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Gardener's Black Gold or Compost is easy or you can make it really hard. I prefer easy. It's mixing "green" and "brown" materials and mixing them to make a pile that heats up to kill bad seeds and stuff. Provide moisture to keep the pile working.
Green stuff provides the nitrogen: grass clippings withour herbicides, kitchen veggie scraps - no meat or fats, manures - not dog, cat or human
Brown stuff provides the carbon: dry crushed leaves, old hay, dry plant residue from the garden, add garden soil to innoculate your pile with good microbes and bacteria.
A simple ring of wire panel or even three wood shipping panels wired together make a simple container.
Layer your green and brown stuff until you container is full.
"Fluff you pile or turn it with a fork for oxygen.
The pile should be moist like a sponge. If it seems dry, then add water.
You know it's working when you dig into it and get an earthy smell. If it stinks, it's too wet.
When it'd done to your like, you can sift out the big particles using a wire mesh screen in a fram over a wheelbarrow. The big stuff becomes the bottom of your next compost pile.
We make a good compost by throwing bags of dry leaves on the floor of the hen house and letting the hens crumble them as they search through for goodies. They also add their manure into the mix as they are scratching through the leaves.
Then periodically we shovel out wheelbarrows of this good stuff and add it to a pile of hay and cow manure that has been worked (turned several times over the summer) with a tractor in the lot. We allow the pile to heat up to kill bad organisms and to allow the compost to cure.
I moved a huge pile to the garden last fall and it has cured over the winter....It goes in the garden this spring.
Gardener's Black Gold or Compost is easy or you can make it really hard. I prefer easy. It's mixing "green" and "brown" materials and mixing them to make a pile that heats up to kill bad seeds and stuff. Provide moisture to keep the pile working.
Green stuff provides the nitrogen: grass clippings withour herbicides, kitchen veggie scraps - no meat or fats, manures - not dog, cat or human
Brown stuff provides the carbon: dry crushed leaves, old hay, dry plant residue from the garden, add garden soil to innoculate your pile with good microbes and bacteria.
A simple ring of wire panel or even three wood shipping panels wired together make a simple container.
Layer your green and brown stuff until you container is full.
"Fluff you pile or turn it with a fork for oxygen.
The pile should be moist like a sponge. If it seems dry, then add water.
You know it's working when you dig into it and get an earthy smell. If it stinks, it's too wet.
When it'd done to your like, you can sift out the big particles using a wire mesh screen in a fram over a wheelbarrow. The big stuff becomes the bottom of your next compost pile.
We make a good compost by throwing bags of dry leaves on the floor of the hen house and letting the hens crumble them as they search through for goodies. They also add their manure into the mix as they are scratching through the leaves.
Then periodically we shovel out wheelbarrows of this good stuff and add it to a pile of hay and cow manure that has been worked (turned several times over the summer) with a tractor in the lot. We allow the pile to heat up to kill bad organisms and to allow the compost to cure.
I moved a huge pile to the garden last fall and it has cured over the winter....It goes in the garden this spring.