It's me again with a question!!!

Hi, everyone. One more question and I may be on my way to good compost. I bought cow manure in bags, but am afraid to put it out. Do I put it in my compost now, or do I wait until spring and mix it in before I spread it?
I just don't want to waste it by puttting it out too soon or burn all my p0lants

I'd go ahead and put it in the compost bin, it'll just help you get everything premixed for spring. No lumps!

Thanks Pagancat, you've really been a big hlep to me. Now all I'm doing is walking around trying to find stuff to go in my compost piles

LOL ! Good for you. Don't forget about the use of paper as a brown - junk mail without the little plastic windows, newspapers, cereal & soda boxes - all torn up as small as you have the patience for.

Very glad I could help.

Hi Pagancat, Yes I spent my evening last night watching TV and tearing up cereal box, etc. If anyone had seen me they would have thought I'd lost my mind

'Cept me, who'd say you found it!

Of course, everyone already *knows* I'm a nut, so....

I have to laugh, my husband tears up any mail that has any personal information, even our names, because someone used our charge card numbers! I'm trying to convince him it would be even better to put it in a mulch pile, then no one will ever be able to tape it back together. We should push composting as a security program/mail privacy.

Cathy, I love that idea. My daughter saves alll hers and burns it. Guess who will be at her door when she's ready to burn it. It's okay, my family all think I've lost my mind anyway.
You're right about the security thing. Maybe we should call Homeland Security and tell them to just juse all that stuff they find and then shred and use it as compost . They could see it and gather up money to help social security

Lorraine, we may have just solved global warming AND national security. YOU go ahead and call them and let me know how they respond, lol. Who cares if your daughter thinks you are crazy, tell her it will save her so much time by not having to burn the stuff, you are doing it for HER benefit because you love her sooo much.

I don't thing you are a good mother if your children think you are sane, mine gave up long ago. I have fun with or without them! Wait until I tell them i'm making lasagna in the back yard, woo hoo, I can see the eyes rolling now. Grinning, Cathy

Pagancat, I mail my junk mail back to whoever sends a return postage paid envelope. They get everything I can stuff into it, even if I have to tape it shut. Supports the post office, and then someone has to have a job opening all of the letters, right? Boy, now I'm helping to keep people employed, I amaze myself! Laughing, Cathy

Well, you are right about kids. Mine see me walking out of the woods looking like Ma Barker or something, and just shake their heads.

I'll go ahead and call Homeland Security and Al Gore and tell them we have it all figured out and that our book will be out soon. Then a film, We'll get Micvhael Moore to do it, ha ha. Gee, we are all so smart, why doesn't anyone listen

Way too funny!!! ha-ha But really does make sense, doesn't it?

Ruby

Actually, it does. They want us to use only one sheet of toilet paper and not drive, so why doesn't it sound reasonable to make compost with your garbage. Of course, then the garbage men wouldn't have a job. Oh well, they could bag up all the compost. Just think what pretty yards we would have.!!

Since I've started composting, I have very little trash

So, are you saying that you tear up junk mail, like you should have long term care insurance, or you should have someone come and do your yard, etc.? Most of these things have color on them or are printed on colored paper. Therefore I put them into the mixed paper recycling bin. Also, many are shiny.

What are your thoughts on that? I know that in other threads people are concerned about color because except in some newspapers (where the ink may be soy based) the dyes are probably synthetic.

We shred only purely black and white papers for the compost.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

Hi Clementine - I don't shred the shiny or ones with too much colored ink. But I am not a stickler per se about what is shredded. That would definitely cut out folks who are using cereal boxes and soda boxes. Speaking of which. The large soda boxes, 12 packs and 24 packs are what we are using in lasagna gardening. We aren't sticklers about the dye on these either, we really haven't given it much thought.

I certainly don't want to go up against anyone who is dead set against using the colored dyes. I am not educated enough on the subject to do a good debate. I am just stating what I personally do. I have a very clear conscious and will continue to do as I have been doing.

Yes, the shredder and kitchen scraps sure does cut down on the amount of trash going to landfill.

Ruby

You know, I might be creating another toxic dump, Clementine, but I doubt it! >smile<

Seriously, I trust in the process of composting to deactivate most of the toxic substances in the paper and junk I'm using to speed my compost up. So far I've only had problems with one box that had something plastic applied to the colored picture, but everything else has turned into compost.

I don't know all of the science behind it all, but I do know that the earth has all of these chemicals and more already (coal, mercury, uranium, etc.)- the unhealthy part is often the concentrations and mixes. Part of my senior project in college was figuring out how to deal with both the ecological disaster of human sewage in water and I found out some about a related subject, super-fund sites. Might not sound related, but the approach I studied is called bio-remediation, the use of bacteria, and in some cases, plants, to remove or change the toxic substances to non-lethal ones. Instead of removing "bad" dirt and putting it in another place (polluting that new place) there are some trees that will take some of the chemicals up, often deactivation of the chemical occurs through that process. Sorry I'm being so vague about it, but of course, it's a pretty involved process with very select chemicals and plants, but the basic idea is that these chemicals change when subjected to natural processes.

Well, needless to say, gardeners work on a MUCH smaller, much less deadly level. But we're still working with bacterial processes, with natural breakdown and buffering of things that we have physical contact with every day. One of the reasons I try not use too many chemicals when I garden (bug spray, preemergents, etc.) - the fewer I put in, the less load on the earth and the plants to detoxify and breakdown all the junk.

I hope that makes more sense than I think it does ... I wish I could be a little more coherent, it's really all a theory on my part anyway, not hard facts. But that's what guides me.

Thanks to both of you, Pagancat and rubyw. I think I want to be more conservative and not put synthetic chemicals into the ground if I can help it. Like you say, Pagancat, it is too much of a load on the earth already.

the point here seems to be that there are two schools of thought, one that says that nature will detoxify and the other that maybe we don't want to test the system and therefore avoid adding materials or compounds about which we are not too sure. Does that make sense?

The land and plants can take care of more than we think.
I read an article about a company that was asked to take care of a diesel spill.
They spread mushroom, )I think Oyster mushroom) over the area, covered with a tarp and in a month the soil was pure again, and testing the mushrooms showed the had no toxin in them.
The more I learn about nature the smaller I feel.

Solarization with clear or black plastic, and detoxification with activated charcoal, are two methods for detoxification of soil. I am interested in
PCs method of using plants for detoxification. Some of course, are nitrogen fixers, and they do detoxifiy by increasing the health and fertility of the soil--such as the legumes, peas, beans, and leguminous shrubs.

Here is some info. on a patent for activated charcoal:
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5738623-description.html

O.K. I have done some quick searches on soil detoxification. What I found is that there is a movement in the U.S. to produce genetically modified plants that will clean oil and petroleum wastes from soil. But, in this reference, ordinary plants were found to clean up oil-contaiminated soil.

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_edpik/ls_2.htm

I also found references that compost itself, contains microbes that detoxify soil.

soil detoxification = activated charcoal + compost + tomatoes (don't eat them). Also, preliminary solarization with black or clear plastic (Not for petroleum toxicity - only to clear noxious weeds.)

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting the link Gloria.

Ruby

How much paper do you put in your compost. What percentage of your pile is paper. I'm always afraid I'm adding too much .

Hi Lorraine. For a while, when getting the daily newspaper, I put in a lot of shredded paper. Probably the majority of the compost was paper once upon a time. It has rotted very well. I guess the test as to whether you are adding too much paper, would be if it is breaking down and rotting, you aren't putting in too much. If it just continues to stay as paper and is very slow about breaking down, you may want to lessen the amount of paper for a while and put other things in.

I am not sure what the logistics are, but there is supposedly a formula for greens and browns. I believe that it works out to be 70% of one and 30% of the other. I will go and search and see if I can find the formula and post here. I need to close this message, because I am afraid of losing it. So, I shall return.

Ruby

Hoping to save Ruby some time, I had to look up the formula to remind myself the other day. The ratio is 25 to 1, brown 25, green 1. That means paper should be used in abundance! Just remember you'll have to still keep some kind of moisture going to keep it breaking down 'cause paper doesn't add any when you put it in like some other stuff does and you want your pile at least damp.

PC: I agree with you, as usual. I also think its important to water the area well before you put the cardboard/layered news paper down. People here have mentioned coffee grounds or blood meal under the cardboard to get things going.

Hey! Its raining in Alabama! We have been under severe drought conditions since spring. All of a sudden there are green weeds to throw in the compost pile! Now I just got to get out there and cut them down, and get them into the pile. And I just got a new paper shredder. What fun! Green weeds and shredded paper. And of course rabbit poop and timothy straw, thats the staple provided by Henry Rabbit.

Okay, Gloria - now you know I'll have to come up with something stupid!

>smile<

...

Hi, as far as colored carboard with the shiny fronts. Just get your thumbnail under the shiny part or colored part you don't want and pull that off. You will still have the cardboard you want, you're just missing that paper thin front. Make sense? Or am I the only one that obsessive?

Lorraine, every time you post I smile. Quit questioning your sanity, do what YOU want to do, make yourself happy, life is too short to worry. Smiling, Cathy

Okay Pagancat: Let's have it. I happen to know you have a horse. My bunny can't compete with that!

Thanks PC. Yeah, about the time I was going to post the information that I found, my hubby said, "It is time to go." I had to just ride over sixty miles to see a periodontist to suture a place in my bottom gum that was flapping around.

I am home now and checking out the boards. Yep, a person is to put in 25 to 30 times more Browns (straw, brown leaves, paper, sticks, sawdust) than Greens (manure, kitchen scraps, green leaves, grass clippings, coffee grounds.) I also just noticed that it seems that the Browns are all dry materials and the Greens would be considered wet in their nature.

Also, and I think I have this right, the Greens are rich in Nitrogen and the Browns rich in Carbon. So, the ideal is 25 parts carbon to every 1 part nitrogen. Of course, depending upon the season and other circumstances this ratio is not always met. This ration is just the ideal.

At the moment I believe that I have a lot of greens in my pile. It is a good thing that fall isn't too far off so that I can hopefully begin adding brown and crispy leaves or find another newspaper source.

Anyone feel free to correct me if any of this is incorrect. I am learning each and every day.

I just love dirt(y) talk. ha-ha

Ruby

Well, thank you Cathy, because I have now found a use for postage paid return envelopes. I am definitely going to begin mailing the junk back out again (as long as it doesn't contain my personal details). lol

You could send them some of the lovely offers you get....

Gloria, I have 6 horses. Unfortunately, most of the manure I get goes right back into my pastures .... especially as brown and dry as they are right now.

D'ya mind sending that rain up here when you're finished with it?

PC: I think the rain is headed your way as the hurricane season progresses, but it promises to be a dry fall. You are going to get either buckets and 70 mph winds, or nothing. We all need to learn to collect and conserve water.

Yeah, I got two rainbarrels and a (believe it or not) canoe, almost empty at this point........

Yeah, I got two rainbarrels and a (believe it or not) canoe, almost empty at this point........ but that doesn't take care of my pastures.

I also am trying to MAKE compost...I have a Mantis 2 bin one and they say 14 days and you'll have compost...not me!!!
I used a lot of fresh grass clippings, shredded newspaper, rooten veggies, coffee grounds, and even compost starter...my pile is only staying right about 100 degrees.
I go out and turn it at least 2 times a day...Anyone with advice ..my moisture was high so I added some hay or straw, I can't seem to get the right combo..
cindy

Getting compost, quickly, is a bit of science and a bit of luck.

There is a specific ratio of carbon adding material (browns) to nitrogen adding materials (greens). You're obviously aware of the need for moisture and it's correct level. So you get the ratio of browns (25) to greens (1). You mix them up and let the microbial action begin - adding oxygen by turning and keeping the moisture level even.

That's pretty much it, to my understanding.

My hubby built part two of our compost bin yesterday. That means that we can now begin a new batch. The older batch is pretty much ready to go. He came in at one point yesterday with about an 8 inch elelphant ear plant that had been growing there. ha-ha I asked later if he found anything else, because whenever I throw anything still alive in there, I wonder if the conditions are so that it will grow. ha-ha

Well, I am on my way out the door to see his handy work. I had so much going on yesterday that I never got out there to look.

Ruby

I had potatoes growing in mine and lots of them. Also 2 pumpkins from the pumpkins I put in last year. I pulled some of the potatoes out just to see and they were really nice. I just left most of them. I figured they would make good compost!!!

Well, now you know you're doing it right!