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Post by woodeye on Aug 17, 2022 14:22:16 GMT -6
Merely gleaning the knowledge to make compost, even on a small scale, is making the book worth it to me. In the history of my gardening endeavors, I have never dealt with compost on any scale other than buying bags of mock compost from Lowe's or Walmart. I want to change to homemade, small amounts to begin with are fine. Once I figure it out well enough to make compost consistently, the batch size can always be increased if desired. I'm not saying that I will increase the batch size dramatically, but the option to do so would be there.
Charles Wilber says any size batch of a ton or less only requires a compost or pitch fork. (p.29) I have 2 pitch forks, neither of which has handles that are worn from overuse.
When I first read about the way he builds 2 cages for the compost pile, I was a bit confused. I think his method has sunk into my hard head now though. He says "All turning is done by moving the outer part of heap to inside of heap."
What that means to me is that he starts at the top of the pile and uses the pitch fork to pick up some of the material, then turn the material upside down and deposit in the 2nd cage. And do this until all the compost material is in the 2nd cage, which means that all the material that was once in the first cage, is now upside down in the 2nd cage.
Then, after 2 or 3 days, and the temperature of the pile is up to 160°, turn it again. All the material in the 2nd cage is moved to the 1st cage and will be tuned upside down again.
If I am wrong about what Charles Wilber meant in his explanation of how the pile should be turned, please let me know...
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Post by woodeye on Aug 17, 2022 15:16:35 GMT -6
Well I thought more about what I just wrote to explain what Charles Wilber meant. And here is an easier explanation.
When turning the compost pile, he calls it the "outside" of the pile, and I call it the "top" of the pile.
He calls it the "inside" the pile, and I call it the "bottom" of the pile.
So the terminology is what had me confused.
All I had to do was substitute "top" for "outside", and substitute "bottom" for "inside", and it all made sense...
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 17, 2022 16:21:20 GMT -6
I think he really probably does mean “outside” and “inside,” woodeye. I could be wrong, of course, but here’s my thinking. Obviously the “top” of the pile is going to be part of the “outside,” but I think he probably would recommend moving the outside edges of the bottom prior to the inside. I think it’s a moisture thing since the outside of the pile will dry faster, and you want to move that to the interior so that it doesn’t dry completely. He even mentions watering the edges or watering during turning if necessary. I have to admit that I own a pitchfork, and I use it, even occasionally in my compost tumbler. Mostly I just tumble the compost, and I like that way of doing it. Are you planning to build Charles Wilber’s wire bins, or are you thinking of using his system in your tumblers? Did you ever get that 80-gallon Lifetime tumbler built?
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Compost
Aug 17, 2022 17:15:17 GMT -6
Post by woodeye on Aug 17, 2022 17:15:17 GMT -6
Yeah, I bet that's right, chrysanthemum. I remember reading that part too, about watering the dry edges. So moving the inside of the top on one cage, to the outside of the bottom of the other cage. Plus turning it over as you move it. That way it would get mixed better too. Okay, I'd say that's a go on that. Thank you for offering advice on it.
I haven't gotten the Lifetime tumbler together yet, decided to wait until it cooled off, which Thank God it did cool off today. I got some other jobs out in the yard done today and tomorrow I have a couple of jobs in the shop to get done. I will get that tumbler put together before long, and with both of the tumblers going I'll just have to see if I can even come up with enough material to do the composting in the cages like he writes about. I may just use my tumblers in the near future, at least until I know more about making compost. I'm not going to go buy a whole lot of materials just to start the compost like Charles Wilber does. I'm just starting small scale for now...
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Post by hmoosek on Aug 17, 2022 18:25:19 GMT -6
Ok, so I have some items that should be useable for compost. I have about 3 to 5 acres of woods behind my house. Consisting of hackberry, mesquite and locus. The hackberry as you probably know rots very quickly. The forest floor looks like this is large areas. Twigs, limbs, leaves. Here’s a quick picture. There is about 300+ acres of farm land right across the road from me. This year it was a cornfield which they gathered, then bailed the stalks into hay. Well, we got that storm the other day and now my yard looks like the second picture. Surely these materials could be put to use. What I’m lacking though is manure.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 17, 2022 20:14:05 GMT -6
woodeye, I’m a small-scale composter as well. Actually, I use a huge amount of material in my compost it seems. It just turns into a small amount of compost. hmoosek, you’ve got lots of good composting material there. Wow! All those cornstalk bits blown across the road. That was some storm. Do you have a mower with a bag? That would be a good way to gather them up and shred them at the same time. We brought our walk-behind lawnmower with us when we moved from Virginia. We use it very rarely on grass because we have little grass here, and it doesn’t grow unless there’s rain. Last summer it grew, and we harvested grass clippings for the compost, and it was excellent. We use the mower often, though, to mulch up leaves or sweet potato vines or asparagus ferns or whatever else we are cutting down at the time.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2022 12:04:26 GMT -6
hmoosek, it dawns on me that maybe I should mention that you don’t need manure for compost. If you have it, it’s great. If you don’t, you just need another source of nitrogen. We’ve composted for years and years and have never had a source of manure in all that time. (We do, however, buy aged manure compost down here for our raised beds, because we can’t produce enough compost quickly enough.). Lots of kitchen scraps are nitrogen, as are coffee grounds. Green grass clippings are. (Once they start to dry, they start to lose nitrogen and shift the balance to carbon since there is carbon in them, too.). If it rains again and your grass starts greening up and you need to mow, you’ll have a great source there. All those cowpea vines you’re growing are full of nitrogen. They’ll shift a good chunk of it to the seed when they start producing, but they’ll still be a source of nitrogen. After you harvest your seed, you can cut the vines or even pull them up by the roots if you’re not wanting them for soil building in that spot, chop them up and add them to compost. We do have a hard time getting enough nitrogen inputs quickly down here. That’s why I have on occasion mixed up a few scoops of alfalfa pellets or cottonseed meal with water and used that slurry in my compost. If you have a feed mill nearby, you can get 50 pound bags for somewhere in the teens, I bet. I wouldn’t buy them in a garden store as they’d be way too expensive. You may already know all that, so I’m sorry if that was information you didn’t need, but I wanted to put it out there just in case it would be helpful to you or another reader.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 18, 2022 12:42:42 GMT -6
Like Woodeye said earlier, "Warning, this post contains opinions."
I think that turning the compost frequently is not only a moisture thing, but also an oxygen issue, possibly more about oxygen than moisture? Compost won't break down very quickly in an anaerobic environment.
This first came to my attention while backpacking in the Rockies in the early 1980s. The Rangers there had me read a pamphlet about how to manage biodegradable waste while on the trail for several days. One of the things mentioned was not to bury any biodegradable material more than 8" inches deep or it would not decompose properly.
The earth's atmosphere causes the soil to 'breathe' by way of high-pressure and low-pressure cells passing overhead. High-pressure forces oxygen into the soil, while low-pressure causes spent gasses to be released from the soil in the form of carbon dioxide and methane; think inhale, exhale, only in terms of the soil.
Apparently, this process only affects the top 8" inches or so of the soil, as things below a depth of 8" inches decay very slowly.
After having read that memo, I started to notice things, like, if one pulls up an old wooden post that has been buried for several years, the part that was underground will resemble a staircase newel in shape. There will be a narrow neck of decomposition, just inches below the ground that will extend about 6" to 8" inches at most, then that narrow neck of decomposition will begin to enlarge to nearly the same diameter as the wood that was above ground all those years that the post was buried.
That phenomenon is caused by the availability of oxygen to a certain depth. Things below a certain depth decompose at a much slower rate than things nearer the surface.
I think the same applies to composting. Things just below the surface tend to decompose at a faster rate than things nearer the core, while things right at the surface decay at a much slower rate than either, most likely due to a lack of moisture right at the surface. (Just an observation).
Compost should never smell bad. If it smells bad at the core, chances are it has been deprived of oxygen or else it might be out of balance, due to too much of a certain thing, such as green plant material or carbon. Stirring it all together and introducing plenty of air to the core usually fixes that.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 18, 2022 13:08:34 GMT -6
Excellent observations heavyhitterokra. Your opinions make sense to me, I'll keep them in mind.
I don't trust all opinions though, so just for fun this morning, I searched the internet for opinions on whether deer would eat cucumber plants. I already discovered the answer to the question early this morning when I checked my backyard garden. I was amazed that most of the sites giving opinions on deer eating cucumber plants said that no, deer won't eat those because they don't like to eat plants that are prickly. Well that popular opinion is WRONG! The deer ate the prickly leaves off my cucumber plant during the night, but left the leaves of the luxuriously soft Tromboncino plant that is right beside the cucumber plant on the same trellis...
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 18, 2022 13:22:27 GMT -6
Deer murder my cucumber plants here on a regular basis. One year, I strung electric fence wires above my cucumber vines, sort of in a clothesline fashion. It worked pretty well for keeping the deer off of my vines, but I'd forget it was on and raise a vine in order to pick a cucumber and accidentally zap myself.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2022 14:16:44 GMT -6
heavyhitterokra, thanks for that information about the earth breathing. I never knew that eight inches was the magic number, so to speak. I agree that turning the pile is important for oxygenation, and I probably should have mentioned it, so I’m really glad you added it. I was just smelling my compost this morning and running my hands in it to feel the temperature and the consistency. This batch should be a nice one. It smells that nice earthy smell that you get when walking through the woods on a damp morning (or at least that’s how Virginia smelled when I was little. I think it’s probably the naturally decayed leaf smell.). Our compost is much more likely to stall due to lack of nitrogen, but every so often we’ll start a new bin off with kitchen scraps and not get enough carbon in there right away. (We always intend to get it in, of course, but then get delayed.). If it starts to get slimy and stink (they way the bottom of my indoor kitchen scrap pail can at times), that’s when we pull out the lawnmower and get some shredded leaves to add. (“We” is a bit of a stretch there. I should say, “That’s when my husband pulls out the lawn mower and shreds some leaves to add.” I do use the mower on occasion, but I really have a problem actually starting the thing. My husband has to do that for me.)
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2022 14:34:04 GMT -6
woodeye, I’m so sorry to hear that your “predatory, attack deer” (I think that’s what you once called them) are at it again. I haven’t believed the whole deer don’t eat prickly plants for several years now. My first sign should probably be have been that they completely obliterated a potted Christmas cactus that I got from my master gardener neighbor a few years back when they moved. I had it in front of the house, and I really thought that being a CACTUS (albeit not the most fierce once), it would be okay. Nope. Wrong. Gone. Having had that experience, I still believed the whole “prickly protection” idea a bit. After all, the deer don’t eat all the thistles that grow on our property. (Those greens are good compost material, by the way. Just remove all seed heads even if they haven’t opened because thistle heads will mature even after they’ve been cut. Vicious plant!). So I thought, I can surely plant artichokes outside my garden fence. They’re just domesticated thistles after all. Nope. Wrong. Gone. (Probably because I was growing them from seed, the deer just decided to sample what they were since they didn’t have such big prickles yet.). I have one artichoke now INSIDE my garden, though it’s had a rough life with the weather this year. I have a couple more starting from seed right now, and I haven’t actually figured out where I’ll plant them yet, but it won’t be unprotected from deer, that’s for sure. I decided to read about whether deer eat luffa the other day, and I read the same things about how deer don’t eat cucumbers and prickles. Well, my deer do. Before our fencing was quite so secure around our garden areas, one broke in and killed a number of cucumbers and tomatoes. Thankfully once we secured the fencing better, we haven’t had deer in the garden since. (I almost left the gate open, though, this morning. That could have been a disaster. They’re always lurking nearby.) My neighbor told me that they were told when they moved here that even deer resistant plants aren’t safe if the deer are desperate, or if there is a culture of feeding deer in the area. Apparently it’s like people and junk food. The craving for the junk food can make them not want normal healthy foods even when they’re available. It also actually changes their digestion and makes it harder for them to eat what they should. We’ve got both situations in our area. The deer population is very high, and the drought makes it hard for them to forage. People in our neighborhood think their being kind by putting out deer corn, but it’s really not good for the deer at all. heavyhitterokra or his wife probably knows more about that than I do.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 18, 2022 15:26:42 GMT -6
chrysanthemum, now that you mention it, I have not seen any of the super sized thistles this year. A few years ago they got started on this place somehow, not sure how. They grow to about 4 feet high or more. A much bigger plant than the old standard thistles we have always had. I bet those would be good for compost, I just can't figure out why there aren't any this year. But anyway, I'll keep those in mind because I'm sure they'll be back next year...
This photo was taken 3 years ago, they got more widespread every year, and then none came up this year. Odd!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 18, 2022 20:05:11 GMT -6
No huge thistles this year? We’ve been pulling them out for five years, and I’m not sure we’ll ever be rid of them. Ours can be taller than I am, which must put them at over six feet at times, and they branch so much. We try to get them when they’re smaller, though, but they hide and grow fast. The first spring when we moved in, we had a rainy day in March, and the ground was soft the next morning and the weather beautiful. I took my four kids outside, and we pulled up 55 pounds of thistles. We turned it into a whole homeschooling morning. We read about thistles for science. We weighed and added and subtracted for the math for the little ones. The oldest had to make a pie chart for which child had worked how much and use multiplication to figure out how much they got paid in total. (I think it was something like 50 cents per pound divided among the children). She then had to use the fractions from her pie chart to figure out how much each one actually got. Then they all had to write descriptions of the morning’s work, and we probably had some sort of spelling lesson. I don’t remember it all, but I remember 55 pounds of thistles. (Normally, by the way, I’m a much less creative homeschooler with much more traditional subjects that are not all integrated. That was a day, however, where we had to take advantage of the softer ground, and it just all worked with their math levels.)
I used to throw all the thistles in the trash because I was afraid of putting them in the compost. I would also drown them in buckets of water and make a weed tea out of them, which is also really good for plants. Now I’ve decided that they’re allowed in the compost as long as I’m careful about seed heads, and they really are a great source of nitrogen and minerals.
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Post by woodeye on Aug 19, 2022 1:43:26 GMT -6
chrysanthemum . That's a great story! I noticed quite some time ago that you must be a teacher. Your kids won't forget that lesson. At least when the thistles come back, probably next year, you have taught me what to do with the things, and I won't forget it either...
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