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Post by chrysanthemum on Nov 18, 2022 20:59:51 GMT -6
I still have one bucket of compost left from my finished batch. I’ve been using it to build up around leek plants.
My two compost bins continue to cook. We are regularly adding kitchen scraps to all those weed clippings we put in this fall. Each one also got a big boost of nitrogen when I put the sweet potato vines in there. I could tell it heated up again for a while. One of these days we plan to shovel the contents of one of the bins into the other because they are both below half full at this point, but it’s one of those jobs that we keep not getting to because it can wait. We don’t have a need for an empty bin. We just think it would heat up more to have the two half bins combined.
@frostyturnip, I missed having your contributions here this summer. I’d love to hear any thoughts you may have.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 22, 2023 16:23:10 GMT -6
Sometime fairly recently my husband shoveled the contents of one of our compost bins into the other. Then he put some shredded leaves in the empty bin, and we’ve been adding our kitchen scraps to that one to give it some nitrogen. Yesterday we topped that bin up with shredded leaves, added some alfalfa pellets, and water, and closed it up again to cook. We may need to add more water as it can take time to get it moist. Yesterday we spent a lot of time doing garden work (my husband added in some additional yard work while I watered the garden). I did a little top dressing with cottonseed meal, and I added cottonseed meal to all of my empty beds, and scratched it in just a bit. To the beds where I plan to plant the soonest, we also added our homemade compost from our tumbler. It wasn’t all finished, so we put some cage wire over our garden cart and did a coarse sifting of the compost to get out the largest materials. Some of those we returned to the other compost bin; others we just put in the corner of one of our large heaps where we piled shredded weeds last fall after our bins were full. After we had sifted and used all of the compost in the garden, we filled that bin, too, with layers of shredded leaves and alfalfa pellets, and watered it all in. We left a bit of room in there for kitchen scraps but not much. We may have to add more water to it as well, but I expect it to break down well once we get it moist. I don’t have pictures of the shredded leaves, but here are a couple of the beds where we added compost. We had one more load to go after this, so the larger bed got some additional compost, and some went to a third bed. I hope to be planting some Sugar Snap peas, brassicas, and beets in these in coming weeks.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 27, 2023 9:19:52 GMT -6
I’ve been tumbling the compost a bit this week as I’ve added kitchen scraps and a bit of water here and there. When we dump the scraps, we take our little stainless steel bucket to a rain tank and add a bit of water, swirl it to help dislodge scraps, and then dump it in a bin. I’ve noticed some heat as I’ve been doing that this week, but it wasn’t till this morning that I actually took a thermometer outside and measured temperatures. I was surprised to find that both bins were just about 120 degrees as they didn’t really feel that warm to me. Perhaps it was just that my hands were cold as I wasn’t wearing gloves, and it was still in the 30s outside.
I should mention that earlier this week I also added several scoops from the bottom of a bag of clean kitty litter. It’s the zeolite and bentonite granules, and I wanted to get them in to the compost as it cooks.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Jan 27, 2023 14:07:20 GMT -6
Good work, Chrys. Been turning compost around the weather the last week over here. Instant new garden beds. Hard work, though. Whew
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 27, 2023 19:42:50 GMT -6
But worth it, right, Frosty? Improving the soil is so satisfying. I get excited when I see my Austrian Winter Peas growing, and it’s not just the greenery during winter that’s thrilling. It’s the thought of chopping them and enriching the soil with them in the coming months that’s pretty exciting. I know that sounds a bit on the odd side, but I figure you get it.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Jan 28, 2023 16:21:57 GMT -6
Absolutely. Good compost is the energetic fertility that never stops, but only transfers. Way back when I was deciding on cover crops, I watched a video where a woman had a very thick patch of Austrian peas for compost. She was cutting the patch at grade across its width while rolling it up like a carpet. I wanted that. I got it. Keh Expensive seeds.
Impatient, I check on mine two days ago. I dug up a couple of seeds. They haven’t popped yet, but they put on 4 inch roots. Tough stuff.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jan 28, 2023 22:04:14 GMT -6
4 inch roots? That’s awesome!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 2, 2023 10:47:18 GMT -6
Our compost bins got emptied out in Texas. The new owners of the house and gardens got some lovely compost added to the empty lettuce bed. We cleaned out the bins and then stuffed them full of lightweight garden stuff like frost cloth and shade cloth and some empty planters that I wanted to bring. Just this morning I found places to put that stuff in my mother’s shed, and I started the work of filling the one of compost bins back up. My mother has a number of pretty old redbud trees around her driveway. Some of the branches are pretty low growing, and they were low enough to hit even our small car, so we pruned some of them back the other day. This morning I pulled leaves and seed pods off the prunings and put them in the bin. There’s a lot more room that needs to be filled before it really starts to cook. My plan is to do some mowing with the push mower that we brought with us and add the mulched materials to the bins as I can.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 2, 2023 13:17:03 GMT -6
I did the next additions after lunch today. We had corn on the cob with our lunch, so I broke the cobs up and added them. Then my mother had lots of grass growing in and around her strawberry patch, so she wanted me to mow that. The grass was tall and thick, and several batches of that pretty much filled the bin. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much nitrogen material at one time before. As a last step, I scooped just a bit off the top of my mom’s fresh compost bin which has soldier fly larvae in it to let them get a start digesting all this fresh material. I’m a little worried that it will be too much nitrogen, but there are carbon materials mixed in, so we’ll see how it progresses. I know where I can get carbon if I need to if it starts turning slimy and stinky.
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Compost
Aug 10, 2023 10:48:02 GMT -6
Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 10, 2023 10:48:02 GMT -6
That is a beautiful compost pile!
I always throw a couple of shovels full of topsoil on top of my clippings, to inoculate them with insects, worms, and needed bacteria. I didn't use to, but after I started that, I noticed the compost broke down faster in those places.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 11, 2023 5:51:06 GMT -6
That compost full of shredded materials is breaking down nicely. It’s amazing how fast is can happen.
I have a second bin which I filled later from weeds and spent plants that my mother was pulling from her garden. She would make the piles, and I would haul them out to the tumbler. I didn’t inoculate it from her existing compost pile, but we did leave several clumps of soil on the root balls to serve that purpose. I broke up large stalks and stems, but I’m thinking that since the plants weren’t mulched, things in there aren’t working nearly so fast.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 16, 2023 5:59:54 GMT -6
I decided that the first of the two compost tumblers, the one that had mostly shredded materials in it, needed the addition of some more brown/carbon materials. I raked up a couple of wheelbarrows full of grass my mom had mowed and let dry in her old pasture, and I tumbled that in a couple of days ago. The compost is still producing lots of heat and breaking down nicely. I think the shredding sped things up immensely.
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james
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by james on Jan 27, 2024 9:48:09 GMT -6
You can make your own composter without too much work. I just buy some fairly strong wire fencing and create a circular container. I just cut the fencing to the right length for a 4 foot diameter container and wire the two ends together. Then I fill it with materials that can be composted which for me is mainly leaves collected in the fall and weeds from the garden as well as refuge from cleaning up the garden and the yard. I don't put very many kitchen scraps in my bin because they do attract pests. We have a city service that picks up our compostable stuff and that is where I put most of the kitchen scrapes. If you do a good job of mixing in the scraps with other compostable stuff in your bin and manage the bin very well you might not have too much trouble with pests.
I don't do very much to manage my bin. I just let the stuff break down on it's own and once a year remove the stuff in it that has broken down to use as compost in my garden. There might be some that still isn't decomposed after a year and I just leave that in the bin. In a dry year I might add some water to the pile to speed up the break down.
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Post by rdback on Jan 28, 2024 9:13:19 GMT -6
^-- This --^
In fact, this is so close to what I do, we could be related james, lol.
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james
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by james on Feb 3, 2024 7:46:50 GMT -6
"Great minds think alike" ha ha! Some of what I do is more or less well know so that is probably why what you do is similar to what I do. I have developed my own version of how to do it that allows me to make compost without too much trouble and I suppose you have done the same.
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