I'm planning to use black leaf mould and aged horse manure to build a quick hot compost pile. Question before I get out there with a rake: Should I treat the leaf mould as a carbon input or a nitrogen input? If it were just leaves It'd be a no brainer, but...
This might be challenging to get to heat up. I mix leaf mold and composted chick manure all the time. It never heats up, but does continue to break down. I think at this point it may just be a fungal thing (not bacterial that will go thermophyllic). Regardless of the process, its Black gold shibshib! hth cheers os
Good to know. I'll try to keep track of the temps and see how it goes. Meanwhile, today I found a tree farm with some pigs down the road that will deliver 5 cubic yards of their homebrew compost for $225. Not sure if that price is good or bad, but it's all I could find around here other than the bagged stuff. If I want to grow at all this year, I'll have to roll with it.
Wow, 5 cu yds, That's a lot of compost! That's a dump truck load. Nice score, and that's cheap. cheers os
It's definitely a lot. I asked how much a truckload was going to cost, and agreed, before I asked how big the truck was. lol We've got 40 acres to play with here, and some food forests to start, so we'll put it to use eventually, but If I were a betting man I'd say most of the pile is going to be right where they put it when the snow comes back. We'll be moving it all by hand or pull-cart. Which leads into another question: Do I need to cover the pile with a tarp next winter? 300 inches of snow may sit around for 8 months in these parts.
This I is just a thought. If possible have the truck dump somewhere you think you may want a garden at some point. I would cover the pile with heavy duty clear plastic. When the snow starts to melt off the top, solar will help warm up the pile more efficiently and much earlier. I did this with my bins to thaw them out this spring. I have been able to harvest thawed compost off the top, when there is still 2 feet of snow on the ground and temps in the 30's, It helps if its sunny though. cheers os
Clear plastic is a solid plan. I'll do that. At this point we're pretty limited on where they can dump. I'm going to try to get them to split the dump into two spots just to save my back, but neither of them is going to be as close to their final resting places as I'd like them to be. Our access sucks here. Lots of forest roads, but right now they're either under two feet of snow, or two feet of mud. We have a lot of work to do on this place in the next few decades. Reliable three-season access is a huge piece of that.
That's always how it seems to work out. The plastic I use is called visqueen ( I'm sure I spelled this wrong), its the tough reinforced stuff. Sometimes it helps having them dump on a tarp or plastic, especially if they dump in a driveway or road. Helps avoid a big mud bog, when you are hand trucking countless wheel barrow loads. You can roll up the tarp as you clear of portions of it off so you aren't slip sliding as you get toward the middle of the pile. Been there done that. This makes it easier! cheers os
I turned my compost pile yesterday. There was still a frozen chunk about 20 gallons in volume in the middle. Maybe now the ball will get bouncing. The frozen stuff is on the top now. If you haven't tried doing bin to bin, or pile to pile transfers for pile turning, its the way! I have 2 bins side by side that can be opened in the front if needed. I keep one bin empty for turning into. Its a perfect top to the bottom transfer. cheers os
Started a new compost pile. Its straw and 3 heaping full wheelbarrow loads of horsetail, dandelions, grasses and forget me nots. The upper part will have to be dissected at some point, and more straw added. I'm sure the whole pile is too 'green' but I just couldn't turn down the loads of DA's. In fact all I had to do was leave the neighbor an empty wheelbarrow and then wheel her on home. It will be black gold next year, even if I have to wait for fall leaves. cheers os
Cool beans for sure. I’m kind of aggravated with myself - I usually save my autumn leaves each year and just keep heaping them out back in the corner - well, last fall I was very busy with life and said “well I’ll just deal with them in the spring”. Spring came and of course I’ll have zero to do with raking so what I do is her use my riding mower and when the heaps get too big then I collect them, dump them, and continue with the mower. By the spring they had already broken down too much to even bother with so I’ll have to wait till fall again and not procrastinate this year. I have a woods full of them if needed right behind the house anyhow I guess. I just need to take the time to collect them. One of these upcoming weekends I’m going to anyhow just to add more into the vegetable garden. I’m honestly not sure what I would do without them. They are totally a major player in my own gardening methods. J
View attachment 2464141 More compost and worm castings on the way, my comfrey is growing like crazy too I have a deep freeze full of comfrey and pumpkin. The round bins outside are worm bins I fill up with compost and added worms from my indoor bins, im starting to find the little worms everywhere out there now.
This time of year I always find my self in a situation where I have a ton of greens from weeding dynamic accumulators. Mostly horsetail. I don't have browns to use until fall. What I have done in the past is to just stack them up in empty giant bins and save them until fall, and then mix piles when I have leaves available as browns. With horsetail, it breaks down real fast by itself, and I have half-piles of black goo by fall. I'm not complaining, this is ok. I have also been doing a lot of experimenting and work with pine bark nuggets over the last 9 months. I really like what bark has to offer. One thing that comes with the bark, is usually a layer of wood still attached to bark. Removal of this skin of wood, would make it even better in a soil mix, as there would be less nitrogen theft. Here is what I came up with. I have been soaking small bark nuggets in water over night, then adding that into my horsetail piles to 1) act as a brown (carbon source), and 2) remove the wood skin left on the bark. Kind of killing 2 birds with one stone. I must note that I also use straw in these piles, but I didn't have much, and there really isn't quite enough carbon to do the job. The pile is heating up quite nicely! It is my hope that once the bacteria is done doing its thing (thermophylic breakdown) , that I end up with some fungus happily growing in the bark to continue breaking things down. This in turn should make great habitat for my wild worms, and then will be the base for my wormbin mixes all winter long. I also hope to have some fully broken down compost before summer is over, instead of having to wait for the following spring. cheers os
Sounds like a good plan. I’m rushing to get some good compost started and I’m playing around with what materials I can easily source locally. I’m hoping to build multiple piles of compost to feed through some worm bins next spring, and then into large raised indoor planters. I have been researching quite a bit and getting some good info from some key blades here, and this is what I have sourced so far. Endless supply of hardwood “granules”. Not dust. Really coarse. Endless supply of pine saw dust. Coarse, from a saw mill.. Lots of green bio mass. Montana prairie grass mix. Run through mower. Endless smaller branches from aspens and cottonwoods. Chipped? Mostly composted horse manure. LOADED with red wigglers. Straw. How do these sound? I’m still soaking all this in, but I know the carbon / nitrogen ratio is key. Was it 25-1 that I read? (Sorry, so many threads...)
Carbon between 25-30 is good. Carbon between 20-40 is ok. That's from a compost calculator website. Besides a good ratio, it always helps to have everything in the smallest pieces possible. This speeds up the process. Sounds like you have that figured out. Your ingredients sound great. I keep hunting for sawdust from home sawmills, but no luck. Everyone I know burns that stuff as fire starter. Make sure and wet all your ingredients when you build your pile, and try to build it all at once. cheers os
I was removing poison ivy from around my pine trees and I raked up all the surrounding pine straw and leaves from the trees to get to the vines. I decided to use the pine straw/leaf mixture for a new compost pile. I layered 3-4 inches of packed straw and leaves with a single thin layer of alfalfa pellets, watering deeply with each layer, when finished I poked 5 holes in it for air. That's all. The pile is 3ft across and 2 ft high, for shits and giggles I threw a compost thermometer in it (about 3pm). I got outside this morning and looked (7am) and holy shit! This thing heated up quick! (I have more pine straw I raked off my roof yesterday evening. Can I add this to compost pile today? Is it ok to use although it's been on my shingled roof?) Edit: the pile is sitting on a concrete slab although you can't see it
Thanks for the input! Yeah, I’m pretty stoked on all of the great materials I have been able to source. I’m totally geeking out on worms and compost right now! How do I deal with my great horse manure/ compost? It’s loaded with worms! I don’t want to fry them during the thermal stages, so do I wait til it cools to add that, maybe after a turn or two. I am thinking that the rabbit manure should go into the original pile and then add the horse manure afterwards? Any idea where rabbit manure falls on the carbon/ nitrogen scale? @ElRanchoDeluxe I would love your help here too....