Ya gotta start somewhere... my organic compost factory

[flylowgethigh]

It's a start. Tree guy is bringing me the shredded tops off hardwood trees they take down. Leaves and branches. I may start collecting the clippings off the acres of grass I mow here too. Add some ammonium nitrate, or urea, and let the rain and old Sol do their thing. I put 20 gallons of ammonium nitrate on before it rained yesterday. I will add fungus and bacteria as it breaks down. Those are test piles. The rest will be going on a couple acres of clay based dirt I want to improve. I think a compost pile on hard clay will soften it up, and that test pile location is a good place for a house. I need to hit up lawn mower services here for their clippings also.

 

[exploziv]

I would think you could contaminate the soil underneath it and the groundwater as well. In my country you must have a cement platform for any composting pile. Just because the stuff it leaches, especially when you also putting other things into it by the gallon.

 

[chilliwilli]

Hey man big compost project u are starting here.
Take care of the amount of n u add to the pile because too much n can make things fast anaerobic. Wood chips alone have too less n iirc, think its ~c:n=100:1 and u want somethink like 25:1 in the pile.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Like I said, I will be moving the main pile where it will improve the soil, and not hurt the hard red clay where a house should go tht it is on now. I have the other place ready, and this pile will get moved soon enough. The tree dude has years of piled stuff like that, some is probably already close to being ready. If this works out, I have a place for the U shaped concrete area with mid height walls there. There is no groundwater concern here, and the little bit of fert was what I took from a buggy, that I then used to spread out on the grass the other 500#. That is hardly any, least I have ever bought. BTW, this is the shit they claim Nichols and McVey used in OKC. You can make tanny out of it, except this batch was kinda contaminated with a little P and K.

I only used 4 buckets of fert, this stuff is 33%. Probably 40 yards of material there with unknown percentage of leaves. It was steaming inside after a day in the sun when it was delivered. I will be playing the artificial N by ear, and turning the material with a front end loader. All the fert watered down in the rain, so let's add some microbes via my moldy old leaves in a low area, and a scoop of swamp dirt.

The ash from the burn pile is good fertilizer. Need to look into incorporating ash nd char into the operation.

Make my own damn compost. Grow my own worms, hopefully in a mite infested bin with sorgham peat as the medium. Then to make soil, just add drainage and minerals.

IMO a good depression business. Trade soil for food.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

Interesting project, I was wondering how long you expect it to take to break down those wood chips with the smallish amount of litter-decomposing fungi (compared to the large pile of chips) found on the dead leaves.

White Rot fungi (found in decaying wood in the woods) would help greatly to speed things along in accelerating the lingin degradation in the wood.

........ also some bacteria such as E. coli and B. subtilis (found in poop) can help with this also and large batches can easily be made at home but stink to high heaven!

Good luck, I'll be following along.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Come-on over and help! I will put in grass eating animal manure, but not dawg or human. I have wild woods where I can get all the wet decayed leafs and trees I want. Fungus grows on trees here like mossy oak. The timing for the soil to make is TBD, and who cares anyways? I think the summer heat will do a lot. Part of the infrastructure work this year will be to run irrigation back there from the nitrate rich fish ponds, so I can keep the piles wet and the microbes happy.

One other project is to start hugelkulture (termite tek) in my 35 x 50 veggie garden that has a hard clay base under it. I will dig 3' deep holes with an auger and put the wood in the bottom.

I have been fighting low CEC here for years as I spread the dirt I dug out of the pond. Lime helped, but didn't fix the problem. Humic and fulvic acid are what I think are the cures.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

Well I can't 'come on over' but I could help! One more thing that breaks down the lignins in wood is mushrooms which are a fungus. And the best psychedelic mushroom is Panaeolus cyanescens, which just so happens to grow on hardwood and would grow well in your area during the upcoming season. If you want a pure culture just give me a holler!

...... you may as well get some fun outa alla the hard work you're putting in, fun that can be spread around!

 

[chilliwilli]

And the best psychedelic mushroom is Panaeolus cyanescens, which just so happens to grow on hardwood

Hi Cosmicgiggle do u really mean panaeolus and not psilocybe cyanescens? Didn't know that panaeolus can grow on hardwood. But they will like the manure in the mix.

 

[flylowgethigh]

There are dead trees down in my woods with shrooms growing out of them. Hell ya, I'll try growing some real shrooms. I'd rather you found some blotter somewhere around there though.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Where I put the fert is already turned dark. I mixed up and poured 10 gallons of microbe water on the piles today.

 

[Chunkypigs]

just leave them be, don't dump shit on them, they are already innoculated with your local fungus.

in 3-4 years you can start adding them into soil mixes and in 7-8 years they will be soil.

my pile at 8 years, I started with 50 times as much as your pile keep adding to it.

I lay it down on my beds every year and add plenty o perlite to lighten it, add ferts and boom!

add some dope genetics... Chaching!

 

[star crash]

Someone’s getting the growing bug ....it’s a seasonal thing

 

[Sunshineinabag]

It's a start. Tree guy is bringing me the shredded tops off hardwood trees they take down. Leaves and branches. I may start collecting the clippings off the acres of grass I mow here too. Add some ammonium nitrate, or urea, and let the rain and old Sol do their thing. I put 20 gallons of ammonium nitrate on before it rained yesterday. I will add fungus and bacteria as it breaks down. Those are test piles. The rest will be going on a couple acres of clay based dirt I want to improve. I think a compost pile on hard clay will soften it up, and that test pile location is a good place for a house. I need to hit up lawn mower services here for their clippings also.

filedata/fetch?id=17841003&d=1619295591filedata/fetch?id=17841004&d=1619295605

https://vermontcompost.com/
Worked with Elliot for a bit. I hsvf a mastes composting cert from UVM with whst i learned.....id suggest following their lead

 

[Sunshineinabag]

just leave them be, don't dump shit on them, they are already innoculated with your local fungus.

in 3-4 years you can start adding them into soil mixes and in 7-8 years they will be soil.

my pile at 8 years, I started with 50 times as much as your pile keep adding to it.



I lay it down on my beds every year and add plenty o perlite to lighten it, add ferts and boom!






add some dope genetics... Chaching!

Oh here we go

 

[Great outdoors]

I would think you could contaminate the soil underneath it and the groundwater as well. In my country you must have a cement platform for any composting pile. Just because the stuff it leaches, especially when you also putting other things into it by the gallon.

If you are using strictly organic material this makes absolutely no sense.
In fact the soil below would be revitalized and be very fertile.

 

[flylowgethigh]

Who's got 8 years to wait for this stuff to convert? I have eqpt to fluff the piles, and I will add as much green N as I can get a hold of, as well as urea.

That is just the start. I will be able to write off the fuel, eqpt, ferts I buy, the irrigation line, and the electricity for the irrigation, fixing and running my little dump truck to fetch material...all of it. I milked the last "business operation" for well over a decade, losing money the whole time (doing what I would do anyways @ a 25% tax rate discount). Time to realize the last business didn't work, and move on. Organics. Yeah, that's the ticket. The dims at the IRS should love it. I hope they don't bust me for making CO2.

Maybe I should take the lead from former dim-o-rat Senator Lugar, and trade carbon offsets too. Black walnut trees take 30 years to grow, and make about $100/yr in root burl (so I have been told). So you have a private forest and the .guv picks up the tab.

http://wikimapia.org/4154932/Lugar-Stock-Farm

 

[flylowgethigh]

If you are using strictly organic material this makes absolutely no sense.
In fact the soil below would be revitalized and be very fertile.

I have that concern. Red clay is good to build on, and my test piles are on a good building site. I am gonna move my test piles because the organics can leach down into the clay and lose the binding forces that make it so hard. That is one reason for this project, to convert a couple acres I have to very good organic soil, fix my garden better, and have my own supply.

 

[Great outdoors]

I have that concern. Red clay is good to build on, and my test piles are on a good building site. I am gonna move my test piles because the organics can leach down into the clay and lose the binding forces that make it so hard. That is one reason for this project, to convert a couple acres I have to very good organic soil, fix my garden better, and have my own supply.

Simplest solution if you want to convert a couple acres is to just cover the couple acres with a foot of wood chips and be done with it. 2yrs and you will start to see some big benefits.
If you want to speed the process up you can cover the ground with a high N organic source before throwing the wood chips down. Soy bean meal from the feed store fits the purpose well and it's quite cheap.

 

[thailer]

I don’t think you can call it organic compost if you’re using ammonium nitrate. Try a softwood tree next time and you’ll have compost much quicker; especially if it’s sawdust. Fresh chicken poop on a sawdust floor needs to be replenished often and for good reason. There’s mushroom compost available locally here and one is using ammonium nitrate and the other uses chicken litter. The litter product is labeled organic.

 

[flylowgethigh]

All in good time. Only hardwood chips. This guy is bringing me the sredded tops of the trees... branches and leaves all mixed together. No pine, cedar, or sweetgum. Some really nice stuff coming in. The last load was cherry, and smells nice. I have seen this stuff called ammoniated wood, but it is still compost. One conundrum is getting the nitrogen (besides bagging my clippings). A pallet of 33% bagged urea is the same price as bulk 46% urea, but a lot easier to handle and store. I have a good source of chicken shit, but am kinda afraid to use it at this stage. For now the piles are being dumped and I don't have to lift a finger. . My equipment to move it with needs fixing anyways.

I missed this spring, but I think planting a cover crop of red and white clover would be good for that soil also. There is a cotton gin nearby that was piling up the seed hulls - that stuff is great for mixing into clay to break it up. The organic colloids leaching out of it totally changed a hard red clay place they stored it on. Problem with that stuff is the cotton is sprayed with some nasty chems, and also the cow farmers buy it to feed their cows, so the price is getting high.