Hi! Pam, I would like to come in on the compost, Allan.
If made in the warmer part of the year, in a contained heap and turned once or twice, you cane have good compost in six or eight weeks. It must be at least one cubic metre volume and preferably in a cube. We use a compound made from non returnable shipping pallets. These are about four feet or one point two metres square. Simply wire or tie in to a square. Get as big a variety of materials as possible. At least three manure's, one being chook, pigeon or turkey. A mixture of different green and dry vegetable material. If dry, soak in an old bath, this goes for both manure and dry grass, old paper etc. Dry material must be very wet. Build in thin layers. Old cow manure is low in nitrogen and should be one to one - one to three with vegetable material. Fresh pigeon/ turkey is high in nitrogen and should be about one to thirty - vegetable material. These are the opposite ends of the spectrum. What is good is to soak the bird manure for at least some hours and literally pour it on. No layer should be more than one and a half inches thick. The amount of water required is much more than you may think. The finished pile should be one third water. Thus a pallet compound will take 330 to 350 litres of water. I like to get most of it in into the dry materials before building the heap. I have all my wheel barrows, baths, old sheep troughs etc in service and well wet all dry material before hand. I add my Preps in liquid form, sprinkled on to the heap, during building. The top of the heap should be covered with old bags, wool skirtings, old hay, what ever, as long as it is wet and will protect the top from drying. The top of the heap should be level, unless the weather is very wet, then slightly domed, if very dry, slightly hollowed to catch any passing shower. By day three the heap will be too hot to stand your arm in it and will kill the weed seeds etc. If time is available, after two or three weeks, take one side out of the compound and make a new compound along side. Remove the top and front of the heap and place in a mound in the middle of the new compound. Pull the centre of the old heap out, to allow access to the other the "cold edges", place them also in the middle. Place the remaining material on the top and sides of the new heap, finishing with a flat top. Redampen, as required while remaking the heap and cover. By six weeks the heap should be ready to place in the storage compound and used as soon as all the heat is out of it. If time and energy allows, two turnings are preferred. The size of the heap will have reduced to a quarter to a third of a compound. It is good to have two rows of compounds facing one another, with room to work between them. Start by stock piling material in one row and build your first heap at the right end of the other row, depending which hand you are. Make sure you are doing it the comfortable direction. Then move the material along the row and the last in the row is the storage compound. As they fill, start using the other row. It is really nice to have a couple of cube metres of compost on hand and ready to go when you are. When the compost is moved to the storage compound, I have a sloping screen about two feet wide and five feet high, with one inch holes. I throw the compost through this, removing any large or uncomposted bits and also mixing the heap. Anything rejected by the screen goes in compound one next time. I have a fifteen inch length of twelve inch pipe that fits between lugs on a sheet and half inch plate steel and a fencing crow bar with the knob on the end for tamping the posts in. In this I crush bones, oyster shells, lobster shells, fish heads and bones from the liquid compost making and any thing I think will add some minerals to the compost. the section of pipe just lifts off, allowing easy collection. I also add a couple of hundred grams of super fined basalt dust. This in below 70 micron size. If not to hand, I crush the granites and amphabolites off the property, as fine as I can in the above device. I have the rock dust in an old and very large salt shaker and add a little every layer. When the compost is in the storage compound(s), it should be kept covered from drying and checked for moisture and not allowed to dry out. I introduce compost worms and make sure to food them a few kitchen scraps etc, so you can see they are going OK. Remember, compost is a living medium and should be used within a reasonable time and well cared for until it is used. The above is hot compost and will make the best compost and also in the shortest time. I also have a mouldering compost heap, same compound, nearby. This is used to handle kitchen scraps, not wanted by the chooks or the worms (possibly too much for them to handle) any fish waste from cleaning fish, the dog's old bones, shredded papers from the office etc. Because this is a slow mouldering heap, it may attract rodents, so needs monitoring. I had Bush Rats in mine a few weeks ago and did not want to kill them as the are quite cute, but just as destructive as the imported ones. So I made a homoeopathic of the Radionic Rate to send Rats packing and sprayed it on and around the compound. The family of eight or nine moved on, to I know not where, and I have my compost rodent free again. I let this type moulder until the compound is full, often a year to eighteen months. I add a bit manure now and a again and sometimes grass or wet shredded paper, if it is too much just vegetable scraps etc. I then put the heap through the one inch screen and the finished compost is used or stored. Bones fish heads etc go for crushing and are added to a new "hot" lot. Any uncomposted material goes in the bottom of the compound with layers of wet manure. This give a good start on the bottom of the heap and has the biota ready to work on the bits and pieces as they are added. With making liquid composts, I have plastic containers with firmly fitting lids ranging from twenty litre to two hundred litres. If I have a lot of fish waste or if I have processed say a couple of wheat bags of mussels, I make liquid compost by just covering all the shells and bits with water and adding the Preps. When used, it is diluted ten to one to thirty to one, depending how strong it is. When finished, any sludge goes in the next compost and the shells for crushing. We also make liquid weed composts. One way of making sure the seeds do not survive is to add some fresh chook poo at make sure it gets really hot. I usually put a little crushed rock dust in each liquid brew also. The above is more work than slow mouldering heaps, but you do not loose as much to the atmosphere. With a slow heap, I have heard you can loose most of your nitrogen and a large amount of the carbon as these are a large part of why you want the compost, it seem sense to do the bit extra work and get it available much earlier and in much better condition. Some of you will have heard of the Tulka Fire, a bit over a year ago. One of our Permaculture Group members was one of the lucky ones, still had enough house to live in while the rest was rebuilt, but lost the out buildings and the garden was burnt to dust, just charred sand. We went down as a group, every one bringing their favourite poo and vegetable matter. I took pallets for a two bay compound and preps and rock dust. We filled one and three quarters the other. He turned them twice and in six or seven weeks had one compound full of finished compost and he then started the other one him self. Lacking confidence, because the sand had become water repellent and he had not used compost in quantity before, he spread the bit over a cube metre about three inches deep and turned it in. as all the heat was out f the compost he planted his winter garden and had the best crop he had ever grown on that site, while all the other burnt out houses had little success. He told me the garden was a big part of getting over the shock of the fire. Gil Allan Balliett wrote: > >Am about to expand from no garden to five acres! I am about to rent > >a house and land to try it for a year and see what it will support. > > Pam - Congratulations on your willingness to walk the talk. You can't > really expect to get a payback for your efforts in less than three > years. (Just think of 7 months to two years to make good compost > onsite, for example.) Are you going to be able to get a long term > lease? -Allan
