ok, what am i doing wrong?

oh - guess I didn't read the giant word Florida on there! LOL

well, I'm trying the wired in piles next. this black bin is worthless, I'm thinking.

Try tossing in some alfalfa. I threw some in on Sunday evening, along with some water, and stirred everything well. Today, when I opened my biostack and began moving the top layer, the layer underneath produced steam, heat, and the material was white, like ash produced from a fire. The more that I moved the compost, the most ashlike pieces I saw throughout. I don't have a thermometer, but it was hotter than I have seen it.

I read somewhere that alfalfa is a great accelerator.

Hi. I'm relatively new to composting too, and two books I've found super useful to help me understand what it is I'm trying to make happen and how to tweak it to suit what I've got to work with, is:

Humanure by Joseph Jenkins-- a book with a website and a rabid following. Even if you never intend on using what's in this book, the techhie stuff in it and the understanding of it is invaluable

and...

the Complete Compost Gardening Guide (authors Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin

This book has recipes for hot composts, long slow cool ones, which you want for what situations, explanations, pep talks for newbies, cautions, chin chucks and outrageous suggestions that truly work. Read this book, and you'll know what you're doing and why, and bins full of half-rotted compost with weeds and stems sticking out of it will no longer trouble you (hint: everybody has that. It's what they invented compost sifters for).

Have fun and remember: everything & everybody rots, you couldn't stop it if you tried. But educate yourself and you sure can harness it and make it work for you. Without rot there'd be no cheese, no wine, kim chee, soil, beer, bread, spring, or life. Three cheers for rot!!!



This message was edited Mar 26, 2009 7:10 AM

Oh and BTW, just because leaves turn brown, that doesn't make them a 'brown'. The brown and green has ref. to the color *most* nitrogens and carbons are. Green refers to growing stuff like grass and weeds Brown or not, they are 'Green'. Browns are the carbons. Most common brown is manures, hence the choice of Brown as the representative color. Food scraps usually fit under that too. Most common form of smokin' hot compost is a manure pile. The brown is the manure, the 'green' is the hay/straw bedding which is usually a lovely blond.

Speaking of magic pills for fast compost: If you want something to make your stick-y weed-y stuff to turn into a smokin hot pile,(don't use this method unless you're up to going out and rolling this over every other day minimum as it is a MUST if you don't want this to actually catch fire) go buy yourself a sack of cheap dog food at the local store and a tarp, bring these home, carry your compost from the black thing out to a place where you've got about 8' of room, spread the tarp and dump the compost on it. Take a hoe and roughly chop those plant stems that didn't break down in the black thing, and layer the compost/sprouted weeds and dog food into a pile at one end of the tarp, moistening as you go. the dog food will act as the alfalfa mentioned elsewhere in this list as a 'starter' and cause the pile to heat up. Every other day go out and bring the edge stuff into the center so it gets hot too, and use the tarp to roll the whole mess over by lifting the edge closest to the pile. In a couple of weeks you should have finished compost. When it finally cools off, cover it with the tarp for about a month to let it mature. After that, you can put it on your garden.

This is from the Barbara Pleasant/Deb Martin book. It lists cottonseed meal, chicken crumbles, alfalfa pellets, as well as dog food and the leavings from all grain beer wort and whisky mash as some of the things that will work, and they work because they're mostly grain (greens). Why not give it a try?

The "green" actually refers to materials with a C:N ratio below 30:1 (high N source)
"Brown" refers to materials with a C:N ratio higher than 30:1 (high C source)
Manures have a low C:N ratio around 15 or 20 and thus are a nitrogen or "green". Manure is NOT considered a "brown" or carbon source.
http://www.wiserearth.org/uploads/file/7c089dc3a82030787dda4d973271144c/N%20Ratios.pdf

I think the "brown" and "green" are poor designations because they confuse people, as they have apparently confused Melissande. (BTW coffee, though brown in color, is also a strong "green" or N source.)

Karen

I worked with Brooklyn Botanic Garden in the urban composting program. A guidebook that we developed called Easy Composting is another good resource. It's available from bbg.org

Two others are "Let It Rot" from Storey Publishing and Worms Eat My Garbage (on worm bins) by Mary Appelhof.

This is really a great series of posts. Thanks for all the info. Ellen

cqcrna, did I get it wrong? Oh Well! Opportunity to learn from my mistakes! Thanks for straightening me out.

This stuff is so exciting, it's difficult to keep your trap shut about it even when you've only got half your info straight!--M

Mlissande:You don't seem to understand C:N ratio, i.e. the "green" or "brown" designation.
It has nothing to do with the color of the material as you said, "manure is brown because of it's color". For the purpose of composting, it is a "green" due to low C:N ratio. And though coffee grounds are brown in color, they are a "green".

Also,:
- fresh green leaves taken from a tree or plant might be "greens" while brown, dead leaves which are naturally shed in fall are "browns".
-hay is "green" while straw is "brown"
- vegetable kitchen waste is green.

There are many online charts with C:N ratios or math formulas to calculate the C:N ratio. I think it helps to avoid the "green" and "brown" designations because they do tend to confuse a lot of people. "Nitrogen" and "carbon" seem more logical because the just don't confuse so easily with the color of the material.

Karen

How's this?
C (brown) rarely smells and is usually dry.

N (green) often is moist or smells some way. You usually don't want to stick your bare hands in it.

(Hay and alfalfa pellets don't fit this tho.)

well DARN! I think I'm getting it! it doesn't matter what color I'm putting in! "brown" isn't the color!

I'm using mostly all green adds then. And I have tons of brown available, just not adding enough to get it going. well, it's back to the stable for MORE manure! and time to go down to the ravines and pull back up some leaves (oh DH is going to just love that - I told him I didn't want them put down there....)

...and time to go down to the ravines and pull back up some leaves (oh DH is going to just love that - I told him I didn't want them put down there...)


LOL

bonbon: Manure is a green

Karen

oh boy. this is more science than logic

Well, yeah actually. N is part of the chlorophyll molecule that green plants all have, and that N is part of urea that is in urine, that helps me remember some. N is also very transient, while C is not. That's why people are always saying add N to heat up the pile.

If you play with those links I gave you I think it will help. Get a good idea of what's nitrogen and what's carbon. Because the green and brown thing confuses so much, try putting that nomenclature out of your head and think "nitrogen" or "carbon" instead.

To get a mix to give you a good hot pile, oxygen and moisture are a given. It's the actual ingredients that will usually make or break your effort.
http://www.klickitatcounty.org/SolidWaste/fileshtml/organics/compostCalc.htm

And as that calculator shows, you can't rely soley on a formula like equal weights or equal volume of carbon or nitrogen. Because it's C:N ratio is so high, you will need a much smaller amount of wood than you would of leaves to "balance" a given amount of nitrogen and get a pile cooking.

If that didn't make sense, try plugging these three ingredients into this calculator:
horse manure, dry leaves = tells you for 1 cu ft manure you need 1.5 cu ft dry leaves to get a C:N ratio of 29.85

Let's try again with the same 1 cu ft horse manure but use only wood chips as the second ingredient = you need 1 cu ft of wood chips to give a C:N of 32.91

So, because the C:N of leaves is lower, you need more of it (cu ft) than if you were using wood.
http://www.klickitatcounty.org/SolidWaste/fileshtml/organics/compostCalc.htm

Did this make more sense?

Karen

no wood chips, may have acorns though

A very inexpensive and very good booster is cattle grade black strap molasses. It can be purchased under ten dollars a gallon (you must take your own container) at any farm feed producing mill. Two ounces in a gallon of water is the usual application to any method of composting. The living biology in cattle grade molasses is awsome and includes about thirty trace minerals. This will feed your native biology and enable them to expand and do their work more quickly. This same measure of black strap molasses may be used in watering and flower bed or garden and will be good for all concerned. Once a month is ample during the growing season. It may be applied as a foliar feed too.

Another thing many composters do not do is add a sifting of their native garden soil. That small amount of garden soil contains many biological factors that compost all needs.

Any sleepy pile or the contents of any barrel like so called composters will awaken and go to work when fed black strap molasses. It is inexpensive and better or as good as most purchased much more expensive commercial compost pile boosters. It is the working living biology that creates the heat.

One word of caution is important. Black Strap Molasses is very much alive with living biology. Your gallon should be sitting in a foil tray. In warm weather it may grow in the bottle and make an ugly mess if you do not heed this advise.

I have been aware of all kinds of composting advise well over fifty years now. My practice is to include by vollume aproximately one forth of the following in my piles: manure of any type and age, mixed greens and browns from lawn and garden in season, leaves, spoiled alfalfa, used potting soil, garden soil all boosted by black strap molasses. Bonus items when available might include soy plants, pea hulls, floor sweepings from barns, small animals or road kill burried deep under a pile, kitchen wastes, shrimp shells from a seafood center and my famous pee bucket contents as needed. Then anything else that will rot.

These are the basics to which few modern writers seem to want to elaborate upon to make saleable copy for the magazines and book trade. Composting is not rocket science. I doubt that many writers today have ever made an ounce of good compost. Should I make a mistake in the additions to the pile it just takes a little longer to find that black gold finished.

you're the first one that says used potting soil! been dumped all potting soils from plants I forgot to water through the winter in my pile for years.

Potting soil by the end of a growing season is just tired and unballanced from the plants use. I see no reason not to toss them in the pile. The organic content will rebuild itself from all the goodies in the pile. That little bit of worn out potting soil would be a very small percentage of the total pile. Likewise to all but a purest organic person, the nasties that may have come, from a green house, will be largely if not totally leached out during the daily waterings. Most potted plants have been grown in peat or peat and other soil substitutes. It's a shame to not reuse it.

yeah, and when I forget to water, they turn into peat bricks that don't want to rehydrate, so the plant gets doubly stressed when the water I give just drains away.

Doc - in your experience, what would be an approximate amount of time for horse manure in sawdust to break down in loamy soil?
Could one accelerate this process by adding the molasses? Alfalfa pellets? Haven't been able to collect much in the way of ingredients as it has been wet & cold. 1st mow might be attempted tomorrow...
I was able to buy a truck recently, and now have 2 sources for horse manure. There was no way to get the autumn leaves here, and what I did have went to the orchard. The horse manure has been mixed into raised beds with some pretty nice soil that I have worked on for many years. To create another planting area, I thought it best to take a sampling from each one of the beds & then mix in the manure to create more volume. Got 5 gallons of molasses. Worked like a charm last year, but I used it differently.
Got any tricks to pull out of your hat?

Doc, have you ever added a sizable amount of raw molasses to a cool pile? I'm considering kick-starting mine that way, but I can't have a smoking crater where my house used to be. Kinda drags down my neighbors' property values.

Oh gee wizz to the above two posts....................Manure and sawdust placed in the fall with a cover crop over all will be broken down by Spring here in a cold winter frozen up type winters. The same placed in the early Spring will break down a little faster due to warmer conditions but nothing much happens until the soil temperature reaches fifty degrees. After getting to fifty degrees the warm up becomes a little faster.

Molasses always helps but not as much in the colder slower soil. The natural bacteria, fungi and critters from amoba to nematodes and beneficial insects perform their growing and numbers explosion in direct relation relation to soil temperature. In the garden mixed in is no match for a good working compost pile that can and will commonly heat up to over a hundred degrees. That is a whole beneficial temperature range for the biology. Some of them need the higher temperatures to work and grow at all. I have never made any effort to learn and fully understand the academic fine details. I leave that to our reak researchers to write and expound upon. I work the KISMIF theory and it works fine. Keep it simple make it fun! Really we can not change the rotting process. All we can do is make ready to help it a little by including all of the basics. Mother nature provides the timing a bit different each year. The only difference is the time it takes to get from point A to point B. If for any reason we add elements that take longer or the weather is cooler than normal it just takes a little longer to see it become real finished compost.

The range of ounces of molasses per gallon of water is quite wide. I usually suggest two ounces in a gallon but you can use six ounces in a gallon for so called jump starting or super boosting. Mother nature still holds the key for the ground or pile temperatures. Turning piles weekly or every two weeks enters oxygen and moisture by our judgement. Jump starting or boosting at higher rates of molasses use depends on starting temperatures of about fifty degrees in both the pile and the gardens to cause better results. I doubt that a smoking pile up to 140 degrees or so would be an issue of concern. My average highest ever was one time a hundred and twenty degrees. That was in summer with a starting temperature of eighty degrees.
Only the magazines and books will hold still for temperatures in the piles over a hundred degrees. Doing nothing but making a sizable big pile will see temperatures in the eighty degree range. That do nothing pile needs a whole growing season to finish for the following Spring use.
You still need all of the basics in that pile to do that good. Because of my age and health I take a whole year to get to finished just letting it lay there with minimal distrubance. I don't worry because that still gives me for several wheel barrow loads up to a ton of really good compost.

I do remember how confusing this was in my early days of gardening. Today the understanding might be Zen in Gardening. I, the elements and nature become one and it happens. This is rather exciting all the way down to worthless pondering depending on the readers savy. My neighbors watch, talk and ponder my success but they do not really make an effort to better their skills. They all would rather dump another bag of 10 - 10 -10 and continue to think I am an old fool. When my final day arrives I shall pass on with the comforting thoughts that my blathering such as this may have added some fun and excitement for a few folks I've never met.

Thanks, Doc - I appreciate your wisdom & wit.
Normally, I create the "do-nothing"piles. This time was an exception.

The basic recipe: the right mix, the right moisture, plenty of air

Karen

Adding pee really seems to help.

Commercial urea comes from urine. The N content varies depending on processing and sources. Raw urine differs a little from animal to animal but 12% Nitrogen if used immediately or relatively soon after collection is a reasonable N value estimate. If stored some serious losses will be a factor.

Hey doc, how much will Bud Light change that N percentage?.... Seems to be ready to "use" much quicker after few Bud Lights!!!!

Doug

Personally I find that restaurant-made iced tea increases the availablility of " liquid N " dramatically, too.
AND if I started storing it, there Would be serious losses-- in my personal life and family's assessment of my sanity.

"family's assessment of my sanity" is not something I've worried about for years!!! They all know I'm a little nuts and a lot of fun!

Doug

oh dear. now I'm going to have nightmares, of going to restaurant and drinking lots of Miller beer and sweet tea, and coming home, climbing up into compost and squatting.....

TMI! TMI!!

this has given me pause for careful consideration of employable methodologies...

bonjon--some amount of beer gives a plausible excuse for mistaking the compost for the actual facilities.

Maybe we need to start calling it a "Compist Pile"....

Ah, the joys of potty humor ...

excellent, PMDug!