Small Scale Composting

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It is moist but not wet in the middle. I added a bucket of topsoil from the garden that was under a weed block tarp. Nitrogen as in more dry leaves? I have 9 acres of oak, hickory and walnut leaves to pick from.

JT
 
Dry leaves are mostly carbon, not nitrogen. Chicken poop is mostly nitrogen. Green fresh grass clippings are mostly nitrogen, dead brown grass clippings (hay or straw) are mostly carbon. Sometimes things mostly nitrogen is called greens and mostly carbon are called browns. In composting them mean the same thing.

Very few things are 100% nitrogen or 100% carbon, practically everything is a mix. Some things that are mostly nitrogen are all kinds of animal poop, most kitchen wastes, and green foliage. I've been known to toss some high nitrogen fertilizer in there when I was short on nitrogen.

The moisture sounds right. Often chicken bedding does not have enough poop in it in relation to the amount of carbon from the bedding to really supply that much nitrogen.
 
Ah not much is green around here at the moment except my grass boxes. Before I discovered a poop board a lot of pine shavings went with the poop, now not so much. Thanks so much for the information.

Wish you lived in Northeast Arkansas we would be neighbors almost. I do like to visit the Northwest Arkansas and ride motorcycles out there. One place we like to visit is Jasper and cross the mountain to see the elk herd.

JT
 
I'm glad you started this thread, JT. Although I garden, I'm more of a weekend warrior as I work slave hours...I just don't have all sorts of time (or energy) to be playing with chicken poop, complicated composting and whatnot. A small version to just deal with what exits my little flock is all I'm looking to do. This thread has helped tremendously. Thanks a bunch!
 
I keep a plastic bowl on the kitchen counter to gather coffee ground and filters, various kitchen wastes like peels, egg shells, and scraps, even paper towels. Some of that is fed back to the chickens but a lot is dumped in the compost bin. Volumewise it's not really that much at the end of the day but a lot of it, like the coffee grounds, are high in nitrogen.
 
jthornton said:
I know where my coffee grounds are going from now on... in the compost pile.
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/node/1009

JT
Click to expand...

Hmmmm....I've been dumping my spent coffee grounds right into the garden each morning...apparently...not correct. ** Learn something new every day **

Keep in mind that uncomposted coffee grounds are NOT a nitrogen fertilizer. Coffee grounds have a carbon-to-nitrogen ration of about 20 to 1, in the same range as animal manure. Germination tests in Eugene showed that uncomposted coffee grounds, added to soil as about one-fourth the volume, showed poor germination and stunted growth in lettuce seed. Therefore, they need to be composted before using near plants.
 

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