Catch 22 Composting

[Ridgerunner]

The reason I like sides is that the chickens scatter it everywhere. If you don't have chickens or some other reason, I don't see that sides affect composting.

 

[IamRainey]

Other than the tumbling composters that make it easy to keep turning the contents, I don't see that enclosures or the lack thereof make much difference.

I guess if your chickens spread the material by scratching in it that's gonna mean raking it together and shoveling it back onto the pile. But, of course, this is going to keep the moisture and the beasties well-distributed and actively breaking your pile down.

A compost pile ONLY needs to be a pile. Containers just keep it more compact. And this can also be accomplished, of course, by dry stacked cinder blocks, wooden pallets, chicken wire, straw bales and probably much more. There's even a gardening style called "keyhole gardening" in which the garden is the container for the compost.

 

[IamRainey]

Since this topic has been so active and there seems to be real interest I thought I'd share how it works for me. As I've said before, I do all the no-no's. I do completely lazy "passive" composting. And I still get mounds of wonderful soil year after year.

I hope this encourages someone to think that they can do it. And they can do it the "right" way or their own way based on their needs, situation and work habits and still be very successful.

Here is my current finished pile. You can see a ton of stuff in there that you don't want in your planting beds. But when it cools down -- the weather that is, the pile has been finished and cool for ages -- I'll sit out there and sift it into my wagon and return the bits of cardboard and larger sticks to an active pile. Since I get so much I add what I currently need to planting beds and store what remains in large covered trash cans.



This is my next oldest pile and the one I'll break down next. It's never been turned except for the stuff I tossed on top to open it up for you to see. It's had branches, whole cardboard boxes, meat, big beef rib bones, oyster and other shells, even the occasional dog pooh and my experiment with humanure way down at the core. This pile was probably about 18 months from set up to this stage. And the humanure broke down in moist coir for several months before it went into the bottom so it should be well composted and indetectible by the time I sift this one through. But, as I said, it was an experiment so I'll have to see what's happened.



This pile is about a year old. I've covered it with an old packing blanket to indicate to my lawn service that they shouldn't add anything else to it. The packing blanket came from the previous pile but I suspect this is its last rodeo and it won't make it beyond this one. That's OK. Everything is welcome in my piles! I once cut the sheepskin tops from a pair of tired old Uggs slippers and added them to a pile.

You can see the cheap plastic "walls" that I use to enclose my piles. Most of the sections are 15+ years old and have had my dog climbing on them and chewing at them. ...and who knows what other scavengers have had their way with it! They still hold a pile into a pile. So, a good indication that you too can get away with anything that works.

This pile will probably sit until next Summer before I need any more humus from it.



This is the active pile I set up about 3 weeks ago. You can't see that the bottom is branches and roots that are going to be a long time and several trips through several piles to break down. Nothing is particularly "layered". Nothing is chopped up or broken down. It all goes in as it comes up.

Despite the fact that it looks pretty well on it way to filled up in just a few weeks, it will heat up and collapse down several times. We'll be using this pile for at least the next 6 months. At some points it will be heaped up well above the 3' sides of the plastic but once it's done it will settle down to about the height of the previous piles.

A bonus is that when I start dumping in the unfinished stuff from previous piles they will bring with them all kinds of hungry bacterial and fungal and microbial beasties clinging to them as well as the creepy crawlies that will give this new pile a kick start.



Hope this gives someone some ideas and some encouragement.

 

[IamRainey]

All this discussion of compost has me, oddly, engaged with my piles. So I thought I'd finish my tale.

Here is my sifting set-up with a hardware cloth sieve sitting on top of my dumpling cart. In it is an ordinary grower's flat. I shovel some raw compost into it and then, sitting in my chair, I just push the flat back and forth letting the fully finished compost drop through. While I'm doing it I remove non-organic stuff. And when all the loose humus is in the cart, I dump the organic remnants into an active pile.



What's in the cart is ready to fork into beds or mulch around established plantings.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Yep, compost is compost and no matter what you do, eventually everything will break down. And generally if you layer aboooooout the right stuff together, and give it close-ish to the right water content, it'll work just fine.

It's not like nature layers every pile of greens with a nice pile of leaves to heat up and break down. It still breaks down anyhow.

 

[quack quack cluck]

My buddy dropped off a book that had a chapter on composting. It states to build a compost bin 3' x 3' x 3' and fill it with alternating layers of leaves (carbon) and grass (nitrogen). This seems to be a Catch 22... leaves fall off the trees in the fall when the grass stops growing and grass grows well in the spring and summer when the leaves are green.

Last winter all I had was dead leaves and chicken poop, the result was not ideal compost, it was wet and formed balls but was not stinky. I've been adding grass a bit at a time to those bins and they are coming around and looking and smelling more like compost every day, you know that earthy smell.

The one thing I have year round is chicken poop which I assume is nitrogen??? So for those that compost poop what do you do year round?

My compost bins are 4' x 4' x 2.5' or so...

JT

As they say, "compost happens." Add what you have, when you have it. If the final product is off for any given plant (PH, nutrients), you can adjust as needed. In the meantime, don't sweat "layering" and ratios. Throw it all in and let nature take its course. While careful layering may speed up the process some, and certainly makes for a great end product, this -- compost -- is one of the realms that shouldn't demand any extra cost (don't import or purchase material outside of your home/garden) or energy (let the microbes and bugs make magic from whatever you have to feed them.
(Side note, while I do add unbleached paper towels, organic cotton, and occasionally other paper, most of the paper that many here have suggested added to pile is rich in all kinds of chemicals and plastics. If your compost is ending up on edible crops, consider going light on cardboard and paper).

 

[Sequel]

All this discussion of compost has me, oddly, engaged with my piles.

Haha! Me too!

 

[aart]

I just push the flat back and forth

Slick sifting set up!

 

[Ridgerunner]

As they say, "compost happens."

With that lead-in I can't resist sharing this. I love the dancing ladies.

I made this frame by ripping a 2x4 to get roughly 3/4" and 2-1/4" wide strips and using 1/2" hardware cloth to make frames like this. I use them to dry sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, and such from the garden by setting them up on other 2x4's to get air under them. The frame also sits on my wheelbarrow. I shovel finished compost in it and, using leather gloves, rake it back and forth with my hands. I'm not sure how @IamRainey manages to sit and sift back and forth with that grower's flat, sounds like hard work to me but I'm sure it works. Anything that goes through the frame into the wheelbarrow is compost and gets put in plastic chicken feed bags. The stuff that doesn't go through is either trashed or, if compostable, goes into the next batch.

 

[Mimi13]

nice to have a discussion stay on topic

Well now, we can’t have a discussion stay on topic, can we? Let me derail it by “stirring things up” a bit! (only pun intended)

3x3x3 is probably minimal for mass to generate some 'heat',

I guess this kind of answers my ‘sides’ question. If I don’t have them I won’t be able to keep a pile more than 30 minutes and I definitely can’t rake it 20 times a day. I do have pallets to put around it (3 sides), which will also make it less ugly, maybe?

we have two of them - one to age one to build.

So this comment poses another question. How long should I build on one before I begin another? And even though I don’t need huge amounts of compost, it does appear that 3 piles is the magic number in order to keep it flowing smoothly, that is. Hopefully I will be able to set up 3 compost pallet bins right next to each other, using only 7 pallets, letting the two inner pallet walls pull double duty.

And like I said before, there is such a “crap load” of information in this one thread. I am going scavenger hunting in a bit (suppose to be 109 heat index today) for all kinds of stuff to put on my PILE. I have plenty of the poop, 38 chickens worth.

Two weird questions:

• can I put horse, dog and human hair in my piles
• and where would horse manure fit into this game plan? Is it better off dumped in its own pile in the pasture after mucking the stalls?

Thanks to everyone contributing to this post, especially @ChocolateMouse, @IamRainey and @Ridgerunner.