Compost question.

I was told that I shouldn't put pine needles in my compost pile. Is this true? My husband said he read that it doesn't break down like the straw. We have lots of pine trees and I would really like to use them. Your input would be really appreciated.
Thanks-Lynda

The best thing would be to mix them up with other vegetable matter before adding to the compost heap. Some people chop them up first - also layering them in your bin/pile will help them decompose quicker. Wish I had a few pine needles - I would use them as mulch.
Hope this helps :-))

Thank you Roseimp for the info. Always wanted to go to your country, it looks so beautiful.
Lynda

It is beautiful Lynda - but very wet lol

Alll things that once lived will rot....each in its own time. When completely converged into compost we have one of nature's best soil conditioners or amendments.

Straw and soft grasses rot the fastest. Plant material from evergreen plants have more natural waxes that cause them to break down very slowly. They do make better mulches but given time they will rot just the same as anything else. The nut trees also decompose more slowly that most other trees.

Helping all to decompose faster will be any kind of manure added to the compost piles, a bit of native soil and such other needs to adjust the PH to 6.5 -7.2 will all help. Black strap molasses (cattle grade) will feed your micro herd or biological army leading to complete conversion of the pile to compost as quickly as possible. An effective pile needs to be aproximately four X four X four feet in order to perform to your pleasure. Smaller piles and containers are more difficult to manage and may not work properly without the use of expensive commercial boosters.

A cover crop planted in the fall and tilled under in the spring provides a whole lot of natural goodness to anyone's gardens. These cover crops are called green manure crops and are indeed very much valuable to the soil building process.

docgipe : if possible, (and not too time consuming) could you provide some links? It would make for an interesting read & be very helpful.

Thanx

I just gave you all of the simple basics. Anything Google will lead you to may serve to confuse the simple basics. While you are achieving the simple basic skills would be more than ample time to search the web using any key word or words I have used.

In time you might tweek the basics a little but all rotted formerly living material converges to finished compost given enough time. It's really that simple.

docgipe, Thank you for the information!

the true "farmers" around here have relied on composting to succeed in their endeavors. It is better for their cattle. It is better for their gardening efforts, family etc.

I get a "rash" when I see things in the garbage can that should have been composted,

That is why the one container smaller than the main compost pile is right by our back door from the kitchen. We only put kichen waste in this container and a bit of native soil to provide the biological players to keep the smell down. At any time we need more space here in the smaller unit we simply take half or a little more out to the larger piles where they will work better at anytime during the year. We get nearly all kitchen waste into our smaller container and let it work in that container. Sometimes we get it to finished compost but most often the larger piles out near the garden get the job of finishing it.

I use every bit of waste from the kitchen apart from meat, fish and cooked products. I've got a couple of dogs and cats which polish those off lol. I also use some cardboard and paper but it needs to be wetted first before layering with vegetable matter. I empty my small container every other day or so but can't use any soil for mixing because what liitle soil I have is waterlogged. Most of my compost goes into containers and raised beds.

Can composting be as easy as putting the spent annuals and clipping in a corner of the yard without adding anything? I am in the middle of one of my yard cleanups right now, and I really do hate to put everything in bags for the county to take away, but I don't believe that I have the discipline to get a composter and turn if regularly. If I could just leave it in a pile, that would work for me. I seriously doubt that I would ever turn it, but I am willing to let it decompose on its on. It doesn't matter that it would take longer.

The area that I am considering isn't sunny. It's a shady wooded area behind my azaelas, so the pile would be out of sight. I am not considering using food scraps so it shouldn't attract small rodents - hopefully. This would just be yard waste.

Yes but there is a big but............When you do not include the basics you will not have near the value of a managed pile. You do not need a commercial composter. Every once living thing will eventually rot. That rotten material may not be compost by today's terms but it will be good for your soil. Nature simply drops her leaves and twigs. They rot where they fall.

You can dump fallen leaves back there, too. They will mix with the trimmings and you won't have to turn anything. In a year or two you'll have something usable.

I drilled holes in the side of my rolling Rubbermaid trash barrels, and have been successfully using them for compost bins for several years. I never turn them---I do sort of layer using green garden waste, some kitchen waste, shredded newspaper, and (the secret ingredient) bunny poo. I get marvelous compost in about 6 months wetting them down occasionally during the dry season here. I have 4 barrels that I rotate. They take a little storage space, but almost no work. When I need compost, I roll the most-finished barrel out to the place where I need it, dump it and start over.

I am often told....but I can not find or use manures. For some this may be a reasonable statement..........however most can find and use some manures. Trace minerals are available in neary all organic source web sites. Low number organic fertilizers are everywhere now and can be used directly in the gardens or compost efforts. Half a five gallon bucket full of any manure will greatly enhance your compost or small bed when applied in the end of your growing season. A plastic bag tied shut prevents odor transfering to your automobile trunk of van's interior. I do this often to get the little bit I need to make compost and then the teas from the finished compost. A single shovel full of completely finished compost in a barrel full of water left to soak and mature for a month is far better than a straight manure tea but both are good practices. Simply stirr and keep the barrel covered with a garbage bag to prevent skeeters from moving into your water source.

Leaves and garden waste are excellent diversity in all piles or directly returned to the soil by light tilling. Mulches of any plant material is excellent management. A bale of hay or straw as well as processed plant material is widely available. Small additions directly added and tilled lightly in the top few inches is much better than nothing.

When potting plant mediums are used just a little good soil and finished compost will improve any commercial medium. Try to use an organic potting medium. Using coir is a biological support to potting mediums as compaired to peat moss. Coir is sustainable material where many feel that peat moss is not. Largely this may be true of peat moss based mediums.

As to tilled in weeds...........well anywhere you do it before seed set is an excellent practice. In fact this simply helps the rotting process in a controlled way to return the organic matter to the soil rather than pulling the weeds and working to create compost. Reasonable small amounts really do help your soil immediately as the material is converged by the rotting and biological process.

There is no doubt that finished compost is excellent but it does involve time and energy on our parts.

If you are managing small beds of flowers a very light application of grass clippings, straw, or even ground wood will do wonders. The weeds that do appear will be easier to pull while the mulch will reduce the weed germination in the top half inch or so of the soil. Very light applications will be consumed by rotting and need to be kept up by adding a little more as the season continues. This is also true of potted plants.

In the house a light sand mulch on your potted plants will stop fungus gnats from emerging and serve to break the cycle of their lives. Several organic ready made sprays are labeled to to break the cycle and clean them up too. One way or another those sprays are oil and soap therefore I use Neem Oil and Saffers Soap which I use outside as well.

I see a lot of our DG members making comments that indicate they are trying to lean into the organic or healthy soil movement. This rambling of mine may help a little.

I can find manure but getting it trasported is another matter. Even if the manure is free transportation costs are high enough to put anyone off getting some. I have discoverd guano and use that instead. it's pretty good stuff.

I assume you mean Bat Guano. If that is the true rest assured it is very good. So good in fact that two tablespoons full in a gallon of water makes a very good tea. If you are gathering the guano please use a dust mask to prevent inhaling the dust while gathering it. It should be stored dry.

If only using Bat Guano I would not use more than fifty pounds on one thousand square feet of garden soil placed in the spring. This following fall prep using some other fertilizer and leaves followed by a cover crop will surely improve the patch. Of great importance is trace minerals being added at the rate of twenty pounds per the same size patch per year.

Hey, you would have to be extremely clever to harvest bat guano here doc LOL. Bats and their habitats are protected here. I get guano from an organic source in powdered form and yes, it is very strong but almost completely odourless. I only use it sparingly and it lasts a long time - a bit like organic slow release feed. I mix it in compost to give young plants a bit of a boost and also use it as a liquid feed for fruiting plants such as tomatoes and peppers. I do also use an organic vegetable liquid feed alternatly - just in case I miss out on any trace elements.
:-)) Rosie

Well Rosie...........It is nice to know Irland has one darn good gardener. I'll bet you a big cup of coffee a touch of kelp either meal or dehydrated would put a dandy element of the sea with all its trace minerals and growth stimulant factors to give you one of the best patches in Ireland.

There's seaweed in my organic liquid feed doc. 20 odd years ago when I used to garden near the coast in Sussex UK it was easy to get a few bags full of seaweed for the veggie plot. Now we are so far inland it's not so easy to get the fresh sort especially as my other half is disabled and we don't get to run around as we used to.
Kelp and other forms of seaweed are a great source of iodine - I took it many years ago for a thydoid condition. Rolled in oatmeal, fried in a little butter with a slice or two of bacon, it's yummy. It's also the most important ingredient in one of Wales's national dishes - lava bread. I lived in Wales for 16 years.
You won't get me with the coffee bribe LOL - I'm a tea drinker.

Rosie there is no good seaweed along most of our shores. Only our far Northeast shores have the best seaweed. Most that we use is imported in the dehydrated state. I keep a few pounds in my stock for house plants and garden alike. In the garden I add small amounts when I create aerobic tea. My potted plants inside and outside get some early in the season. Seaweed is considered a germination booster and contains growth stimulants for the developing plants.

The seaweed that washes up on most of our shores is of far less value and often contains elements that are not good for the soil. It is composed of plant life different from the well known kelp fields where the commercial meals are made and dehydration processing takes place.

doc or anyone else who is interested, if you would like to add your name to a forum on companion planting here http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/897993/ I would be very grateful. I'm particularly interested on plants which deter garden nasties such as aphids also plants which condition the soil to release nutrients for other plants to feast on.

Rosie

Rosie...........Thanks for the offer or invite. Over the years I have read and tried many suggested companion plantings. I never saw any significant differences if reasonable crop rotation was practiced.

I have tried several associate plantings of plants that reportedly do not like each other. The last was onions and leaf lettuce. My planting was a four row lettuce and onion planting. Both did fine with no noticable association stress that I could see.

I have bought several books on these subjects. They are intersting for sure but my plantings never showed me any amazing qualities that I could identify.

My last experiment was peppers and pumkins who reportedly do not like each other. I planted peppers with the pumpkin. Again there was no noticable stress or growing problems with either so called unfriendly associates.

Rather than go to the site where I'm sure benificial pairings will be nothing short of gospel I will respectively not go there to be a ney sayer.

My small patch has never been large enough to have wide rows with a legume growing between the rows to pump nitrogen to the plants. I have just always used a low number organic fertilizer like 4 - 2 - 4 or side dressing with meals. Modest mulching over the side dressings is as close as I ever came in my food plots to no-till.

I'm getting more interested in no-till methods as I have arthritis which is begining to become disabiling. I have to see a bone specialist soon and hope that he can give me a new joint BUT I want my new garden up and running for next spring. I have loads of compost - any suggestions?
PS Don't say container growing. Large containers are too expensive to buy and if you're not much of a builder and can't recognise a straight line to save your life - no chance LOL. Anyway I want to use the soil.

Real honest to goodness absolutely finished compost is about right when applied at half an inch over all. Leaves or other mulches lightly over this is one way to begin no till. There are all kinds of names for slight variations of permanent mulch systems.....all of which make sense.

Naturally the better soil you begin this on the faster you will see the gains professed and promised.

When I coach I say set a goal of organic content in the soil first above five percent. Amend the soil for a PH of 6.5 to 7.2 for most garden and flower plants. Accepting the losses from tilling it still the fastest way to get the organic content up there. Ten percent or more is not to much. Somewhere along the way when you are pleased with the total you can slip right into no till and this will then improve your conditions in all cases. At this point you can safely step back and say...."There you are worms. I've built a great home for you". "I'm tired and ready for you to do all the rest of the soil improvement". With a little yearly help they will continue to build while you watch.

But will I need to cover the soil with something first doc? I mean it's just grass at the moment and digging that is going to be a non starter for me. I've heard that there is a method of covering a plot with paper or cardboard and then covering with compost. Do you think this will work?

We always seem to wish for the easy route home. You will have to talk with them and follow their instructions.

Roseimp, are you talking about lasagna beds? I think it depends on what kind of grass you have. Lasagna will kill off a lot of the turf grasses that people use in the U.S., but not everything.

I layered a lot of my lot last fall to make new beds. I couldn't do a full lasagna because I couldn't build raised beds (we're on a graded lot). But I did lay down cardboard (pizza boxes) and newspaper, cover it with about 4-5 inches of shredded leaves, and then spread compost or peat on top. I had a ton of plants from a RU that needed to be planted and couldn't wait till spring, so I planted directly into it. Everything has done great. I was just out there today moving things and planting new stuff. Every spade turned over tons of big fat earthworms. It's not perfect yet, but it's sure a long way from the concrete/caliche that was out there just over a year ago.

There was bermuda grass growing out there last year, and some nut grass too. The newspaper and layering didn't get all of the bermuda, so I had to kill off most of it in the spring with vinegar. There's still a little out there. I just keep spraying, and one of these days it will die off. As for the nut grass... I'm considering dynamite.

LOL lady. My neighbour has the same intentions with marestail which is impossible to get rid of. Yes, I do think I'm talking about lasagne beds but I have no experience with them. Any tips would be really appreciated. I can't dig as I have dodgy knees and to have to do without fresh veg is not an option especially as my other half has just bought up a couple of seed companies - LOL only kidding. It just seems like he's bought a seed company or two with packets arriving on a daily basis and just like his books there are far too many. I make a lot of compost so that won't be a problem.
:-)) Rosie

Dynamite is more fun but the moles and worms don't like it. :)

Rosie, there's a whole thread, or forum, or something about lasagna gardening on here somewhere... let me see if I can find it. Sometimes people call it no-till. There are also some threads on the hosta forum.

This is a really good technique for organic gardeners. Basically, you're emulating nature's natural cold compost--you're just speeding it up. People use a lot of different ingredients: leaves, grass clippings, straw or hay. A mixture would probably be best, but I only had leaves, so that's what I used.

First, you should lay newspaper about 15-20 sheets thick. The paper kills the underlying grass/weeds, AND it lures earthworms, who eat the newspaper. Wet the paper down thoroughly, then add about 6 inches of leaves (they work best if they are shredded). Wet down the leaves, and then add 2-3 inches of compost or peat. The compost adds soil microorganisms that will help the worms decompose the leaves and paper.

Then just repeat the leaves/compost layers until you have the desired height. Your beds will ultimately settle 50% (more if your leaves aren't shredded). So make it double the height you want to end up with.

I couldn't raise my beds much, so my finished height was only about 8 inches. I also mentioned that I planted immediately. I just shoved my spade down through the newspaper layer, and the plants didn't mind at all. Then I kept it damp for a couple of weeks. I did all of this last December, and by July, my beds had settled. These were oak leaves, which compost VERY slowly for me, so I was pretty surprised at how fast the beds were finished. Right now they are easily workable about 12 inches deep.

Good stuff. Free if you have the leaves and compost, and fairly easy to do. The hardest part was shredding all those leaves.