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Post by daylilydude on Oct 1, 2017 9:27:42 GMT -5
Do you have a compost pile... tell us all about it... please?
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Post by paulf on Oct 1, 2017 9:57:44 GMT -5
Yes! Built into the side of a hill near the garden (my property is almost all hillside) it is a two section pile. It is 4'X4'X6' doubled with 4"X4" treated posts for corners, 1"x6" lumber as side slats and wire fencing as the back and sides to hold it all together. It is open on the top which is even with the garden and open from the front at a fairly level spot where it can be worked and unloaded. There is a sort of driveway area from the front to the garden so it is fairly easy to push wheelbarrows of finished product up to the garden and flowerbed areas. It looks pretty rough right now since we used a truckload in some new flowerbeds a week or so ago. I wouldn't be without a compost pile. Everything goes it it that will compost except for walnut leaves and meat products. on the first photo the garden is inside the picket fence at the top. picture hosting sites free
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Post by paulf on Oct 1, 2017 10:09:13 GMT -5
By the way, I love the question of the day. Maybe other members could add questions so there could be several questions of the day to discuss?
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Post by meandtk on Oct 1, 2017 14:25:35 GMT -5
Yes It is simply a pile. I have wood chips and each week I get anywhere from 25-150 pounds of out of date produce from a grocery store to add to it. Soon there will be leaves added.
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Post by september on Oct 1, 2017 18:15:15 GMT -5
No, and yes. I don't have a convenient spot designated next to the garden and am too lazy to maintain a nice compost pile.
But I do have a spot in the woods where I dump all my vegetable food waste and garden leavings. The deer eat anything remotely edible no matter how disgustingly rotted, but slowly the pile grows as I add old pots of soil and dried up flower and vegetable vines. My original pile was started to fill a low wet spot, it was getting to be quite a large unturned mound, when a tree fell on it, and I had to start a new pile. There should be some good composted soil in the old pile, but it probably also has many tree roots from the big surrounding trees invading it.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 1, 2017 21:25:58 GMT -5
Composting in the same exact spot since 7/10/1963. Was a pile until 1996 when I got the big ComposTumbler. Even then, still maintained a big pile for slow action on bigger things like deer heads and offal. Then discovered that it will also break down in the tumbler If anything was once a living thing, it is natural that it be composted.
Just started the late-summer batch a couple weeks ago. Base was a bale of grassy wheat straw reduced to tiny bits with a mulching mower. For bone and blood, there's 5 pigeons, 5 wood mice, 1 squirrel, and 1 vole so far. Should keep this heat cycle going through October before dumping in mid-November. Then the winter batch will start with a base of shredded leaves.
For those curious about what happens to deer heads, doe heads vanish in one heat cycle while buck heads take two. All that one can find are the lower jawbones. If those are cracked with a hammer and sent through again, they vanish. Rib cages are hanged from a tree and birds pick them clean during the winter. In the spring, after they are dry, gone over with the mulching/bagging mower and into the tumbler. The bits vanish. (Mower blade is harder than the bones so it doesn't hurt it.)
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by ladymarmalade on Oct 2, 2017 10:15:19 GMT -5
I have a pile. It's a big box that DH made out of pallets next to the garden. In theory we dump yard and kitchen waste on one side of it, and it gets turned over to the other side and goes back and forth a few times before we use it.
But the reality is that I can never keep track of which side is which, and there are a few times a year where the quantity going into the compost takes up most of the bin so... I just keep piling stuff on and eventually DH will mix it all in and then in the spring we'll use it in the garden here at home and start again. We stop hauling kitchen scraps to the bin once we've had a couple of good snowfalls because I don't want to trudge through snow to dump it.
We add kitchen scraps, yard waste, and ash from the fire pit regularly. I'm irritated about the ash because DH (and the neighbor) burn a lot of wood scraps which come with hardware attached. I hate it when I'm having to pull old nails and screws out of my garden.
I should start having DS dispose of his rodent catch in there.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 2, 2017 12:23:55 GMT -5
Rodents definitely belong in the pile. Meat is 6.8% nitrogen 0.5% phosphorus, and 0.5% potassium in addition to calcium and iron. Bones are about 10% phosphorus and 23% calcium in addition to 4% nitrogen and trace minerals. It's rather difficult to justify not taking advantage of it, especially when all should know the benefits of blood meal and bone meal.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by pepperhead212 on Oct 2, 2017 22:23:46 GMT -5
I have a compost pile behind my shed, to put slow composting things into, and one of those tumblers that somebody gave me years ago, which I put greens, and faster decomposing items into. I wouldn't put rodents in my pile, as they would probably attract some scavengers of some sort, and it's not far enough from my house (and even closer to others) to dump all those squirrels I trap (just sent 3 out with the trash today) into it. I'm too lazy to bury them deep.
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Post by daylilydude on Oct 3, 2017 3:45:52 GMT -5
By the way, I love the question of the day. Maybe other members could add questions so there could be several questions of the day to discuss? Sure, y'all post as many questions as y'all want
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Post by paquebot on Oct 3, 2017 16:09:48 GMT -5
pepperhead212, the squirrels would not have to be buried deep. 4" of soil on top of them is enough to prevent carrion flies from finding them and keep them sufficiently damp to promote near-natural decomposition. After a year, you'd be able to run through them with a tiller and not find a trace. Extreme composters drive around looking for roadkill of any kind for their compost. (The county north of here has two huge tumblers where entire deer vanish in 14 days.) 1988 was my best year for a pile. Started with 60 bags of mostly white oak leaves shredded down to about 20. Pile was nearly 6' tall when it started. My son and I shot 7 deer and all heads, feet, and legs were scattered about the center. (Leg bones cut into 4" lengths to allow bacteria to attack from inside.) At last minute, there were still several small skins which were of no value and they went in. The pile was so big and with so much "fuel" that it worked all winter despite some really cold temperatures. When turned in the spring, I expected to find at least some of the skin to be intact but it was all a brownish powder-like substance. Everything else was the same color as the broken-down leaves. That was the result of 5 months in a big slow cooker. By the way, every gardener who is truly serious about doing a proper job of composting should get Rodale's "The Complete Book of Composting". Over a thousand pages and has every bit of information that you will ever need to make the perfect complete compost. Martin The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by coppice on Oct 3, 2017 16:45:31 GMT -5
I have far fewer four legged visitors to my twin compost bins. On the other hand I'm not putting a lot of meat and fats in the bin.
The little flesh are boiled bone from stock. Barely enough to feed a soldier-fly.
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Post by brownrexx on Oct 26, 2017 9:20:33 GMT -5
I have a big pile on the ground which gets turned by my husband using his compact tractor with a bucket. This makes composting super easy for me. I just dump all of my weeds and kitchen scraps into it and he turns it periodically. Actually we let our 8 chickens free range for a couple of hours each evening and they also help with turning the pile as they dig through it for treats. It usually looks like just a big pile of soil. It gets spread on the garden once a year in the fall.
Meat scraps around here go to the feral cats or our chickens.
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Post by horsea on Oct 27, 2017 3:19:19 GMT -5
Is throwing a 5-gallon bucket of kitchen slops onto the garden once a week in the fall and spring a compost pile of sorts? If so, I guess I have one. Also, I do put all coarse garden wastes in a corner of the garden against the fence. It may take a few years, but it does eventually break down without any help from me. The best, biggest winter squash I have ever had showed up in a winter's worth of kitchen slops. No soil added. Mother Nature has a mind of her own, that's for sure.
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Post by paquebot on Oct 27, 2017 18:26:52 GMT -5
horsea,you have to remember that all of those kitchen scraps required NPK in order to grow and produce. Whatever they produced was just a storage bin for us to get our NPK. What we don't use is available for something else to use. Yours made a winter squash, mine used to often make pumpkins and cantaloupes. Martin The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by horsea on Nov 2, 2017 14:05:42 GMT -5
horsea,you have to remember that all of those kitchen scraps required NPK in order to grow and produce. Whatever they produced was just a storage bin for us to get our NPK. What we don't use is available for something else to use. Yours made a winter squash, mine used to often make pumpkins and cantaloupes. Martin Yes. The contents of the kitchen scraps - some bought, some grown by me - obviously contained NPK and other necessary minerals, too. Some of those nutrients were placed in the soil somewhere along the line, others were inherent in my soil. So what I am doing is partly recirculating and organifying some non-organic fertilizers. A nice crop is the result. At some point more outside input will be needed, whether from a bag or from my own crop wastes. Some people don't realize this, they think their gardening methods are pure and clean because they are recycling vegetables they bought at the supermarket. But all soil will wear out at some point and so there is no purity. There are no closed loops anymore, in this day and age. I keep thinking of the great crops that were grown in the US by the first few generations of settlers, but then eventually their soil became depleted but probably they couldn't figure out why. It took a long time to discover these things, didn't it. As I like to say, "It's a fallen world."
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Post by paquebot on Nov 2, 2017 19:25:44 GMT -5
Recycling nutrients worked great on this planet for millions of years until Man took over. Everything that lived was returned to the soil. Now it's virtually one-way, out. Tons of food comes into a big city daily and it's a dead end. Eventually that will have to be reversed as the natural sources are finite.
Martin
The truth is more important than the facts.
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Post by Gianna on Dec 15, 2017 16:54:57 GMT -5
I built a large (for me) compost heap a month ago. Some of the stuff was already partially decomposed, and I also added a lot of the screened mulch from the city mulch program. It is about 3.5 X 5 X 3ft high. It quickly got to about 150*F. And for the last month has held pretty steady around 130 or so.
I was going to turn the pile soon, but decided to use some of the partially decomposed material as a sheet mulch on a bed that currently had a cover crop of buckwheat, lentils and a few weedy things. 3-4 inches deep, with soaker hose beneath. This bed will sit another couple months or so. It will be kept moist. Just trying something new on my way to no till beds. I'm hoping to get some worm action in there.
I'm going to cover another bed with this young compost too.
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