Need to learn "composting made easy"

[patandchickens]

You know what is really good for covering a compost pile. Crummy old discarded carpeting (like from the curb). In any climate I've lived in, and possibly the Pac NW too LOL, it lets enough rain thru to keep the pile respectably moist while encouraging EXCESS rain to run off and preventing so much evaporation in dry weather.

Plus, you know, "free"

Pat

 

[k0xxx]

You know what is really good for covering a compost pile. Crummy old discarded carpeting (like from the curb). In any climate I've lived in, and possibly the Pac NW too LOL, it lets enough rain thru to keep the pile respectably moist while encouraging EXCESS rain to run off and preventing so much evaporation in dry weather.

Plus, you know, "free"

Pat

Hey, great idea. With our community Spring cleanup taking place soon, there's usually a lot of old carpet going out to the curbs. It'd be worth picking some up this year, and then putting it back out again next year before it starts rotting into the pile.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[patandchickens]

Gotta stock up on discarded carpet anyhow, it is useful for SO many other great things too, both in the garden and elsewhere

Pat

 

[kcsunshine]

The important thing is to put your compost piles where you're going to use them. It's easier to haul a bucket of poo to the compost pile than it is to haul 3 wheelbarrows of compost to your garden site.

My DH does everything the hard way, but it's his muscles, not mine. He drives all over town in the fall picking up leaves from the curbs. These are either piled on a compost pile, or he spreads them out directly on the garden. Mind you, our garden is 1/2 acre. Then, in the spring, he spreads aged manure and composted materials on the rotting leaves and tills it in. You can stick a shovel into our garden anywhere a come up with a dozen or more night crawlers. They work wonders on rotting leaves.

 

[savingdogs]

Well maybe "composting made easy" would work better with an industrious hubby like that!

I'm usually the one playing in the dirt here.

 

[patandchickens]

The important thing is to put your compost piles where you're going to use them. It's easier to haul a bucket of poo to the compost pile than it is to haul 3 wheelbarrows of compost to your garden site.

Only if your poo comes in quantities of one bucket at a time

Seriously. If it is being produced in larger amounts -- say, three horses, or the semi-anuual total clean out of a 30-chicken-and-turkey coop -- it is really MUCH easier and more efficient to let it compost as near as possible to the source.

Because, it will reduce in size (and sometimes weight) by half or two thirds before it becomes compost.

Since it has to make the total trip from Point A to Point B at *some* juncture in its life cycle, it is a lot less work to leave it until there is half as much of it, or less

(The exception is of course, as you say, if the compost is being produced in very easily portable quantites and you're wlaking past there anyhow.)

Pat

 

[Farmfresh]

Another thought is that if you are just generating poo by the bucket dig a little hole and dump the bucket directly into the garden. A new little hole every time you had poo to "compost". It would work great like that ... but most of us have more poo than that.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

The important thing is to put your compost piles where you're going to use them. It's easier to haul a bucket of poo to the compost pile than it is to haul 3 wheelbarrows of compost to your garden site.

Only if your poo comes in quantities of one bucket at a time

Seriously. If it is being produced in larger amounts -- say, three horses, or the semi-anuual total clean out of a 30-chicken-and-turkey coop -- it is really MUCH easier and more efficient to let it compost as near as possible to the source.

Because, it will reduce in size (and sometimes weight) by half or two thirds before it becomes compost.

Since it has to make the total trip from Point A to Point B at *some* juncture in its life cycle, it is a lot less work to leave it until there is half as much of it, or less

(The exception is of course, as you say, if the compost is being produced in very easily portable quantites and you're wlaking past there anyhow.)

Pat

This is why the new garden plot is being built up right outside the left hand chicken pen. 70x40 I think?
And why, we are going to add another matching fence to double the space, so I can rotate garden plots.

 

[Farmfresh]

I love my chickens wintering in the garden!

 

[mlynd]

that is what I do I put my bantam chickens over my garden for the winter come spring I move them