Things I Have Learned About Composting

[shoppintractors]

<font color="blue"> Now for a question, what does one do if mushrooms start on the pile? Turn 'em in and cook em? Pick 'em out? Never composted... Yet... </font>

If mushrooms start to grow in your compost pile it means your past due to flip the pile. I would just blend them into the pile. The heat should destroy the spores.

Don

 

[DaveNay]

I have learned that you will never have a lack of material for the compost heap when you have 16 horses! Luckily, our farm has a large cement area that was the feed lot when it was a cattle operation. This makes for a very easy time moving and turning the pile periodically. What amazes me is how much of the marterial breaks down. I can stack the pile about 12' high with my FEL, and within only a few weeks, it is down to about 6'-8' tall. That is when I usually restack it, and mix it up.

Dave

 

[RalphVa]

My cabinet guy only uses pure lumber.

Sawdust is also good stuff to put on muddy spots. Unless you get a hard rain right away, it'll kinda blend it and glue itself to the top. A hard rain right away will wash it away.

Ralph

 

[rambler]

Here on the farm cornstalks have that problem - they take a lot of N out of the soil for a year in decomposing, before adding anything back to the soil in future years.

Greg, I'm not sure I understand your question about grass clippings with fertilizer? What part of this worries you? Fertilizer is just N, P, & K which your plants need.

Now, if your neighbors spray for weeds, a few of those chemicals can last 3 months before breaking down. I've heard of a very rare case where a special weed killer didn't break down totally in 12 months & harmed some very fussy specialty plants, but that is not likely a problem with the 24D used on a lawn. Also that was not composted, but a straw multch. Normally these weed killers will break down in the time it takes to compost.

--->Paul

 

[RalphVa]

He's probably worried about that Weed & Feed fertilizer stuff that so many uneducated home owners use. That stuff is nasty: kills everything in sight except grass.

Ralph

 

[GregJ]

Rambler & Ralph,
I confess to ignorance about pesticides and fertizers. I really don't use them, so I don't know anything about them. The reality is that 99% of my compost is going into our landscaping. Very little will be used for our vegie garden, so I probably am being overcautious. I just look at their yard and see their flower beds looking like a "dead zone" with no weeds and their lawn doesn't have all the beautiful dandelions that ours does. I just want to keep my compost as safe as possible. If the life cycle is over during a composting period, I guess I don't have anything to worry about. Ralph, you mention "Weed&Feed". What is the life cycle of that. Does it break down in compost. Thanks for the feedback.

Greg

 

[RalphVa]

Not sure what the life cycle of the "weed & feed" components are. Probably a lot of it is 2-4D or related stuff. I'd read a label to find out about it if I suspected any of the grass had this applied.

I applied some fert with "weed & feed" in it once in my life. Had a few veggies planted in sunny spots around the perimeters of my grass. The stuff killed all the veggies.

Excess of stuff like Roundup (glyphosate) gets tied up in the soil. Excesses don't harm the plants. Only that which hits growing green plants does its work.

Ralph

 

[kemartin3]

If I may throw in another question please. We have huge piles of tree parts (mixed hardwoods and softwoods) where the prior owner cleared to create more pasture. They took the big lumber and pushed the rest of it into piles. Probably been 3-5 years ago. If chipped up, would this material still decompose correctly in a compost pile? Or would it be too dry by now to break down in a reasonable timeframe? I don't have much new (wetter) material to mix in with it, though I can probably get a supply of used hay/straw (used for horses/cows) if needed.

Thanks,
Kevin

 

[shoppintractors]

<font color="blue">If chipped up, would this material still decompose correctly in a compost pile? Or would it be too dry by now to break down in a reasonable timeframe? </font>

If I may interject. Dry wood will chip much better than 'green' wood. The dry wood will shatter where the green, wetter wood will not. It has the potential to break down faster because the pieces will most likely be smaller with more surface area exposed to the elements.

Don

 

[bebster]

Kevin, I have the same situation, and to help the wood chips along, I have them in a pile next to my compost pile. They are slowly decomposing. But I take other material when I get it, such as household organic scraps, and throw that on my compost pile, and then shovel on a layer of the wood chips. I think the blend will make good compost, but it's too early to tell