Extreme Composting

A guy my little brother worked for had oil eating microbes in barrels of crude oil. When they needed some for an oil field clean up job they stirred in some miracle grow to rev them up for a high count.

If you have access to Stinging Nettle…..that stuff is supposed to have properties extraordinarily positive for the compost pile…..even beyond the physical……

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“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

Hey Tim have you ever used a lawn and leaf chipper for bones? I will have several bones to bust up this summer.
Also I know you all will find this normal. My4 smallest kids often use the potty chair to pee in. They produce about a gallon of fantastic liquid fertilizer a day. Would that be too much for my now "small" plies?

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I'm so done here.

I use a big feed mill to bust up bones.
I lawn grade implement would die a quick death under that burden.

I wouldn't be afraid to put a gallon of pee per day on a pile the sir of, say, four pickup loads.

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“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

Ok I'll fore go my leaf shredder. Gotta find someone with a large hammer mill. So far I just have buried them around my fruit trees. I so desperately would love all my own bone meal. We will be having several dump truck loads of mulch coming in. I hate to wait that long to harvest such wonderful assets that keep being tossed away.

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I'm so done here.

I didn't give the link before: http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savor...te_change.html

WOW 400% Now all they have to do is convince BLM.

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Interesting. Unfortunately I'm not big enough to be of service. But I'm doing my part on my small plot.

I think we can study the principles and apply them differently on a small scale. They are using the animals to sheet compost and mulch. In such large areas as he is discussing it is impractical to import such material, but on a small scale we can accelerate the change by bringing in outside animal feed and compost materials.

Note the part where he said you could change the micro climate for the worse by clearing one square meter of ground cover. What if you did the reverse to a half acre?

Has anyone come up with a good way to shred hay? I have a troybilt chipper shredder, a brush hog and several lawnmowers. I have access to round bales. I'm trying to figure out how to get enough carbon material mixed in to get my mound of manure to heat. I think if I can get it to the heating stage that I can then keep up with adding manure and carbon material to keep it going. It's just the initial pile that I'm struggling to get enough material added to.

Just unroll and alternate carbon and nitrogen layers?

It sure would make it easier to turn if the hay was chopped up somehow first.

If it were conventional bales, the chipper-shredder would work great as you could feed single biscuits at a time and blow it right onto the pile. Round bales either have to be unrolled or cut down with a silage knife. Unrolling one and running over it the full length with the brush hog several times would reduce it down considerably but then there's the problem of collecting all of the bits and taking them to the pile. I use a bagging mower to chew up regular bales of straw but I can't imagine the amount of time it would take to do it with a large round bale. I would probably attempt it with my Merry Mack chipper-shredded but it would be a major pain unless the bale could first be cut into pieces which could be easily handled. That leaves the brush hog as the best bet despite the logistics of having to get the material to the pile.

Martin

Personally I wouldn't bother shredding it. I would fluff it up when putting on the pile. IOW no whole bales or compacted flakes/mats.

Working on 10. Have a neighbor who complained about flies a few times. I never noticed them. Maybe he needed a bath or didn't wipe very well. Anyway he doesn't come over any more upon my request.

Oh yeah his garden died before the end of spring while mine thrived all summer.

Turning it serves only two purposes that I can think of, to make it decompose faster and to move material to the interior so that everything gets caught up in a heat cycle. I don't turn my piles except the incidental turning from re-piling when things have started to get messy or I need to move a pile. My piles are often 8 - 10 ft high, so if I scoop a loader full of finished product from the bottom, I does tend to scatter the pile.

If you do the layering method of hay and manure, in 6 - 12 months you will probably have some good stuff, even without turning.

I just started my big project, fenced a 60 x 80 area, added 18 to 24 inches of wood chips that the tree butcher guys bring to the nursery, topped all that off with 7 pigs, will let them run on that for a four or 5 months, I can add more or take out as needed and will incorporate that into the tree farm. a little corn or grain scattered around and the pigs can do the flipping and turning

I think that is a great idea. Please report back as to the smell situation in a month or two. I'm betting you'll have almost no offensive odors and some fantastic compost in a year.

while I was getting the big pen set up I housed them in a 8 x 24.... I also has been used in the same manner except with broilers, the smell was there a little but nowhere near the stank of a 8 x 24 on concrete....I am trying to figure out a chicken coop for the layers where they can roam in the pen and the up the ramp into roost/laying boxes, I think they will help keep down flys as well as cutting feed bill down some