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Post by daylilydude on Apr 22, 2017 7:10:43 GMT -5
or both for your garden and planters... your thoughts??
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Post by paulf on Apr 22, 2017 9:25:09 GMT -5
Fully composted manure is great. I would never add fresh manure to anything but a compost pile. Way too many toxins, weed seeds and burning nitrogen content to fresh manure. Alpaca poop can be directly tilled in since it is fairly mild, but even then I would wait a full year to add that to my growing space.
Compost is golden and a wealth of organic material.
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Post by september on Apr 23, 2017 10:52:10 GMT -5
Whatever I can get! Don't have horses anymore, so my manure source is long gone. All I have are unlimited tree leaves in the fall. Unfortunately, I don't get them composted in a timely manner, so they usually end up as shredded mulch. My most unfullfilled New Year's resolution is to do better by my compost pile every year !
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Post by bestofour on Apr 23, 2017 12:34:36 GMT -5
Is humus mature compost? I've always thought humus was something added to help retain moisture but didn't add a lot in the way of nutrients. Live and learn. I have a compost pile that I keep turned and am using that in my garden. I live in horse country but adding manure seems like it adds tons of grass and oats and other stuff that has to be pulled out of my garden so I gave that up.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Apr 23, 2017 13:24:46 GMT -5
Whatever I can get! Don't have horses anymore, so my manure source is long gone. All I have are unlimited tree leaves in the fall. Unfortunately, I don't get them composted in a timely manner, so they usually end up as shredded mulch. My most unfullfilled New Year's resolution is to do better by my compost pile every year ! If you're adding shredded leaf mulch every year, you're improving your soil, just slower than by adding compost. The leaves break down (with help from the earthworms) and those nutrients and organic matter end up in the soil. Some of the best soil around is found around trees in old growth forests, and it was formed from years of decomposing leaves.
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Post by paulf on Apr 23, 2017 15:36:30 GMT -5
It can be. Either produced in a compost pile as finished product or occurring naturally. Humus is the dark organic matter that forms in the soil when plant and animal matter decays. Humus contains many useful nutrients for healthy soil, nitrogen being the most important of all.
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Post by paquebot on May 2, 2017 21:57:33 GMT -5
And think that all of that was accomplished without worms. A thousand years accumulation of that can vanish in a single season when nightcrawlers are introduced.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 3, 2017 10:48:11 GMT -5
It can also vanish when people harvest it, and then the forest will decline. Which is why harvesting leaf litter and forest soil is illegal in many areas.
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Post by bestofour on May 3, 2017 21:47:59 GMT -5
did not realize night crawlers would upset the decomposing of leaves in a bad way.
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Post by paquebot on May 3, 2017 22:06:31 GMT -5
It takes about 1,000 years to make an inch of duff/soil in a forest. The north woods of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisocnsin had it almost a foot thick. That accumulated since the last Ice Age. All biodiversity developed along with it. Nightcrawlers can consume that in one season. I have them here by choice. After hilling potatoes, I may fill in between rows with 4 or 5 inches of shredded leaves. Three months later the leaves are gone.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by bluelacedredhead on May 4, 2017 6:05:10 GMT -5
I have three composters in my yard. One is for kitchen scraps (no meat, bones or dairy). One is for grass clippings. The third is for leaves as there are many large, mature trees on our street and the leaves plentiful in fall. So I use a thick mulch of them on the garden over winter and then turn as many as I can into the soil as soon as it can be worked in spring. Nothing better than Free fertilizer.
I also used dried, pelleted chicken manure. I live on a small urban lot these days and manure from other sources may just be a little too aromatic for the neighbours.
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Post by paquebot on May 4, 2017 10:04:12 GMT -5
Blue, no meat or bones when most gardeners have to buy them? They are merely unprocessed blood and bone meal. I have had the big Compost Tumbler for over 20 years. Rabbits, squirrels, pigeons, and deer heads and bones vanish in it.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 4, 2017 10:54:23 GMT -5
paquebot , remember that bluelacedredhead is on a small, urban lot. In that environment, strong compost smells definitely cause problems with the neighbors. If you don't get the conditions in the composter just right, composting animal remains will really upset the people living just to either side of you! Not to mention you will get to "enjoy" the aroma in your own house as well, since the composter will be close to your house on a small lot. But you're right about the value of the compost made from it. If I had space to set a composter well away from both my house and neighbors, I'd compost the animal stuff, too. Your big (metal?) compost tumbler is a great way to do it, since the critters can't gnaw through the metal to get to the animal scraps. I have had rats chew all the way through the thick plastic exterior of a plastic compost tumbler, and burrow underneath another composter that had an open bottom - just to get to the veggie scraps inside. And I wasn't even composting meat, bones, or dairy, which would have been even stronger attractants to the rodents!
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Post by bluelacedredhead on May 4, 2017 11:13:22 GMT -5
Martin, I don't have a tumber, just stand up composters.
It's not so much the smell. It's the Rats, Cats and Raccoons here that become a nuisance with meat scraps and bones. All of my meat scraps and bones go in the municipal composting cans for weekly pickup. I let the city do the composting of that, which they give back to the gardeners this time of year for free.
And yes Laura, rats sure can chew!! Even squirrels, although they aren't meat eaters. But they chewed through a plastic garbage can on my deck to get to bird seed when I bought something other than plain safflower seed. Won't make that mistake again.
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Post by paquebot on May 4, 2017 19:35:56 GMT -5
My urban lot is 75"x115". Prior to getting a tumbler, had a compost pile that could have been mistaken for a beaver lodge for size. One year in the mid-1980s there were 7 deer heads which cooked right in the center. While that was going on, there could not have been any more odor than if they were in a kitchen in a crock pot. As long as such material is not exposed to the air, there's no offensive odor. Odor would be no different in a tumbler or a bin. None from deer, squirrel, or rabbits. Doe deer heads disintegrate in one heat cycle except for the lower jawbones. Buck heads take 2 cycles. The only times there are any odors are from pigeons for a few days. That's because they are protected by feathers and fowl just naturally smell foul! Even then it's more like a wet feather smell. And that is primarily from the high nitrogen content which is the prime reason to not let it get away.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by bestofour on May 4, 2017 22:30:31 GMT -5
I just have a big fenced in area that I use for compost - no tumbler. We turn it weekly with a pitch fork.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on May 5, 2017 17:27:00 GMT -5
paquebot, I'm impressed that you can compost such things on a city lot odor-free! I always had a hard time consistently getting enough "brown" to go with the "green" and so odor was a recurring issue. I actually gave up composting kitchen scraps after the rats got into my second composter. One of these days I will get a metal (hah, chew through that, ya stinkin' rats!) compost tumbler and pick it back up again. I still put my yard debris, fallen leaves, garden debris, and tree trimmings in a hugel, though. Don't want to waste that good organic material! Without the kitchen scraps there's no worries about smell or attracting critters.
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Post by paquebot on May 5, 2017 20:04:55 GMT -5
If odor can't get into the air, it can't be smelled. Nothing has to be buried very deep to no longer be detected. Rotting meat and decomposing meat have totally different micro herds working on them. One is aerobic and one is not and that makes a big difference. If you want to experience that, there are just some parts of animals which can't be used in the meat industry. It's called "inedibles". Years ago it used to be burned. You didn't want to be downwind at the time! Now it becomes fertilizer. A big tanker truck pulls up to the field. The slurry is pumped off into an applicator which then knifes it into the soil about a foot or so deep. I know what it smells like if some is spilled and few stomachs can handle it. No odor after it's in the ground.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by bestofour on May 5, 2017 22:26:35 GMT -5
I do put kitchen scraps in the way of peels, egg shells, tea if I make tea, greens, things like that and plenty of leaves. Never put meat or bones though.
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