile.
GROSS !!

I now have potato plants suddenly sprouting up out of my first compost pile...the one I was getting ready to spread on the garden for the fall. Does this mean it is ready if plants are growing out of it??? It obviously must not be heating up at this point. What do you think???

There goes AP combining her fear of wet slimy things. I compost stale bread, crumbs, dough that fell - partially eaten by dogs, when the sour dough start doesn't fit in the jar, etc and have never seen a planarian. I do have lots of worms and BSFL and don't mind either.

You CAN compost bread. AP just doesn't like the thought of soggy bread and tries to convince all here that they shouldn't compost it.

Sorry, Ann, love ya - but got keep the record straight. I didn't compost bread for a while and had to do a search to figure out why I wasn't.

Oh, rj, you've got me all wrong. (Insert sad smiley face here.) I have no fear of slimy things or gooey things or moldy things or (most) wet things. (I don't even dislike planaria, although I understand that other people do.)

No, like everybody else in the world I have an issue with Sogginess. And what I worry about in the middle of the night is that people who put bread in their bin may not have given a moment's consideration to the fact that other, moist, ingredients in the bin are very likely to come in contact with it, resulting in absorption. I don't think that people realize this.

I kind of think of myself as a public servant, a one-woman army, if you please, against grotesquities in the compost. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle. I think in the end, though, people will thank me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Planarian

Will MD blue claw crab shells disintegrate as fast as lobster shells? My compost is a (rather small) cold pile. I imagine that the whole crab would stink it up good, but maybe just the shells, by themselves would be ok?

tj! What a lovely song! Especially for a girl like me who had an intimate relationship with Jimi.

Conniecola: I bet your Md blue crab shells will do fine in the compost pile. I put all 15 lobster shells in my pile close to the bottom of the pile so they are completely buried, and there is NO SMELL at all coming from the pile. I did this about 10 days ago. All is well in the pile. In fact, it is steaming like crazy. YAY !!!

Jimi Hendrix, that is.

whom I once touched.

who I once touched?

There is true value in lobster shells & all crustacean carcasses, which contain chitin.
Chitin is worth a web search of agricultural applications.

Thank you, flowersnhens & gringojay, that is very helpful compost information.

When lobster shells dry they become very brittle and are very easy to break and crush and you can get them as fine as you want. Check out this site: http://www.lobstershells.com/

Whom. Whom I once touched.

Whom, whom on the range, where the deer and planaria plaayyyeeee.

Only took 5-1/2 years for annpat to give a final answer on the grammar. I think you could build really good soil starting with pure clay faster than that. Is this a new thing similar to the 'slow food' movement? Slow Grammar? heehee

I had to mull it over.

You know what slows down a planarian? Stale doughnuts.

Well I guess I know what to do with Dungeness crab shells out here in CA next year!

@david52: Can't they slither through the hole?

Sprinkles slow 'em down. Considerably. Unfortunately, its not online, but you might find the following text informative:

Witheringspoon-Hawkins, A.K. 2007b. Speed Trials of Six Planaria Species on Assorted Baked Goods. PhD Thesis. Bangor, University of Maine Press, 676 pp.

Bit of a slog reading the first 7 chapters, but it picks up.

Academic Humor, Level 100. :-D

With this research background, laureate-laden Ms Witheringspoon-Hawkins has since moved onto writing torrid romance novels.

But I digress.

I was engrossed from the opening sentence.

Which David can repeat from heart, I bet.

"Raphael's deep blue eyes lingered on her curvaceous silhouette as she strode towards him, like a planarian on a half-composted pop tart."

Whitheringspoon-Hawkins had me at Raphael.

I am interested in composting humanure at the campground this summer. I am not a fan of emptying the stinky black tank. And they want us to buy some big plastic tank to put beside the camper in the trees. I wonder in a compost pile could really fix this problem

Oh it's been a while since I've posted here (not sure I'm a fan of the recent changes), but I am glad some things haven't changed.

annpatt is still fighting the good fight, I see. She converted me. Besides, with 2 teens, we never have any bread, pastry, cereal, or any other wheat-based product around long enough to get stale or moldy. A box of saltines last a couple of hours.

notax: It can certainly work if well managed. You will need a good source of browns - shredded leaves, sawdust, wood chips, etc. I suggest searching this forum for 'humanure' and find some other threads on it. Also, start a new thread for additional questions and discussion, for best visibility of your topic.

I had had left over lobster carcasses and thought I'd do a quick google search for any benefits these might have in the garden. Lucky me stumbled on a most hilarious, informative bunch of cool cats! I am still cracking up, good humor and great info. Never heard of planaria, I know I'm spelling it wrong. But very interesting!

I know! And so avoidable!

This forum brings such demented joy to my heart.