Mt Compost

I started composting 2 years ago. I have been adding leaves to my gardens for years. I grow mainly tropical plants and I use leaves to mulch them up for winter. This way I am able to leave other wise temperate plants in the ground. Each spring I spread the leaves around to make a 2 to 4 inch layer and then add a thin layer of mulch to keep out the weeds. Over the last two years I have been getting more and more leaves. It seems my sign out by the road is working and this year it seems to be working almost to well.
I have been contacted by 5 commercial leaf removing companies and they are all now dumping leaves on a regular basis not to mention the home owners who are dumping bags of leaves daily. I am moving the leaves with a bob cat and have found that even with the bob cat this has become a large task. I spent 4 hours moving load after load onto my compost pile. Currently my pile has around 20 wheel barrow loads of old compost in it as well as 48 wheel barrow loads of green leaf type compost. Now I feel I am getting far to many leaves. It is not sense I have so much brown leaves in the mix. I have been trying to find a source for more green type substance but with no luck. Last year I was able to add around 4 - 10 gallon buckets of coffee a week but this year I have not been able to add any. I am looking to start adding coffee again. Is their anything else I could add to get it hot again?

Here is a pic of my current pile. I have a 20 foot tall pile of wood chips but I am not sure I will mix many of them up with my leaves. I also have a pile of leaves around front that may double this current pile. Any suggestions would be great. I have thought about adding some pure nitrogen?

Here is a my leaves that have been getting dumped up front. I am getting tons each day. Cleared this out no more than a week ago and now have it completely full again. It seems it takes around 50 bob cat loads to move this each bob cat load is 6 wheel barrow loads. I am sure I am going to have to much brown in my mix this year. I am flipping the pile every week.

Can you get any of the high-nitrogen materials on this list?

http://compost.css.cornell.edu/OnFarmHandbook/apa.taba1.html

Manure would be a great way to heat up your pile, and I've heard Louisville has a horse or two. :)

http://louisville.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=manure

This message was edited Dec 2, 2008 4:40 AM

bwilliams I don't know if Churchill gives away manure or not but Puddle has a great idea. If not I'm sure there are some stables in J-town or somewhere close but I'd check around. The leaves WILL decompose on their own it will just take a couple of years to do it. I had a pile that laid dormant for 3-4 years in the shade and last year I picked then up with a tractor and the dirt on the bottom was incredibly rich.

Doug

The leaves will also decompose in the plastic bags they are in all by themselves, one year will be sufficient. Off course it is kind of ugly but it works.
Josephine.

The leaves from last season turned to really good dirt but last season I had a lot of coffee grounds. The ideas you all have shared will help out a lot. I will try to save more scraps of food to add to the mix. I have a few sources for cow manure the biggest problem is have to load and unload it. It seems I can get the wood chips and leaves all dropped off with no problem but it is much harder to get nitrogen rich stuff dropped off other than a few bags of chopped up grass.

I will show a few pics later of our wood chip pile which is huge.

We also have a wood burning furnace to heat our greenhouses. I am trying to figure out what to do with ash? Anyone have any ideas of a good use. My pile is getting 4 feet tall or more which is quite amazing for how much wood we burned over the years. I have noticed on some of the older ash that moss is starting to grow on it.

Ohhhh, ashes and compost are a very rich topic.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=v92&q=site%3Adavesgarden.com%2Fcommunity%2Fforums+composting+ashes&btnG=Search
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/search.php?q=composting+ashes&Search=Search

Basically, a little dab'll do ya.

This message was edited Dec 2, 2008 10:23 PM

I know I am probably in the wrong place but will ask just in case someone here knows the answer. I have seen on some of the forums that people use an alfalfa pellets in their garden. I googled the pellets and all that came up was a wormer for horses . This surely can't be what they are talking about is it ?

Nope - not horse wormer. Compressed alfalfa into pellet form is used as horse feed or the smaller pellets for rabbits, etc..

Your guess is correct. This is what they meant instead:

http://www.planetnatural.com/site/alfalfa-pellets.html

Well I figured thats probably what it was but when I googled it that was what came up that it was horse wormer LOL , so that really threw me . Thought maybe I didn't know as much as I thought LOL. I from the country but never dealt with Horses so I thought OK! Makes me look like a total dummy!

We get manure from a friend with horses. They shovel it into a pile outside. We shovel it into our truck, which has a rollout device, and then roll it out into a pile at home. I've often thought that it would make more sense to purchase a trailer of some sort with sides on it and have them dump the horse manure into in the first place. We could just then transport the trailer to our house when it gets full and then return it to be filled up again. It seems that everyone I know with horses wants to get rid of the manure. If you made an arrangement with several different people/organizations, might that be a possibility for you?

Been looking for horse maure. I found a few places but most are a good distance from me. I hope to find a place a bit closer by that will load it rather than me shoveling it onto a truck.
I have been collecting all the waisted food and coffee grounds from the house to put in the pile. This should help things out a bit. I also have pure nitrogen I will be spreading over the pile to help heat it up. All the comments have been good and has gotten me looking around more for green compost. Thanks.

Man made nitrogen will load the pile with salts and harm or kill the very biology you are trying to build for soil building in your gardens.

Brian, you can always add your own, um, used beer to the pile. It's very high in nitrogen, and provides a very eco-friendly excuse for drinking.

I like that line of thinking PPirate!!!!

Doug

Running it through your kidneys first will make it an even better nitrogen product!

That's why I called it used beer. :)

This should be interesting. I have to throw wood on the boilers nightly. I now see how I will be marking my compost piles. I just don't think I will be letting the workers known next spring when they are digging through it and working with it LOL.

Yes we gardeners know there is more than one place in the patch to take a pea. They can take away my two hole shanty but they can't get to my pea pot. :)

Let's just be glad we're guys. It'd be a lot more difficult to discreetly boost the nitrogen in a compost pile if we had no Y chromosome.

Hey there lads............let's not get to high on the urine. It is void of tons of goodies one can get with a little manure being added to the piles. In the absence of manure a shovel full of garden soil into your compost piles will do wonders with the rest of the biological needs. Trace minerals all 65 or more of them need to be added every year or so and the pile gets even better with a great mixture of plant material including the weeds I hear about being tossed to trash. Ten to one up to twenty to one browns to greens ballance rounds out the basic needs.

I took the time to say this because the lurker to speaker ratio is quite high on all web sites. Some may not understand we were jolking a tad over the last few posts in this thread.

Dear folks,

I could search all threads in this forum if the question has been asked but am a bit pressed for time...

Can I use shredded paper for composting if it has been printed with a laser printer or because the toner is toxic this will prevent decomposition or add dangerous substances to my soil?

Martin

I do not worry about anything on paper at this time. The inks have nearly all been changed to eco friendly materials. If per chance you would get a little older ink the amount would be very small. This used to be a major concern but is no more.....for the most part. I use shreaded paper all the time.

I was talking about toner, which is toxic, not ink...

When it comes to the potential dangers of laser printer toner in compost, the jury appears to be out.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/verm/msg092208042887.html

Nobody in that thread seems to have conclusive proof one way or the other, but I think the consensus favors composting standard office paper with laser printer toner on it.

I let the worms vote on the toner question. I see nothing to be concerned with in the very small amounts in question. On the other hand I have seen worms exit a pile that had just a trace of man made nitrogen in the pile. Exit might mean killed too because I do not run a science lab here. Well an elementary one maybe. Anyway worms there and healthy it is good or OK. Worms not there when they should be is a sure fire give-a-way that something is amiss.

Anecdotal evidence here: I have been using shredded paper from my office for the past 2 years, in my orchard & compost piles. The worms are plentiful & appear to be thriving, as do all that is growing on my property.

My philosophy is to do all I can (within reason) to improve the soil without harm. There is always a balance to be maintained. Example: I have access to manure & leaves, but no way to get them to my property. I live in an area of excessive rain which allows me to grow a very large lawn, much to the chagrin of some. But the grass is a "crop", and provides necessary compostible material, costing me time, only. The balancing act is something each of us must consider, and many times the cost, availablity & access to materials will be determining factors.
I know that I am putting that shredded paper to good use, and the visual evidence points to healthier conditions, with good microbial action.
I weighed the toner situation, and decided this fell into the category of the positives outweighing the negatives. I am not certain of the percentage of toner residue on this paper, or its half-life. Similar thoughts on the chemicals used in the processing of coffee beans (free coffee grounds available), and the manure (residual from vaccinations) I am able to get on occasion. I cannot obtain everything with the purity level I would prefer, but endeavour to do the best I can with what I've got.

I think you are a smart girl Katye.
Josephine.

Ditto.....me too. Sometimes we can be nit picking while we should be just hauling another load of soil improving goodies to our lands. Oops..........I think I just saw a worm wink at me. :)