Finally. It's where it all begins for me. Now I can put the snowblower on the riding mower now that I'm done with the mowing deck. Fun fun. J
Looks like we were doing the same thing today. lol. Better than last year with all the oaks and beechs full of leaves and a foot of snow on the ground.
Last year we had snow in October and I never even collected leaves. I'm trying to make up for it this year lol Next spring this will get mixed with horse manure and some odds and ends and become my potting soil. J
This week I harvested a pile built 18 months ago and has had constant additions as material became available. The original pile was 10 x 4 x 4 (approx. 6 cu yds or 160 cu ft or1200 gallons) and was constructed from weeds on the property; Canadian thistle, redroot pigweed, mullen, horehound, mallow, fresh alfalfa collected from the roadside right of way in spring, loose alfalfa raked from the barn floor, and lawn clippings and kitchen scraps. 150 gallons of horse manure was added to start the pile heating up and leaves from two lawns were added in the fall. The pile was turned frequently in summer and kept moist. While turning, a few shovels of fertilizer mix, mineral mix, and a shovel full of topsoil were added to the layers as it was turned. Most of the material has now become broken down and has now been screened for use as new worm bedding. At this stage it could also be used as base media mix. Ten percent of the pile was saved, along with the coarse screening, to inoculate the new materials this fall as the leaf collection starts. Now that the pile is working it will become a perpetual pile by always keeping the almost finished material pulled to one end and constantly adding more fresh material as it becomes available. This finished compost is a dark brown color, as the pile becomes perpetual it will finish like worm castings into coffee grounds consistency black compost. This harvest produced 140 gallons of compost from the 6 cu yds of original material,(about 3/4 cu yd,(18.7cu ft) from the original 6 cu yd). Bountiful harvests to all PW
Self sufficient organic gardening. Very similar to my own method but I take what you've got and call it potting soil - in other words I grow right in the compost like you've got. Beautiful work PW. Wouldn't expect any less. J
Went for my first turning of my thermal compost. I'm going to use this to expand my vegetable garden for next spring. It doesn't look like much now but by spring it will be the best soil you can find.
You guys posting compost porn huh...... Gimme a couple days and I'll screen my pile built last October. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
It's composting season here where we are. Leaves are all off the trees, we harvested all of our comfrey and are waiting for our cardoon to finish. For anyone that is in zone 6b or higher you can perennialize this plant. We are zone 6b but a cold 6b so we are trying. It's the last plant standing and still green. We have already had several frosts. Everything else has browned up cept the cardoon. We planted it this year, well my wife did right after I was looking at planting comfrey for our composting, she got on it looking for another plant similar to comfrey. Bought seeds and we got it going in the gardens outside. This plant is HUGE. It's got comfrey beat with biomass by a good amount and its a nitrogen fixer. Cardoon is related to the artichoke and is edible - the flower looks similar to an artichoke, very similar actually. This plant looks stunning and is a big show in the garden even without flowers. I've been waiting for the leaves to turn brown so I can harvest them like the comfrey but they are still going strong. Yeah so anyone looking to grow some plants for the compost bin/pile check out cardoon. It's beautiful as a plant and very stunning in the garden and is outlasting every other plant thru several frosts already. Large plant nitrogen fixer, is edible and has PRIMO flowers. Well not for smoking ... put your pipes down ... jeez! You can use the compost next spring to grow the other primo smokable flowers tho and that's my interest. This plant looks great, edible AND will help build your compost pile and I bet the worms will like it too! wiki link - I'll see if I can post a few pics tomorrow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardoon
Here's a pic or 3 of our cardoon plants - we had a heavy frost last night, there was ice on top of my trash bin where a puddle of water was from the rain yesterday. We have another section in the garden even larger than this one with cardoon. These plants in the pics are about 3' wide easily maybe 4' each one and 40" tall.
Do I need to worry about salinity in composting? For example, I live on the east coast, we have all kinds of organic stuff that washes up like seaweeds, dead crabs, dead fish, sponges etc. Can I throw this stuff straight in the pile? Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
Throw it all in, it will balance and regulate itself once it gets rolling....... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You may start attracting scavengers with the fish and crabs, don't know if you have to worry about raccoons or not
When using stuff like meat sources, you'd have to have good control of making sure it gets really hot. I think only commercial composting facilities can achieve this. Someone I know is collecting kelp from the ocean and drying it to make his own meals so I am assuming that a good rinse and dry should be ok. I tossed in crustacean meal and that's ok. It's just certain things like actual meat that needs a commercial facilities.
As long as you can hit over 130 degrees for 13 consecutive days all the dangerous bacteria will be killed off. But if it only goes for say 11 days you have to restart the whole process
Yeah im not going there with this lol. Ill keep it simple I guess with old leaves, leaf mold and certain table scraps
Easiest way for composting kitchen scraps without oil/fat/animal stuff is to put a container on your counter top near where you do food prep... hopefully we are still doing food prep right? Anywho... we use a ceramic container with a lid and fill it with everything from the kitchen that does no have any fat/meat/dairy in it. Dump container in worm bin when full. Basically coffee grounds and all veggie scraps plus trim that we are not saving like; "stems and seeds that we don't need, Acapulco Gold is some bad ass weed "... errr wait.... I got side tracked. I took a day off from puffing yesterday so I'm what you would say "In the mood" .... wondering now if that jazz tune was about puffing (mabe sex after or during??). Oh no, maybe I took a few too many things off yesterday... what was I thinking? (ahem, go Eagles). Ummmm the worms are waiting .. don't let them get bored, they tend to wander when things are not what they expect. You know you're a compost junky when you are walking on horse trails and carry a bucket and scoop with you and marvel when you find a pile of horse poop and actually scoop it up and take it home to the compost pile. God damn I'm guilty, I bet people think I'm a freaking freak.... look he's scooping up poop in the woods into a bucket....WHAAAAT? Yup its me. Kinda similar when your neighbor actually offers to rake YOUR yard for the leaves. That there is attracting too much attention and you need to stop right now! //static.grscty.com//public/style_emoticons/default/watching.gif
Im throwing as much nitrogen into my pile as possible right now. I have 2 harvested plants I chopped up today to throw in. This is kinda fun! Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
if I'm adding biochar to my kitchen bin so I can let it build for a while before each load is emptied. should the char from that be considered towards the c:n ratio of my pile?