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PostPosted: Sun Aug 22, 2004 4:32 pm 
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Location: central california
Central California at this time of year is mostly brown. At least that's all I have for my pile. I want some some of booster because I will have another pile in less than 3 months. I can't get chicken manure any more, so I thought I would use some ammonium sulfate (21-0-0). It only costs $0.20/lb, which is a lot less than those little boxes of "compost starter".

Is this a bad idea? How much I should use on 3 cu.yd. of dry leaves and wood chips.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:22 pm 
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There are plenty of free or economical natural nitrogen sources available, besides using those synthetic sources like ammonium ***** !!!!

Try using lots of food scraps, weeds, meat scraps like fish, urea (urine), or even cheap protein cattle/horse feeds.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 6:47 pm 
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Cottonseed meal will also work and it is not very expensive at the feed store. We often made hot compost piles with nothing but dry leaves and the cottonseed meal.
Richard Spitzdr


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 23, 2004 9:56 pm 
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Location: central california
Somehow, I dislike the idea of putting meat on my pile more than I dislike putting urine on it. I have tried urine in the past, in a small scale experiment. It smelled bad. Chicken manure smells bad in the collection barrel, but not on the pile. But the whole pile smelled bad when I put urine on it. Maybe I have some repressed memories, but I am sensitive to that smell.

Maybe I used too much. What is the nitrogen content, and how much should I use per cubic yard? Is 1 yard too small for an experiment? In case I still don't like it, I really don't want to stink up everything.

Cottonseed oil sounds interesting. Do you know the nitrogen content? And what should I expect to pay?

Thanks for the replies


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 7:28 am 
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A real compost pile must first be aerobic. Lots of constant aeration, via either frequent turning (the laborious way) or lots of stationary aeration vents or pipes all through the pile (the easiest way).

Next, the pile should have at least 2-3 times more browns than greens, and/or more plant matter than animal matter in the pile. The extra carbons act as an odor eater. Also keep in mind that you can't develop humus successfully without lots of carbon, since humus is mostly carbon and microbes.

Constant moisturization is essential too, since all microbes need water to survive and breed. I like using any form of compost tea, rainwater, or urinated water, instead of plain faucet water to moisturize my piles. This adds extra water, nitrogen, and microbes to the pile for faster decomposition.

If you keep the C:N balanced, and the aerobic microbes happy, as suggested above, you will never have a stinky, slow decomposing, compost pile.

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:18 am 
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cal-compost wrote:
Cottonseed oil sounds interesting


Note that Richard said cottonseed meal, not cottonseed oil. That would make a big difference in price and effect.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:45 am 
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Yes, cottonseed MEAL. As soon as I sent that, I said "Ooops, I hope nobody notices that". Cottonseed meal is available around here, but it seems to be a specialty item because it's rather expensive. A 4 pound box sells for $6!! A 40 pound bag sells for $20, and the NPK is only 6-2-1.

But it's organic, right? One reason I initially wrote OIL is because I avoid any (human) food with cottonseed oil in it. It's my understanding that cottonseed oil is undesirable because the plant is typically heavily treated with various poisons. Does this have a negative effect on the compost pile?

I'm still wondering about the urine treatment. An earlier message mentioned "urinated water". So you don't use it full strength? What concentration is appropriate? Can it compensate for an almost total lack of greens?


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 1:49 pm 
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Unlike most of our human bodies, a well designed hot compost pile can digest many bad pathogens, diseases, mild toxins, weed seeds, etc., and balance and buffer many metals and other nutrients from organic mattter, no matter where it originally came from, via powerful aerobic microbes and earthworms.

Back to the urea question, it really doesn't matter how you use it in your compost pile. It's all good! Natural urea can contain up to 45% available soluble nitrogen (45-0-0). All nitrogen sources regardless of where they come from, must be balanced with carbon sources to successfully produce healthy humus for soil building.

Also as a side note, don't worry too much about NPK ratings on fertilizers and soil amendments. (Personally, as a no-till organic gardener, NPK means almost nothing to me any more!)

The whole NPK concept was designed by conventional non-organic farmers to measure the amounts of available SOLUBLE N,P, and K in these synthetic fertilizers. Most have little or no micronutrients, and basically no organic matter at all in them.

In all composts, mulches, compost tea recipes, and natural fertilizers and soil amendments, there are far more INSOLUBLE nutrients besides just N,P,K, plus micronutrients, and organic matter in these products, that no synthetic product has. Natural soil amendments and fertilizers have low NPK ratings, because they have to go through a microbe's or an earthworm's digestive system first, before the nutrients become available and soluble for plants to use. Don't be fooled by NPK ratings!

I read once from the book "The Biological Farmer", that every soil/composting microbe that you breed in your soil, acts to a plant's foliage or root system, as a 10-5-3 synthetic NPK fertilizer plus micronutrients!

So instead of worrying about NPK ratings and exact plant fertilization and other soil chemistry issues, just focus on the biology and physics of the soil by feeding the microherd and the earthworms plenty of organic matter.

Happy Gardening!

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The entire Kingdom of God can be totally explained as an Organic Garden (Mark 4:26)
William Cureton


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:16 pm 
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OK, I'm sold: 45% and it's free. My plan is to dilute it 2:1 just so I can spread it out better. The test will be whether I can dig my hands into the pile and not come out smelling too bad. I like the smell of a pile that's really cooking.

The only reason I was interested in the NPK rating was because I was just looking for a good source of nitrogen. Without it, I knew my pile would take forever to "cook down".

Thank you CaptainCompostAL.


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 12:30 pm 
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You're welcome my friend!

Happy Composting!

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William Cureton


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