That is the only (and I do mean ONLY) situation that I might recommend landscape cloth - lining the bottom of a pile over tree roots.
would u show pic of your compost areas
I had not even thought about landscape cloth! I'll probably try that or maybe just use cardboard or thick newspapers and let them decompose. Any of those alternatives would be easier than me trying to manage plywood. Thanks for all the suggestions!
davis1676, good luck with your projects! This is quite a learning process, isn't it?
Here's my same bin now- I have bushel gourd growing right on top with some plain dirt to start it in. I thought I onle had one plant survive, but already there are more than a dozen branches, and got a few babies just pollinated. So this compost will sit all summer and I'll spread it later. what's left.
I like having two bins. The one on the right is the active "cooking" section, and the one on the left is the storage area. Found the "compost corral corners" online. You just slot them with 1 x6 boards and make any size you wish. Mostly use grass and leaves. Make sure you water frequently, esp. during the summer. There has to be moisture content for composting to happen. It is fun!
Nothing elaborate here- this is it.
Karen
I am wondering how you were able to find a fourteen tine fork.I haven't seen them for sale in a long time.Mike
This is very much fun! I see a saving on trash from my house, already, which is great. This is a "process" but it's not so overwhelming now.
Sally, I'm not sure of what you're doing with the gourd plants, though it looks cool. I've got seeds of something coming up in my compost, so I've kinda been tossing around them. What do you do?
Steve, I love the composting corners you use. Looks decent & can't be but so difficult. Dig footers & you're done?
Yours must me a type of vermicomposting, Karen? I need something like that. I have bones, animal fat, meat (etc) that I need to do something with. I've only read briefly on vermicomposting & I'm considering buying something commercially made to help dispose of & be of benefit somehow. Anyone have any experience?
Davis, if you want to compost and use those bones, fats and dairy, you need to check out the thread on Bokashi, here's the thread http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/852349/ You can use it to "pickle" those items. Great stuff and I can say enough good things about using it. The results are amazing!
davis- I started this load of compost last fall and worked on it some during the winter. Mostly leaves, but some grass. This spring, I put a couple shovelfulls of plain dirt on top in one spot and planted gourd seeds into it. Thats all! Now I've used some trimmed tree branches to make something for them to climb.. I already have two gourds on one vine and should not allow more to develop if I want those to be big as possible. I'm considering adding some balanced fertilizer because I'm afraid the leaf cmompost base may lack some micronutrients, butthen again the whole vine is so huge already I'm afraid to!
In regards to the compost corral corners, it is free standing. No digging footers. The boards are screwed to the corners and that makes it sturdy. However, the bottom two boards on the front are not screwed on. I simply take them out of the slots, shovel the compost out from the BOTTOM, and replace the boards. That's how it works. Its funny how stuff stays in and yet there is a lot of airiness to it.
Where did you get those corners at? They look great!
Davis1626: No, mine are regular compost bins, not vermicompost. It's 2 Biostack bins from Smith and Hawkin. Each has 3 bottomless tiers. Sometimes I move those tiers around and customize the bins to my liking. In my picture above, I have 2 tiers in the left stack which has some maturing, almost finished compost in it. The stack to the right is now 4 tiers, full of hot, actively composting stuff. Yesterday it was 142 degrees.
You can see an open space in the center. After the hot stuff shrinks and temp drops, I'll move tiers to that center spot, forking the compost material into it and rebuild the stack and pile and aerate the compost as I go.
I love the Biostacks, and having two of them gives me a lot of versatility in the way I use them. In fall I spread all the finished stuff, leave one stack to compost over winter, and fill the other with nothing but fall leaves.
Karen
doc, thanks for the link to bokashi, it sounds perfect for me. That's a lot of info to absorb on that thread but I'll do a bit of research to see what it takes to get started. As far as the Bokashi bran or Activated EM, I'll need to get a hold of, a site was listed for me to check it out.
I've been thinking about getting a Solarcone (www.solarcone.net), I can get one thru a municipality program & it's fairly inexpensive. Please take a look see folks & tell me what you think. It seems to be a commercial answer without the Bokashi or AEM.
Ok sally, now I get it. The gourd vine looks healthy & pretty cool!
The biostacks are a great way to go, I'm loving the control you have. I wish I'd of known about those corral corners earlier. Great, great, great ideas everyone.
Davis, thanks for posting the solarcone site. Interesting idea, however, I have issues with
"Before taking your food scraps to the Green Cone, spray them with orange oil or neem seed oil extract. Or if those are unavailable, canola oil will work. The eggs (unfortunately) are already on the food we eat, we just don't realize it. So spraying your food before you take it to the Green Cone is key - when the larvae are covered with oil, they will not be able to hatch once in the Green Cone."
In my opinion, Neem is one of the heavy hitters of the organic pesticide world. I would be very reluctant to use it on a regular basis even in small amounts.
On the other side the EM1 microbes are present in the soil naturally. You are simply replacing what is probably missing or in short supply from over use of chemical fertilizers, poor soil management practices, etc. Admittedly the subject is complex, a lot more than I first realized, but I think Erik didn't make clear, you don't have to use the Bokashi bran, you can go straight to the EM1 which is the mother culture. You simply add black strap molasses and water and let it sit to "cook" for about 7 -10 days, measure the ph and once it hits 3 you are in business. We use both methods since we started with the Bokashi, bought the initial bucket and then made our own buckets as they are not cheap. I have shared the Bokashi juice with a couple of my Master Gardener pals and they are converts! The results in their veggie and flower gardens are amazing. You can almost see the plants grow! Good stuff.
Ok then. I'm convinced enough by your testimony (& those on the bokashi threads) to give the bokashi a shot first. I saw where someone made their "bucket" using a plastic cat litter container,somehow inserted a coleman spigot & raised the bottom up so the container would drain. Is this fairly accurate? Or would you suggest buying the first bucket in a kit type deal? Do you get your EM1 on line? So thats all I'd need along with molasses & food waste & I'm cooking?
I'll give our co. extension agent a call to see what they know. I haven't read a great deal & I'm not really interested at this point in the whys or hows, I'm not a techi. I'm looking for basic simple instructions. Where do I go next?
We did use 5 gal powdered soap boxes with coleman spigots. And yes you can buy the EM1 on line as well as the litmus paper. That's critical. Eric has the formulas posted on the Bokashi boards but it's also on the bottle. :) Good luck..
I love the compost corral corners. I was getting close to making my own but I bet its much easier, and probably cheaper, to just buy them. My pile is just a hole about 8" deep about 6' x 6' and I keep it covered with palms. Nothing special at all. Thanks to Stevelvv's corners, I plan to upgrade soon : )
I used to use a bokashi bucket but every since Eric said he dug holes, dumped the compost material in, sprayed with AEM1 and covered the the hole back up with soil, that is what I have been doing. So so much easier and you don't have the expense of the bokashi. I collect kitchen scraps in the refrigerator until I get a holes worth. Working out real good. After two weeks I can't find any evidence of the kitchen scraps I buried. Today I added wood chips to the kitchen scraps. I will dig through it next week to see the progress. This is a very easy amazing way to build soil out of Arizona dirt.
I love this "tour" of different folks' composting methods! Like Karen I use Biostaks (three of them) and love the ease of tossing the pile just by shifting the tiers. I also have several large black plastic bags of leaves and garden refuse that I have gathered in the fall. Over the year I dispense these into my bins. Also, about every three weeks I bury a bucket-full of finished Bokashi fermented food scraps into one bin. I cover the scraps with a thick layer of grass clippings, leaves, etc, and keep on adding till the compost bin is full. After about two months that bin is full of lovely dark compost, teeming with worms and ready to use in the garden. I just keep rotating to the next bin.
I think it would be much easier to just bury the Bokashi in the ground, but I don't have the room to dig more beds, so I just use it to make great compost.
(edited to correct a few typos!)
This message was edited Jul 24, 2008 12:37 PM
If you don't have time to read through all the bokashi threads, the following link is to a teacher's manual that explains the basics of how to do bokashi and how to make your own bucket using one bucket inside the other so you don't have to mess with a screen or something in one bucket to hold the food up so it doesn't clog the tap.
[HYPERLINK@emhawaii.com]
This video also gives a good explination too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ3zZcLfljU
Someone told me that Burger King gets their pickles in 5 galon buckets that would be perfect for a bokashi bucket, and free too!
Tabitha
Davis1676,
I think a lot of us are really glad you asked your questions. I learned a lot from all the different answers and techniques that your good questions generated. One thing I noticed that was missing- If you are getting manure from a horse farm, ask if the horses have been wormed in the last couple of months. The worm medicine apparently goes right out in the manure and then will kill your earthworms for a while. I don't know this from experience but saw it in another post about a month ago so, if I got something wrong, please correct me.
Paul
This is mine. It took a while for my hubby to get on board with building a bin but when we saw this on HGTV it was a go. He didn't want anything ugly.
That is definitely the most beautiful compost bin I have ever seen. I understand a man's view of "ugly" since I am married to a very particular guy myself. Your hubby did a great job!
That is one "purty" compost structure! It's cool how your hubby jumped in on such a nice idea. We watch HGTV too, they have great ideas. So how are you using your "bins"? I mean do you use the 3 separate areas for different stages of your compost or something else?
Dean W, like the way your compost is "contained" with the fencing. How are you going about composting with it? Can you unhook the fence when it's complete or are you reaching over to dig it out & toss it? Do you have some of the EM in your spray bottle?
Thanks for the links & especially the video, Tabitha, nice, easy point of reference. It gets pretty confusing to me still. I'm wondering rtl850, how much is a holes worth? Like a gallon, 5 gallons, more, in your fridge the whole time? Good to know about the horse manure. I haven't gotten any from a farm yet, but that's still my plan. I found a place to get manure but it's a good 4 gallons there & back. I'd like to find something closer.
davis, thanks for the compliment. It works and it's cheap. I keep it hidden in that corner of the garden. I go about composting with it by getting as many leaves as possible in the fall. Year around I collect coffee grounds. I mix coffee grounds, leaves, vegetable scraps, egg shells and other compostables in the pile. When it's ready to use I use my pitch fork or shovel to dig over into the pile. Once the pile is smaller I can simply remove the wire fencing by pulling it up. That allows me to get the remaining compost out easily. I'm actually in the process of harvesting two piles currently.
No, that's not EM. I have, yet to use EM myself. It's actually Round Up used for spot treating weeds. I know it's a NO NO! I try to garden organically as much as possible. The problem was I had this left over from years ago. An I am using it on invasive Bermuda grass.