Free compost for your gardens

[CowboyTed]

If anyone in Colorado plans any outdoor/greenhouse growing and wants to improve the soil before you plant a monster, I have all the free compost you can tote home with you.


I mixed it half/half with garden soil and grew in it this year, and it seems to be good healthy stuff for a cannabis grow. It will help retain water in your soil as well as adding useful nutrients. I'm using it in my indoor pots as well, and the plants seem to be happy.


I keep my piles segregated, so I have well-aged three-year old compost, as well as much larger piles of two-year-old, year-old and fresh manure available, all free for the taking.



If you bring a pickup, I can fill it with my loader. I'm always happy to share my shit!




PM me!

 

[Monty Zoomer]

Never had any luck with it. Binned it Mixed it with household waste. Watered it. Turned it. Fed it to red wiggler worms.

I have a couple of piles left to scrape up & dump. Good riddance.

 

[Monty Zoomer]

My neighbor has piles of rotten horseshit he can't dispose of. He loads it into a spreader that he pulls behind his ATV. Dumps it all over in the pastures behind his place. The whole place smells like SHIT!

 

[CowboyTed]

I think most of us have similar experiences when we start composting. I had my share of failures too.

I found that the biggest contributor to the success of a compost pile isn't so much what you put in it, but its size.

Bigger piles compost more quickly, with fewer odors. The interior stays hot longer, because the sheer bulk of the pile creates a heat sink, and the dry outer layer works like insulation.

With a big pile, you can sometimes build the pile, turn it once, and when you go back to turn it a second time, you'll find it is already beautiful, finished compost, sometimes in as little as a month.

What doesn't work well is exactly what most people try: a small area like eight or ten square feet, and they start piling up starting with a layer this week, then another layer next week.

IN order for a compost pile to act as a functional receptical for your weekly kitchen trimmings, it needs to be functioning internally already when you add the scraps. It needs to be hot inside.

I finally succeeded at composting when I dragged in leaves and grass clippings I gathered around town, and built a compost pile that was roughly a cubic yard. That's a big enough pile to start itself decomposing as you pile it up, and then you can start adding kitchen and yard waste, and it will magically disappear.

But most homes don't generate that much waste, so their piles never get big enough to work properly.

The best solution would be to maintain a communal pile, where an entire block could bury their kitchen waste, and the neighbors and kids could turn out each week to turn/divide/harvest the piles.

Nah. That would be Communism!

We can BUY our damn fertilizer!

 

[Monty Zoomer]

I think most of us have similar experiences when we start composting. I had my share of failures too.

I found that the biggest contributor to the success of a compost pile isn't so much what you put in it, but its size.

Bigger piles compost more quickly, with fewer odors. The interior stays hot longer, because the sheer bulk of the pile creates a heat sink, and the dry outer layer works like insulation.

With a big pile, you can sometimes build the pile, turn it once, and when you go back to turn it a second time, you'll find it is already beautiful, finished compost, sometimes in as little as a month.

What doesn't work well is exactly what most people try: a small area like eight or ten square feet, and they start piling up starting with a layer this week, then another layer next week.

IN order for a compost pile to act as a functional receptical for your weekly kitchen trimmings, it needs to be functioning internally already when you add the scraps. It needs to be hot inside.

I finally succeeded at composting when I dragged in leaves and grass clippings I gathered around town, and built a compost pile that was roughly a cubic yard. That's a big enough pile to start itself decomposing as you pile it up, and then you can start adding kitchen and yard waste, and it will magically disappear.

But most homes don't generate that much waste, so their piles never get big enough to work properly.

The best solution would be to maintain a communal pile, where an entire block could bury their kitchen waste, and the neighbors and kids could turn out each week to turn/divide/harvest the piles.

Nah. That would be Communism!

We can BUY our damn fertilizer!

I've seen what appear to be some larger-scale homeowner/farmer operations that produce a nice product. If you can produce a clean weed-free product, props to ya!

#1 problem with non-commercial scale composting of equine manure in this area is weed seeds. I could never sustain high enough temperatures for long enough to kill them off. Any hay raised in this area that's not certified weed-free is going to carry a decent load of all kinds of noxious weeds. That's why the forest service mandates certified hay in backcountry areas.

That and managing moisture content in a high-desert environment. Trying to hydrate bone-dry manure is a project. It actually tends to repel water.

My finished product was always a good soil amendment, and the worms loved it. But dealing with the accompanying weeds was a real problem.

Lol, no communal spirit here. We have an odd mix of old-time cowboy hillbilly types alongside of ex-urbanites with no practical rural living skills. We all hate each other equally!

 

[CowboyTed]

I've seen what appear to be some larger-scale homeowner/farmer operations that produce a nice product. If you can produce a clean weed-free product, props to ya!

#1 problem with non-commercial scale composting of equine manure in this area is weed seeds. I could never sustain high enough temperatures for long enough to kill them off. Any hay raised in this area that's not certified weed-free is going to carry a decent load of all kinds of noxious weeds. That's why the forest service mandates certified hay in backcountry areas.

That and managing moisture content in a high-desert environment. Trying to hydrate bone-dry manure is a project. It actually tends to repel water.

My finished product was always a good soil amendment, and the worms loved it. But dealing with the accompanying weeds was a real problem.

Lol, no communal spirit here. We have an odd mix of old-time cowboy hillbilly types alongside of ex-urbanites with no practical rural living skills. We all hate each other equally!

Wow. Your community sounds a lot like mine!


I've finally managed to create a composting routine that kills weed seeds reliably. It's just something I learned over time, after years of using a compost thermometer that helped me understand what happens internally in a pile at various moisture levels. That's also how I learned that piles need to be large to get hot enough for long enough to kill seeds.


Thankfully, I have a skidloader, so breaking up horse turds is simple for me: Spread the manure out in a twelve to twenty inch thick layer. Add whatever else needs composting. Spend about ten minutes spinning around with the skid loader until most of the turds have been ground up by your knobby tires.


Everything is easier with the right tools!


But, oh, how well I remember trying to get horse turds to break down in a compost pile. I didn't always have a skidloader, but I've had horses since I was about five years old. As my name implies, I've had a lifetime of experience with horse turds!



I was surprised how few weeds sprouted in my cannabis pots this summer. We've had very few weeds sprouting in a grassy area where I've been spreading the compost for the past five years. I seem to have the process perfected, at least with the mixture of inputs that we generate around here.

 

[aridbud]

composting of equine manure in this area is weed seeds.
You have to constantly battle it. Tarps maybe.

 

[Defacto]

Sounds like you have composting down CowboyTed!

My first thought was how much water one would need here in Colorado.

I'm from Wisconsin & Mother Nature did half the work.

 

[Monty Zoomer]

Wow. Your community sounds a lot like mine!


I've finally managed to create a composting routine that kills weed seeds reliably. It's just something I learned over time, after years of using a compost thermometer that helped me understand what happens internally in a pile at various moisture levels. That's also how I learned that piles need to be large to get hot enough for long enough to kill seeds.


Thankfully, I have a skidloader, so breaking up horse turds is simple for me: Spread the manure out in a twelve to twenty inch thick layer. Add whatever else needs composting. Spend about ten minutes spinning around with the skid loader until most of the turds have been ground up by your knobby tires.


Everything is easier with the right tools!


But, oh, how well I remember trying to get horse turds to break down in a compost pile. I didn't always have a skidloader, but I've had horses since I was about five years old. As my name implies, I've had a lifetime of experience with horse turds!



I was surprised how few weeds sprouted in my cannabis pots this summer. We've had very few weeds sprouting in a grassy area where I've been spreading the compost for the past five years. I seem to have the process perfected, at least with the mixture of inputs that we generate around here.

Bobcat skid steer loader & a 55 HP JD 4WD tractor with a loader & all the implements. I'm not lacking tools.

No source for lawn clippings or leaves here either. Lol, anything that's not heavy blows away in the wind.

 

[MintyMick]

@CowboyTed

What you have right here is a win-win situation. You get rid of your extra compost, and people get free composted horseshit. Which is great if you want to grow a vegetable garden or just amend the soil in your yard by tilling some in with the topsoil. Which I did when I bought my house. Tilled in sheep and peat in that red sandy shit. Gotta love Colorado dirt. After it’s been amended that is.

And helping people out is a great way to gain some universal karma, if there is such a thing.

 

[h.h.]

Plenty of leaf litter avaible in town.
Cover it up with horse manure.
Tarp it.

 

[Ibechillin]

I wish i lived in colorado! Great writeup on composting in post #4 and #6, much appreciated.