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Post by Wheelgarden on Nov 2, 2022 17:30:53 GMT -5
Fed the mountain o' compost with a mountain o' more chopped fresh maple, tulip poplar, sweetgum leaves, and grass clippings. Turned weekly and used generously, my garden that was once clay years ago is now dark, rich soil. Combined with the low-till/no till method, I've got the dirt I always wanted and the harvests to testify. Enough cannot be said about the benefits of composting.
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Post by gianna on Jan 4, 2023 12:40:50 GMT -5
With the expected rain, I just raked the top of the delivered mulch pile to make it flat to collect more water. The pile has been there a few months. I have been spreading some of it, but not enough. This ground green waste, if moist, will turn into nice compost on its own, eventually with lots of worms. And the process has already started after the rains of a couple weeks ago. There are parts of the pile that are now quite warm and steaming. And parts that are still dry, but not too much. If we get a couple more inches, I'll probably cover it with a tarp so it doesnt get too saturated.
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Post by raphanus on Jan 6, 2023 16:17:04 GMT -5
I’m such a lazy composter. I pick one raised bed, whichever one looks the lowest, and throw coffee grounds and garden scraps and oak branches in it, and after six months or a year of that, I’ll throw some finished compost on top and plant something. The I pick a different raised bed and repeat the process. There’s no turning or aerating or anything like that, it’s very lazy. I have heard people refer to this as “cold composting” or “fungal dominated composting”, but given how hot and wet my climate is, I would guess that there are still a lot of bacteria involved in this process even if I’m not ever turning the compost.
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Post by desertwoman on Jan 6, 2023 17:41:48 GMT -5
Like you, raphanus , I am a very lazy composter. But as someone here once pointed out to me (and I'll pass on to you) "you are far from lazy!" So maybe we need to rename our compost style Compost happens. Slowly or quickly, depending on what we do or don't do to help it along. I always have beautiful black gold each year. I don't need it to break down quickly, I just need it in time for when I need it. And it's always there! I have a 2 bin composting as my main source. I start fresh in one of the bins each Fall, keep adding to it and let it do its thing all year: certain weeds, certain garden scraps from Fall and Spring clean up, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, leaves, grass clippings, (if it hasn't gone to seed- I also have a separate pile that is just clippings from the native grasses I grow, which I let get tall and seedy and a separate leaf pile that becomes leaf mold). The new Fall pile gets added to for a year. After I stop adding to the other bin, in the Fall, I dig in and use it for Fall feeding of the veggie garden and Spring top dress as I plants things and feed the soil around perennials.There usually is stuff on top that hasn't broken down yet and I shovel that over to the new pile I am starting I practice no till, so it just gets layered on top of the beds. I've posted this before but here is my 2 bin set up, made from pallets. Each bin is about 3 1/2ft x 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 I don't turn it but I do give it some water 2-3 times/year if its drier than our usual desert conditions.
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Post by gardendmpls on Jan 7, 2023 23:24:09 GMT -5
Looks like mine. Connecting pallets is easy.
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Post by Wheelgarden on Mar 4, 2023 18:42:21 GMT -5
We've got two piles of compost going. The huge (yuge!) one is the newest stuff that gets turned regularly, and the smaller finishing pile gets sifted and used when needed. You could say it's cold-composted for the most part, cold composting seems to retain more nutrients. Just make sure you give the earthworms their coffee grounds, so they can wake up perky and go to work.
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