Mold spores! Perfectly normal function of decaying OM. Here's some close ups (15x macro) on barley straw, indeed very trichome looking at the early fruiting stage of the spore & comparable in size!
Hey my mom had and bunch of steamed crab legs for mothers days can I just throw the shells in my pile? Or do i need to dry them out or something? So far my pile consist of chicken manure, hay, leaves from the yard, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, some dandelions, lots of coffee grounds, and various fruits and veggie rinds and peels (apple, oranges, celery, banana peels).
I don't know anything about crab legs but you could turn your compost pile inside out. For the first 2-3 weeks I'm turning mine every 3-4 days.
Just found another Smith & Hawken Biostack compost bin like mine for sale on Craigslist for only $25. A steal! I emailed them and am awaiting their reply. I need a second one so I can have an almost finished bin and a newer bin. update.......Already sold. Damn!
In all likelihood your C:N ratio is off and 'brown' is limited. There's plenty of nitrogen available and the bacteria are in overdrive consuming all that they can. One of the byproducts of this activity is ammonia gas. It's a good thing in one sense - your pile is working. throw some carbon based material in the pile (brown), mix it up and you'll be good to go. But a good catch noticing the odor because it has alerted you to something amiss. Now here is perhaps an interesting tidbit to think about. We know plants take up in N in two forms, NO3 and NH4. If we recall from the N cycle NH3 (ammonia gas) is a precursor to the start of the N cycle that ultimately produces NO3 and NH4. So while we're here, 'plants get nitrogen burn' not from the amount of nitrogen applied, rather, plants get burned from the rapid conversion to NH3 (ammonia gas) as the nitrogen cycle commences and completes, especially so if there is an excessive amount of microbial activity converting 'green' to NH3 prior to its formulation to NO3 and/or NH4. "Soils' too hot. Got to let it 'cook'". IOW, nitrogen cycle (and other mineral cycles as well) commences and NH3 is produced making N rapidly available in ammonia form, hence 'hot soil' equal 'burned plant leaves'. Make sense?
Ok...so I feel like I'm somehow going to mess this up. I've got a leaf pile, and some compost that is mostly chicken/sheep/goat manure aged 2-3 years. If I do a layer of leaf, layer of compst/manure, layer of vegetable scraps and coffee grounds, then repeat the layers, is this good?
Sounds like a great pile to me. How great will depend on the exact ratios of the ingredients, but I don't think you can really go wrong with those inputs.
Awesome, thanks! I'm definitely not looking to rush this, but how long before I could expect it to be ready to plant with?
Some people (by which I mean sellers of compost bins or compost "starters") will tell you than you can have compost ready to go in a month or two. In my experience, they are lying. You might be able to get things broken down that fast in a perfectly built pile, turning every day or two, but even then I would advise aging before using it. In a normal pile, I generally expect 6 months to a year before it's usable, and a year or more is ideal. I just reread your post and noticed that part of your pile will be stuff that is already composted. That will speed things up, but I would still expect it to take a while. Leaves, especially, take a long time to break down.
They will certainly slow things down. How slow depends on the weather. Here in the PNW, our winters are pretty mild, and an active compost pile can keep itself warm enough that it will still break things down. If you get a prolonged deep freeze, the pile might stop completely, but it will start up again as soon as it's warm enough.
Too much nitrogen - a common mistake made in the beginning. Stick to the carbon:nitrogen ratios suggested. Composting is not a process of heat as much as some people would like to believe that it is. It is a function of microbes. CC
I live in southern ontario, Canada, so it gets pretty cold. I don't mind it not being ready until next fall. If such a long wait will just make it better, then I'm down.
A long wait will absolutely make compost better, and that applies even more to compost made with leaves.
So here's what my 'Luebke' pile's lookin' like. My C:N ratio was too high so I don't believe it was ever too thermophillic. Nonetheless, when I turned it yesterday there was a whole heap of worms, so I figure it's time to amend it with some goodies (neem, kelp, comfrey) and I'll start on that later this week.