unfinished compost

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by chookiepoo, Sep 5, 2005.

  1. chookiepoo

    chookiepoo Junior Member

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    Newish to the permaculture thing - very inspired though! Surround by failures each day but learn something from them. I read Jackie French's "Backyard Self-Sufficiency", and she reckons you can just chuck kitchen scraps and leaves straight on your vegies as mulch - I tried this and the chooks just flick orange rinds on top of my seedlings, thus smothering them instead of the weeds (grrrr.....). Anyway, I've moved on from that idea. Can I chuck half-finished compost on as a mulch-cum-fertiliser? Surely it's better than straight kitchen scraps and twigs. It's just that when I use finished compost it dries out quickly. I thought maybe half finished stuff with some leaves and twigs and chunky bits might retain moisture better. The only thing is, I read somewhere that unfinished compost has chemicals/hormones/don't know what the word is: something that prevents seeds from germinating and/or kills seedlings. Anyone experienced this before?

    Two days with a bit of sun and my seedlings shrivel (currently unmulched because the blasted chooks like scrabbling in it). I'm trying to find out where they're escaping from (my chook run is like Papillon - 8ft fence) and so currently they free range all day, but I need a temporary solution until I fix the chook problem.

    One more question - anyone tried the new biodegradable nappies available? I bought some today and want to have a go at composting them. They're Danish ones - "Bambo Nature".

    Sorry, one more: in my fervour to prevent anything leaving my property in the "green bin" (for green waste), I've been chucking rather large amounts of couch grass into the compost. Will I pay for my scrooginess later? Will it decompose fully or thrive and take over the compost pile?

    It's fun taking risks ! [crazy, nervous laugh]

    Any help appreciated.
     
  2. verrall

    verrall Junior Member

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    Hi Chookiepoo,

    I can only speak from my own experience in the matter of half finished compost. When making the compost, I will throw down scraps, grass, egg shells, shreded paper etc, during the day and cover with a layer of soil in the afternoon, and repeat each day. After about 2 weeks I move this "working pile" over to my "sitting pile"where I try to leave it alone for about another 2-3 weeks. I have found when planting seedlings out, I can use this sitting pile at pretty much any stage - however I mix it with more soil. I don't know if this is the "best"way, but it works for me - my veges and herbs are doing very well.

    Mulching will help with the moisture loss. If you cannot keep the chooks in a run, then put the veges in a run and keep the chooks out, and let them free range.

    You could also try putting your compost heap in the chookpen. The scraps will feed the chooks, they will also eat a lot of the grass seeds out of the pile, and they will poo all over it. Perhaps it will encourage them to stay in their pen?? (they will also scatter it all over the place). Rake it up, once every week or 2 and place it on another "sitting pile"outside the chook run, and let the bugs and microbes and chook poo do their work, and start a new pile in the chook run.

    Another thing I do when I need soil and do not have enough compost available (e.g. building raised beds), I buy in a truckload of premium garden soil, $37 a m3, I mix this with whatever compost I have available and put it in.

    Hope this helps - let me know if you want more info
     
  3. leo

    leo New Member

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  4. Steve J.

    Steve J. Junior Member

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    Chookiepoo

    Try to avoid couch grass in the compost, it will come back to haunt you. I believe the only sure fire way to not have couch in your garden is to sell the house and move, I battled couch for years in my last place to no avail. When weeded I used to bag all weed in black plastic bags (that I reused many many times) and solarised the crap out of it for several weeks in the sun. More oftern than not it would turn into a slime that was great for garden tea , the remnant slime would then be composted. Good luck with your endevours.

    Steve
     
  5. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Since it's the microbes you are trying to please when you make compost, you need a warm, damp, dark environment full of their most favorite stuff, browns and greens. So if you spread out unfinished compost, it's no longer dark or damp, and will slow way, way down, especially in the summer.

    It's hard to wait the several weeks it takes, but it is important. And if you have some sticks and twigs left over you should put the compost through a 1" screen and get those out, put them back in the compost pile.

    Finished compost won't inhibit the growth of seedlings unless it has in it cedar or redwood or some kind of bark chip that puts off an inhibiting chemical. Even then, if it's really finished, and you can't see anything recognizable, it's been broken down enough to be helpful.

    If your seedlings are having trouble, it means you haven't kept a 3 to 6 inch layer of mulch (part of which ought to be compost) around them. You can protect them with circular collars so they won't get lost or nibbled on by crawling creatures.

    And, yes, the chooks have to be kept separate, no question.

    One thing that has sped up composting for me, and saves me time, is a composting barrel. They are expensive, but you can make one out of a hard plastic garbage can (some of the new ones get soft in the sun and don't work well) with about eight 1/2-inch holes drilled in it, and make sure the lid is clamped on, lay it on its side, then roll it with your foot one complete roll a day. Keep it on a tarp so the little bits can be gathered later. Saves wear and tear on your back as well. I've gotten small clippings finished in three weeks this way. You can literally stand with a coffee cup in one hand and do all your composting!
     
  6. hedwig

    hedwig Junior Member

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    some weeks seems to me a very short time for the compost. We made it like this: turned the compost after two month and threw the material through a chicken wire. The material which passed, is ready we assumed. Turning the compost helps to get air in it, this is important for the process, if not you have fermentation. (which is a possible way as well)

    I alwas wonder about mulching with compost. If you put compost on your beds it is as if you put very fertile soil on it and I don't understand what this should help for water management.
     
  7. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    Mollison writes somewhere in one of his tomes on the balancing act one plays with ones organic matter regarding compost and mulch. He points out that compost, while bonza, doesn't go as far as uncomposted organic matter as mulch. I'm sorry, I am paraphrasing very badly but it is years now since I held said tome in my hands. He seems to be on a bit of a pro-mulch kick in that passage though, promoting the idea that the more soil we can get mulch on the sooner the better!
    If I had unfinished compost, I would try to cover it with some straw or something, to keep it dark and moist like sweetpea says. And I wouldn't let my chickens near my vegetable seedlings. It is kind of a stupid myth that chickens will do your weeding for you, I reckon. They'll help of course, but you can't really combine chickens and vegetables at the same time, unless it is in soup or a roast or whathaveyou :lol: .
     
  8. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    this raises something that I find confusing ..........

    what exactly is the difference between compost and mulch ?
     
  9. earthbound

    earthbound Junior Member

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    Personaly I don't use compost piles or bins of any sort. I try to mimic the natural systems found on a forest floor which means that all composting and breaking down of material happens in situ.

    In making compost piles and shovelling backwards and forwards your not only wasting your own energy but also loosing essential nutrients which are leached away through your compost pile. When the composting happens directly on the ground amongst your plants it may take a little longer to decompose but all of the microbal activity is happening right there. Billions of insects and fungi, living, breeding, dying and decomposing right there,adding nutrients to the soil amongst your plants where you need it..

    OK it may not look as nice as spreading beautiful rich black compost around your garden, but then the whole "neat or messy" permaculutre garden subject was covered recently..

    Frosty, mulch is a covering over the ground which protects the surface of the soil, it can be rocks, carpet, plastic, compost, almost anything really. Where as compost is well rotted organic matter..

    Joel
     
  10. frosty

    frosty Junior Member

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    thanks that explain my confusion because we would only use organic matter ........ and using it as you describe above is just spreading mulch really :?

    Ill never agree with the way permaculture says its ok to put toxic cr*p like carpet and plastic on what you grow :cry:
     
  11. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Hedwig, when mulching with compost, it is not exactly soil, in that it is just broken down organic matter, not clay or different kinds of pulverized rock or sand that constitutes almost half of soil. It helps to keep the moisture in the soil by shading it from the sun. The soil is always "perspiring" and organic mulches hold that moisture near the surface where the plants can get it first before it escapes in to the air, then the mulches are better broken down with that same dampness.

    And 3 weeks works when the pieces are 4" or smaller, which I clip them down to as I trim, plus leaves and kitchen scraps are very small, and when put into barrels, which are a more controlled environment, rolled every day, it holds moisture and moves all things around quite evenly, the edges of the biomass don't dry out as it does in a pile.

    Earthbound, it's true that there is an incredibly rich place under the compost pile that rarely gets used, except for the trees that may grow alongside it, which is great for them. That's also why I like to use barrels so that everything is usable, and I am not jeopardizing my back. But a lot of people really like to watch it (which is good to do if one is new to composting), to heft it around, to somehow control it. But I agree, Nature knows how to do it, and I try to do the natural way whereever I can, as well.

    Frosty, I have seen people on gardening boards get so confused by the word "mulch", and rightfully so. It is used rather carelessly everywhere, and it can have such varying results that the distinction needs to be made among "mulches".

    Generically a mulch is anything covering the naturally existing soil. But there are organic mulches and inorganic mulches, such as plastic which creates a hardpan that causes all kinds of problems, synthetic carpet is toxic as it breaks down (wool carpet might work, but these are so valuable and might have stain resists on them, they are rarely used), bark chips that get under the soil compete for nutrients because they require nitrogen to break down, and rocks are, well, rocks, and it takes millions of years and harsh, harsh weather and glaciers to get them into dust that then can take years to break down and become usable to plants in the soil.

    Organic mulches may take 6 months to break down and become available to plant roots, but they are full of nutrients that feed the soil and the soil critters. It's a world of difference for the soil's sake.

    :)
     
  12. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Chookiepooe,

    Composting is good, but I am with Joel Earthbound on the topic of composting. I prefer more natural (read "lazier") ways to get the work done.

    We have two ways we compost:

    1 We "speed compost" all food scraps through our chooks. So burnt beans, stale rice, old bread, partially defatted coconut, yoghurt that went beyond, veggie scraps, etc, all go to the chookery (my new Australian word. You Aussies please start using it...) They eat it, pass it, and it is on the soil. The soil gets the nitrogen and other nutrients, and we get the eggs!

    2, We collect bins of plant matter the chooks won't eat, like banana peels, grapefruit rinds, coffee grinds and tea leaves, to name a few, and when the bin (a 20 gallon tote box) is full, we carry it off to a spot we selected for that bin, and dump it. Usually we put the boxes between rows of pineapples on hill sides. It sits there for awhile, and then thc chooks find it, and scratch and tear it up, looking for insects and worms, while spreading the half finished compost around (aerating it, which increases biological activity). The scratching and subsequent rains wash the compost down to the pineapple row, where the nutrients pile up, fertlizing the pineapples and the trees and bananas between the rows.

    The chooks also leave their signature donations to the fertility of the farm, chicken shit (chookiepoo is so much nicer a term...), interspersed with the contents of the compost bins.

    This way the chooks do most of the work :lol: . Sometimes the bin is quite warm, which shows that there is a lot of biological activity going on.

    As far as grass, ooooh, we have a bad one here! It is an invasive exotic, from, I don't know where, perhaps directly from the depths of hell :lol: (overstating my case, but read on:). I grows up to 3 meters tall, with spiny hairs, it throws multiple roots from the stalk, at various heights, creating an impenetrable thicket. It produces massive seed heads, which blow in the wind, and remain dormant until we clear that land for annual crops.

    We reduce it by carefully pulling iot up at the roots, so that it doesn't snap any of the roots off (any root snapped off becomes a plant), then place a colection of the plant up in the air, in a tree to dry out. Then it makes great mulch.

    I have a neighbor who has "bad grass" bad. He has sprayed (yuck), burned, (yuck), chopped repeatedly (phew) and, still, it comes back..... The only way to truly get rid of it is to grow lots of tres and shade it out... which is hard as the grass punishes the poor trees....

    If your compost gets hot, it will burn the seed heads up, making the seed unviable, but if your compost doesn't get hot, you may be breeding your grass!

    One way you can increase the temperature of your compost is to take some mollasses, mix it like 5 parts water to 1 part mollasses, and then spray that onto the compost pile, which will give your compost biota some snack food, and raise the temperature of your compost pile.

    Good luck,

    C
     
  13. Richard on Maui

    Richard on Maui Junior Member

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    I LOVE it! Reverse-Reverse Cultural Imperialism. The cycle is complete! Everything is proceeding as I have planned! Get thee to a chookery!

    On another tangent, Christopher, I wonder if your future goats will like your bad grass?
     
  14. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Richard,

    Bad grass and goats. I think they will love bad grass, and am looking forward to having the goats speed compost the bad grass :lol: ! All joking aside, I do think as part of a cut and carry regime as you posted about earlier, bad grass has its place.

    And, as far as reverse reverse imperialism, "chookery" is only a suggestion. I promise I won't break off trade with you or drop cruise missiles in your back yard if you decide not to use it :( . :lol: Since we have received the wonderful passiflora seeds from you, I definitely don't want to threaten our trade status.... :lol: My own imperial ambitions end at the border of our farm. As much as I would like to encourage my neighbors to grow more trees, I can't see forcing it on them....

    I have never been to Australia, and have always wanted to go. Having known dozens of Australians over the years, (all good people, BTW), I tthink I would like Australia very much, excpet you drive on the wrong side of the road. I love those Australian movies, like Idiot Box, and Road Warrior, and Steve Irwin is great ( :lol: :lol: :lol: ).

    I like neologisms, and the transformation of language. I merely wanted to nudge a new word into regional existence. I am using it here in Belize. My wife thinks I'm loopy, but she understands what it means, see?

    Go ahead, try it out, "chookery". Sounds nice, rolling over the tongue... "chookery".

    Let me know if you ever use it... I won't charge anyone copyright fees :lol:

    Christopher
     
  15. baleboy

    baleboy Junior Member

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    chokipoo

    hey chookiepoo

    as far as mulch goes just use anything light and fluffy that is organic and will break down over time and give the soil some goodness like straw or dry grass without seeds dark rocks are good in winter as they absorb heat and keep the soil warm at night light rocks for summer also there is an idea the water can condense on a cold rock at night and give the plants water

    its main purpose is to retain the precious water where it is needed with the roots and for the bactria and worms neither of which can live in direct sunlight

    a good compost needs foru main things for it to break down quickly carbon ie woodships sawdust straw cardboard(worms love the little holes in it and it holds moisture really well and nitrogen manure chass clippings food scrabs

    put these down in layers

    water enough that if you squeeze it it will drip but not pour out and

    oxegen
    my compost is a pile with a bunch of slotted ag pipes running through it this provides redily available oxegen right through the pile to the bottom then the whole thing is covered with cardboard then hessian

    i cannot sing the praises of plain unprinted cardboard it is full of oxegen

    and if covered out of the wind holds water for ages worms love hiding in the layers it is free and i love it

    if you want your commpost to break down quickly you need worms worms produce and environment perfect for bacteria and bacteria love eating the stuff you give them see if you can get a shovel load from a neigbours pile , if it is a good compost it will be full of worms insert that into your pile and leave it let the worms do the work dont turn it and dont cover it with anything that stops moisture or air getting to it other wise it will turn anerobic which stinks takes longer and can produce gasses we dont want in the environment it you want to see the progress use a fork not a shovel other wise you will kill a bunch of worms

    i am in melbourne and have a bunch of strawbales for sale as a fundraiser for my program if you are interested
     
  16. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    BTW, if you are going to compost, Marcus's four considerations, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and moisture are spot on! All composting should come from those thoughts!
     
  17. chookiepoo

    chookiepoo Junior Member

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    Hi everyone,

    Thanks for your suggestions. I'm happy to say the chook problem is resolved - after watching what happens each morning when they escape I've realised that they're pushing their way through the square mesh near the door - they but into it repeatedly until the metal deforms to a bigger hole. And the reason they're so desparate to escape is because they want to lay in their favourite place under a pile of dead branches (outside the chook pen). I've woven extra wire to make a more dense, less "gappy" fence, and they hate it, but they're getting practise at laying in the chookhouse, and not where they bloody well please.

    The mulch is staying on the garden now - yay!
    We've discovered huge piles of free mulch down near our old house - it turns out the council is dumping all their prunings from parks etc there (shredded). With the wind lots of trees have fallen over and these have been pulverised and dumped at this place. We carted a trailer-full home today, and I was wondering if this was ok for seedlings. I've heard that woodchips can temporarily lock up nutrients while they break down. If I use them should I add extra chook poo to the mix or liquid manure or something? I've chucked it all around the flower beds at the moment, and the finer, softer stuff (from shredded date palms, I think) around the pea and radish seedlings.

    About not putting the couch grass in the compost - uh-oh. I've heard you can actual peel off the outside layer and steam the new spring shoots and eat them (according to Jackie French, anyway). Anyone tried this?

    Thanks

    chookiepoo
     
  18. sab

    sab Junior Member

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    lucky you. I wish the council would dump their mulch at my place. I tried getting some from the dump and was told I wasn't allowed to then a week or so later their piles had all been mixed with the garbage and bulldozed into a landfill. :(
     
  19. chookiepoo

    chookiepoo Junior Member

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    Bummer! What a disgusting waste of a useful resource.
     
  20. ~Tullymoor~

    ~Tullymoor~ Junior Member

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    They BURN the green waste at my local hardrubbish/green waste tip!!
     

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