It has been 30 years since I did composting. This year I was hoping to make enough compost to have potting soil in the spring for planting seeds. I put a 55 gallon barrel on the south side of the garden in full sun. I had no trouble keeping the barrel full every day all summer. The barrel would compost down 6" every day and I refilled it full every day. I had plenty of garden plants, 200 potato plants, 100 feet of green bean plants, 32 pepper plants, tomato plant trimmings, watermelon & cantaloupe scraps, 80 cucumber plants. Tomato, beans, potatoes, onions, garlic tops, vines, scraps corn cobs, grass clippings, tree leaves. The barrel was full of black solider fly larva all summer & fishing worms never the bottom. A few days ago I moved the barrel to see what is inside. Corn cobs are still there. Pepper plants look like dead sticks they are still there. Nothing else inside worth keeping, not even a whole cup of compost to plant seeds in. I wasted my time doing this. It is much easier to toss garden scraps in the yard then driver over them with the lawn mower & blow the pieces into the garden. I will drive lawn mower over corn cops & pepper plant sticks later today.
The upside down trash can lid made a great bird bath all summer. Birds were there none stop every day. When I removed the lid 100 birds would have black solder fly larva gone in a few minutes.
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Gary350
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I tried composting again this year.
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Last edited by Gary350 on Thu Oct 06, 2022 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Greens and browns are bulky, but as they decompose they shrink a lot. It takes time to make compost. If it does not have the right ratio of greens to browns, not enough moisture, turning and time it is not that fast. I only do worm composting. The worms do all the turning. All I have to do is add the browns and greens. My bin stays pretty wet even though I don't really water it. Worms don't make a ton of vermi compost either. It is very rich and a little goes a long way.
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applestar
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I might be wrong, but if I remember correctly, black soldier flies are useful for composting high protein scraps.
Red wrigglers/compost worms are better at handling the fibrous carbon-rich materials, and fungi are better at the woody materials … and beneficial lactobacilli and bokashi microbes process the greens the best.
Red wrigglers/compost worms are better at handling the fibrous carbon-rich materials, and fungi are better at the woody materials … and beneficial lactobacilli and bokashi microbes process the greens the best.
The red wrigglers I have do go through a lot of carbon. I have been saving the packaging that came with some of my online orders. The tower garden was packed with brown paper so I have been using that as well as egg cartons. The worms don't like the harder stems of the plants. I usually sift that out when I harvest the vermicompost. I have a better seal on my worm bin this time, but a few roaches have still gotten in, but no geckos. Lactobacilli? I do mix the old yogurt in the bucket when I make vermi compost tea.
I hardly know what to say, Gary.
I've been composting for decades and use compost 100% for potted tomato plants and about 30% for perennials, with soil & peat moss, not for a starting mix. For the perennials, the compost etc. goes through a 1/4" screen, pushed around with a short board.
Composting these days is done below decks outside of outbuildings. I know that this wouldn't work for you because of the tendency for your backyard to flood but the semi-arid climate and rocky ground here makes it possible and work well to have that process done in a hole dug down about 10".
I've done it above ground in the past in various ways and it helped to have concrete blocks surrounding the compost. I'd pile it in one bin for one year, cover it with soil over the winter, and leave it until the end of the growing season the following year. That meant that the material on the bottom was as much as 18 months old. Throughout, it might have been fairly coarse (never use corn cobs
). But, if I was just digging out a garden bed and burying it - coarseness didn't really matter.
Yes, there are seeds that don't compost easily - squash is one.
Steve
I've been composting for decades and use compost 100% for potted tomato plants and about 30% for perennials, with soil & peat moss, not for a starting mix. For the perennials, the compost etc. goes through a 1/4" screen, pushed around with a short board.
Composting these days is done below decks outside of outbuildings. I know that this wouldn't work for you because of the tendency for your backyard to flood but the semi-arid climate and rocky ground here makes it possible and work well to have that process done in a hole dug down about 10".
I've done it above ground in the past in various ways and it helped to have concrete blocks surrounding the compost. I'd pile it in one bin for one year, cover it with soil over the winter, and leave it until the end of the growing season the following year. That meant that the material on the bottom was as much as 18 months old. Throughout, it might have been fairly coarse (never use corn cobs
). But, if I was just digging out a garden bed and burying it - coarseness didn't really matter.Yes, there are seeds that don't compost easily - squash is one.
Steve
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Gary350
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Maybe it is our weather, our termites, carpenter ants, bugs, mold, mildew, rain. If I leave an untreated board in the garden longer than 3 or 4 weeks termites will have it eaten up. 2019 I hauled 10 tons of mulch to the garden with a rental dump trailer and covered with whole garden with mulch then tilled it into the soil. 10 tons of mulch is completely gone in 3 years. Last Oct I tilled 120 gallons of saw dust into the South East corner of the garden then May soil looked like potting soil but now its starting to look like clay again. Next week I plan to till 40 gallons of saw dust into a 34 foot row for planting potatoes in April. Organic material in the garden soil never lasts long. 10 tons of mulch make soil 8ph several plants would not grow, I had to buy several gallons of vinegar to pour on each row for plants to grow. It might be better to have 10 tons of Florida sand in the garden.digitS' wrote: ↑Thu Oct 06, 2022 12:21 pmI hardly know what to say, Gary.
I've been composting for decades and use compost 100% for potted tomato plants and about 30% for perennials, with soil & peat moss, not for a starting mix. For the perennials, the compost etc. goes through a 1/4" screen, pushed around with a short board.
Composting these days is done below decks outside of outbuildings. I know that this wouldn't work for you because of the tendency for your backyard to flood but the semi-arid climate and rocky ground here makes it possible and work well to have that process done in a hole dug down about 10".
I've done it above ground in the past in various ways and it helped to have concrete blocks surrounding the compost. I'd pile it in one bin for one year, cover it with soil over the winter, and leave it until the end of the growing season the following year. That meant that the material on the bottom was as much as 18 months old. Throughout, it might have been fairly coarse (never use corn cobs
Yes, there are seeds that don't compost easily - squash is one.
Steve
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Vanisle_BC
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Gary350
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I threw a good mix of dry & mostly green in the barrel. It was setting in full sun 80+° temperatures. Hard corn cobs, pepper plant stems were all that was left. I drove over it with lawn mower and blew it in the garden today.Vanisle_BC wrote: ↑Thu Oct 06, 2022 6:02 pmGary, maybe I got it wrong but something about your first post made me think your compost didn't get much moisture, maybe got overheated & dried out? Just a thought ....
Last edited by Gary350 on Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Gary350
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3 months of 100°f weather and 14 hours of full sun June to Aug. If compose looks dry I watered it. It is hot as an oven in that rusty metal barrel volume drops about 6" every day.
What works best for me it to throw plants in the yard along the side of the garden to dry in the hot sun for several days. Then lawn mower mulches the plants and blows them into the garden. Mulch blows everywhere in the garden. Next time I till mulch is gone into the soil.
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Gary350
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TV show called, Tennessee Gardener said, compost gets too hot in TN it will compost away and be gone in 3 months. I till organic material into the soil it will be gone in 3 months also. I hauled 4 truck loads of free mulch from the recycle center and tiller it into the, tomato row, pepper row, potato row, that was April and May soil was very soft but now Sept soil shows no signs of compost. Many years ago I experimented with 1 row pepper row with compost, 1 pepper row with no compost. Compost row had taller pepper plants, larger size pepper, larger quantity of peppers. When I dug up the plants compost row of plants had 3 times larger roots than the other row. If I plant peppers and forget to till in compost its a bad year for peppers.
I usually buy bagged compost. But, I did a soil test and my phosphorus was higher and it could only have come from the bagged organic potting soil or compost I had added. My organic matter was over 7%. So the last two plantings I have not added compost, only nitrogen and kmag. The phosphorus is already too high. According to my soil report I could either not add compost for awhile or add only 1/3 inch for maintenance.
It is better to use your homemade compost because you know what goes in it. People have been experiencing issues with composts that have been contaminated with grazon in hay, manures, composts made with material that was sprayed and cut or consumed by animals. It does not affect the animals, but is a persistent herbicide.
I have to actually leach my garden because the phosphorus and calcium is high. and the pH is low. The corn I am growing will remove a lot of phosphorus, so I cannot use it as mulch, so it will actually go in the green bin. The worms may get some of it, but I can't use vermicast except in the new soil mix because the vermicast is also rich in phosphorus and the reused soil is also high in phosphorus and low in pH.
If you don' plant in winter, you can do trench composting instead. I did do that successfully in the herb plot at the garden. That one was low in nitrogen, high in phosphorus but had a high pH 7.8. I dug a trench and we put partially decomposed compost in it . Covered it with soil and we used a woven weed barrier as a cover to control the weeds. It took 5 months to be ready but you can do that over winter. When it was ready I did add nitrogen and we planted
it out and got a fantastic harvest. I did not work for a second planting, so we had to rotate keeping a fallow bed for trench composting, but it was very low maintenance since it did not require turning, or maintaining a compost pile, just waiting.
It is better to use your homemade compost because you know what goes in it. People have been experiencing issues with composts that have been contaminated with grazon in hay, manures, composts made with material that was sprayed and cut or consumed by animals. It does not affect the animals, but is a persistent herbicide.
I have to actually leach my garden because the phosphorus and calcium is high. and the pH is low. The corn I am growing will remove a lot of phosphorus, so I cannot use it as mulch, so it will actually go in the green bin. The worms may get some of it, but I can't use vermicast except in the new soil mix because the vermicast is also rich in phosphorus and the reused soil is also high in phosphorus and low in pH.
If you don' plant in winter, you can do trench composting instead. I did do that successfully in the herb plot at the garden. That one was low in nitrogen, high in phosphorus but had a high pH 7.8. I dug a trench and we put partially decomposed compost in it . Covered it with soil and we used a woven weed barrier as a cover to control the weeds. It took 5 months to be ready but you can do that over winter. When it was ready I did add nitrogen and we planted
it out and got a fantastic harvest. I did not work for a second planting, so we had to rotate keeping a fallow bed for trench composting, but it was very low maintenance since it did not require turning, or maintaining a compost pile, just waiting.