School me on Composting.

[WayneB]

No problem, I found it interesting.

I used to work for a landscaper who was building raised bed gardens for people using composted sewerage sludge. MAYBE it was safe, but the thought curdles my stomach.

I know people around here with huge mounds of horse manure, several years old; I've been talking to them about piling and composting it.
(Gotta be something wrong with someone who finds talk about S***, "interesting."

Well this spring I moved about 55 yards of composted cow manure. It had been in the pile for about three years so it was really nice stuff. Using two tractors a dumping trailer and my pickup to pull it we moved the stuff in about four days, this includes spreading it on all of the gardens.

Little bit early to see what difference it will make in the gardens, but I do know we also added the stuff to the flower gardens and things there are really growing quickly, is it the stuff or warm weather (?)

If it is really old horse manure it will be okay stuff to work with. We have a bunch of that in an upper field, but the one thing I found is that there was a bunch of wood shavings in it and very difficult to compost properly. But, if you have space it is certainly worth hauling it home. A local guy had two horses and was hauling all of his manure up into the pile for more than two years so it is rather large. Haven’t really figured out what we want to do with it. Pumpkins seem to grow pretty good on the pile!

 

[nobull1]

We make about 100 tons of cow manure in six months, while the animals are barned. Our manure is all beef so it is solid as opposed to the dairy slurry. We use a little sawdust and as well some hay gets mixed(not on purpose). During the Spring people take our six month old manure and pile it along side of their garden. They plant some squash seeds and end up with great squash and leaves that cover over the pile to help stop weeds from getting a start. The following year you can apply this to your garden and start over. Some of our customers also use it as an accelerator for their compost piles with good results. The horse manure in our experience has a lot of seeds that are not processed and end up in the manure and take a long time to decompose. The cows are ruminants with four stomachs and appear to have a more refined product from the start. If I was trying to get a compost pile to work I would find a local ruminant farmer and get a small amount of manure to add on a regular basis to help start and keep the pile working.
The attached picture is 20% of what we make a year. This is our Spring manure which is why it has so much hay in it.

 

[plowking]

No problem, I found it interesting.

I used to work for a landscaper who was building raised bed gardens for people using composted sewerage sludge. MAYBE it was safe, but the thought curdles my stomach.

Septic or sludge from treatment plants is handled differently in different state. There used to be spreading in NH of sludge, but treatment plants that have commercial users as well as households can contain heavy metals, which can be bad for humans and fields that have metals from sewage sludge aren't normally allowed for crops for human consumption. Some treatment plants will haul their sludge to approved landfills, which is ok, until the landfill is full. Septic tanks can contain metals, especially if the house is on well water and the well has iron or maganese, but I don't know if these are classified as heavy metals. plowking

 

[Jaybr]

OK, so the dog manure has pathogens in it, but will it harm my lawn or improve the clay soil?

Myself, my wife, and my son (18) deal with the raw manure all the time, cleaning kennels, feeding the dogs, etc. We are going to be exposed to the pathogens anyway, and I'm sure their worse in the fresh manure than they would be after composting.

Right now I just dump it in a pile in a remote section of the property. Also have a bunch of excess wood chips from the chipper, which will take a very long time to decompose in piles on their own. Would mixing the two eventually provide a compost that would help richen the clay soil in the yard?

 

[czechsonofagun]

This year I divided the vegetable patch in two. One half has stuff growing in it and the other one we use to dump horse manure on. I spread it out flat, no piles and the sun and rain will take care of it fast. (also those stupid dogs go there for a snack) Every 3 weeks or so I use midbuster to turn the dirt, kill all what started to grow and mix it with the manure. After that I use landscaping rake to smooth it out.
The plan is to use this half for veggies next year and the other one for manure.

 

[PBinWA]

OK, so the dog manure has pathogens in it, but will it harm my lawn or improve the clay soil?

Myself, my wife, and my son (18) deal with the raw manure all the time, cleaning kennels, feeding the dogs, etc. We are going to be exposed to the pathogens anyway, and I'm sure their worse in the fresh manure than they would be after composting.

Right now I just dump it in a pile in a remote section of the property. Also have a bunch of excess wood chips from the chipper, which will take a very long time to decompose in piles on their own. Would mixing the two eventually provide a compost that would help richen the clay soil in the yard?

Yup - works fine. If you can turn it and aerate it periodically it will compost faster.

Just don't use it in your vegetable garden.

You can compost just about anything. I compost shredded junkmail, cooking oil, dead animals, basically anything that isn't metal or plastic. I just don't use that compost in my vegetable garden. I usually use it to fill holes as it is stinkier than regular "garden grade" compost and takes forever to break down.

My attitude is that it reduces my garbage can load significantly and it is certainly not a "toxic" product - just not ideal for growing vegetables.

 

[txdon]

I've heard guys on this board mention alot of different compostable items that use up nitrogen, but I haven't heard anything yet that adds nitrogen. What do you add to your compost pile to add back in the nitrogent that the wood chips, green grass clippings, and everything else are taking away?

Cotton seed meal adds nitrogen to the compost pile. You can get it at most feed stores. Works great!

 

[charlz]

I've heard guys on this board mention alot of different compostable items that use up nitrogen, but I haven't heard anything yet that adds nitrogen. What do you add to your compost pile to add back in the nitrogent that the wood chips, green grass clippings, and everything else are taking away?

The greens are the nitrogen. Browns are the carbon. Some greens are more 'green' and some browns are more 'brown'. Food scraps, grass clippings etc. are high in nitrogen. Saw dust/wood chips are very high in carbon. Generally you always have more of one or the other than you need for an 'ideal' pile. In the fall I have tons of leaves and not much grass, all summer long I have tons of grass and few browns.

Keeping it moist is critical as is turning it on a periodic basis to mix it up and introduce oxygen.

I use the 'pallet bin' method which helps with the airflow. You tie 4 pallets together to form a bin and start loading in your compostables. I have found three of these bins in a row work best (side pallets are shared). I tie them together with old baling twine and two of the bins have 'hinges' so I can swing the 'front door' pallet out of the way to work the pile, the last bin has no 'door' as the pile is usually pretty small and manageable. The first bin I load up with grass, old horse poop, leaves etc. till it is heaping and make sure to give it a good soaking with the hose as it goes in. I let it 'cook down' until its down half way then reload it (I also have a lot of grass to deal with so your mileage may vary). Once it reaches close to the half way point again I flip it into the bin next to it, giving it a good soaking again. Once it has been in that bin and cooked down a bit more I move it to the last bin. After the last bin it goes in the 'done' pile. This whole process can take a few months depending on how fast things move. Drying out will stop a compost pile in a heartbeat so every few days I 'fluff' the top with a fork and give it a good soaking. I find the corners dry out fast and do not do much so I make sure that material ends up in the middle of the pile when I flip between bins.

 

[hillfarm]

Regarding compost, can I plant directly in it, or is it important to turn it into the soil? I ask because I tilled a small raised garden plot, built the walls, and now, backasswards, added a couple inches of compost. Is it important to dig it in to a certain depth or can I just rake it in a little or leave it on top?

 

[AlanB]

My wife owns a lawncare landscaping business.

They pull a fair amount of "weeds" of all sorts.

The discussion centered yesterday around do you put that in the compost pile or not?

Her view, would not want weeds, or other undesireables in there, as that much more chance to transfer them to the garden etc. later.

My view, they are organic matter, will get chopped, buried, rotted etc, and will have weeds growing in our compost anyway if we do not turn etc. it regularly, it is just that much more "bulk" to me.

Thoughts?