Extreme Composting

I was going to recommend consolidating the piles....or running them over with a track machine to condense. Dirt would work for speeding up decomp.
Continued additions of manure are good, even small additions.

Time is the great decomposer.

In other news.....the new pond is at working level and holding. There is an old man, getting older, who is still waiting for the spirit to move him to build the wheelhouse.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

I chopped what I could with a brush hog, and chipped big piles that are in my garden and getting the majority of manure I haul in. The chip piles heated up and are doing fine.

But I forgot to mention that there are hundreds of stumps in these slash piles, so there is a lot that I have no way to chip or chop. Some of the stumps are 10 - 14". Chipped stuff is gone in a year around here, but the logs aren't decaying fast enough for me. I've spent hours pushing up stacks and moving piles.

Yep big stuff takes way more time. I pile mine in a ravine. It just keeps going down. Nature does its thing as rain washes debris on and through it. Of course it helps when I put a load of grass clippings on it.

If you are moving those piles, that's going to keep breaking them down although it may not seem obvious at the onset. Even if buried in a pile, large pieces of material have the lower side being damper than the top. The elements which break it down work better on the damp side. Every time it is turned, you are flaking off partially-finished material and exposing fresh surfaces.

Stumps would have been best put into a separate pile. Anything aboveground is meant to be recycled back into the soil to feed the roots whereas the wood in the underground portion is designed to resist the very things which will quickly consume other parts of the tree. That applies either to a pile or in the ground.

Martin

I wouldn't cover the stumps entirely. If exposed they move water up and out besides other things that will grow on them to help decay.

Problem with that is depending upon passive decomposition which may take 20-30 years to break down. It also means that they must remain in place long enough to allow those "other things" to grow on them. I took down an oriental elm in 1996 with a base almost 4' wide. It was cut off just above soil surface level. Some of it is still there and it will be another 4 or 5 years before it can be tilled without involving large junks of wood.

Martin

Maybe its your location. My undug stumps are rotting in bout 5 years with no additional help from me. I just kick them right out. Maybe I get plenty termite help. It also might have something to do with the wood and soil composition.

When the place was logged, the piles were not tight piles, but were smashed with 15 - 18 ton machines. They were spread over several acres and I spent a lot of time resmashing and piling them into the shape they are in now. If I had more time and money for diesel, I would haul in manure everyday.

As to your version of Lake Mead, you really need to look into micro hydro. That would be WAY cool and depending on the flow, could make you energy independent.

I don't know that I could generate the blast for micro.

I may have 16 feet of head, at peak level.

I'm going for torque, when the time comes......thinking about a 7-8 foot wheel.

Slow and steady, yuh know ?

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

If you lived closer, I'd let you borrow the 850...... to give those piles something to think about.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

What is weird is my undug pine stumps are already getting soft after 1.5 years, especially if they are under 8" diameter. The big stumps in ground or on the pile that are 12 - 14" seem to be resisting all efforts at decomposition.

I wish! They taunt my backhoe as it grinds to a halt, spinning tires in the sand.

Stop to think. The microherd can attack only from the outside since they need oxygen and nitrogen in order to work. They will eat up an 8" piece of log a lot faster than thicker and older wood. But chew up the biggest stump with a stump grinder and they nearly vanish within a year. It's all in the amount of surface area and moisture which is offered to them.

Martin

I've got black jack and it even get rotten while growing. The termites love it.

That is what happens to my in ground stumps. I suggest you burry your pile about half way and very loosely. Leaves and dirt. You want mold and mushrooms of various sorts. I don't know if they grow on pine or not.

Fill em with antifreeze.

in my haste and lack of proofreading I left out a sentence. The 8" in ground stumps are rotting but not the ones of the same size in the pile. You're right, the dirt contact.

I brought in 6 tons of manure tonight and what I guess to be 9 or 10 tons of dirt. I base that guess on the fact that the dumper wouldn't lift the bed but it will lift 8 tons. I had to drag all that dirt out with a tractor ubntil the load got light enough. Too much extra time and work for a couple of extra tons of dirt.

the tires are already filled. I need tracks or more HP. To move the piles, I have to tear them apart with a root rake. Too much work so I'll keep piling manure and dirt on them till they rot down.

Have you tried crumbing the piles with your back end hoe bucket teeth ?

They do this with houses in the demolition business to greatly reduce mass to be hauled away. It would also be another opportunity to mix the manure and dirt in more thoroughly with the piles.
As those piles age, the brush and roots (as you know) are becoming more brittle, or punky....either way making it easier and easier to reduce the material with a little ironclad incentive.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

FR, I used a root rake to re-pile and smash things and that did reduce the volume substantially. Just not enough to satisfy me after waiting all this time. Normally I can be quite patient with compost (though these piles don't really meet the def of compost), but I was expecting (hoping for) more reduction by now.

It's a combination of steady moisture in the soil which allows the microherd to work continuously and keep multiplying. In a pile, there may be periods when the area around the stumps dry out. When that happens, the population of the herd has to start over again.

Martin