Compost

**Bear** · 10-29-2013, 05:05 PM

I made 5 stackable compost bins 4'x4'. All together they're around 4' tall, and move them kind of leapfrog style to four side by side spots beside the garden, usually having 2 spots active and two spots empty. In the empty spots, after I've put that pile into the garden, I plant things that I want to be "supercharged" like special peppers or tomatoes. In our back pasture there's a sandy type of soil that's very rich, near the house here it's all black dirt. I put sand into the chicken house and when I clean it out it goes into the compost bins and gets covered up with grass clippings from the yard, and after a year or two gets mixed into the garden.
In the hot, dry summer months you can put grass clippings from the yard right into the garden as a mulch. I let it lay in the sun a day or two to dry, and then put it around all the things in the garden it will cover. It works great around plants to help keep moisture in and the ground around the plants cooler.
I heat with wood and during the winter months the ashes from the stove also goes into the compost mix
Tea bags and coffee grounds are good too, and any fruit and veggie peels

**bigburtchino** · 10-29-2013, 06:08 PM

This is great other than scrap conversation guys! beardo that idea of trading compost for beer is something I could get into, maybe way into! Bear it sounds to me like you got this compost/gardening thing down to "How it was done". I grew up in western Arkansas (Polk county), gardening, composting, chickens, cutting firewood every day chores for my brothers and I. My mom did something like your supercharged compost with her watermelons. In those days nobody really worried about the science of gardening (soil ph?). It was what works and what don't, neighbors helped each other. We couldn't just run to the store, 30 miles away! A few years ago one of my customers gave a christmas present, a rotating/spinning custom composter. Of all things to give a guy that makes tons of compost a day. I found one online, cost her almost $300, more money than anybody should spend for your home made compost, I just kept thanking her, telling myself it was the thought of giving that counts and I'm not in Arkansas anymore!

**NHscrapman** · 10-30-2013, 05:43 AM

Originally Posted by Bear

I put sand into the chicken house and when I clean it out it goes into the compost bins and gets covered up with grass clippings from the yard, and after a year or two gets mixed into the garden.

Just a tip for grass clippings they are a super high source of nitrogen. nitrogen released as gas from your grass clippings is lighter than the air and will deplete upward into the air. If you either turn "toss" your compost or cover it after you add your clippings much more nitrogen will be trapped and a lot more heat generated creating a better compost.
I would like to see your bins as i am about to rebuild mine and am looking at all sorts of ideas there's a million and one out there.

I have worked here and been to many of the seminars put on by them. IMHO one of the leaders in organic and self sustainability farming using alternative non waste methods..
http://www.dacres.org/

**Bear** · 10-31-2013, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by NHscrapman

I would like to see your bins as i am about to rebuild mine and am looking at all sorts of ideas there's a million and one out there.

If you'll notice the corners, there's a 2x2 raised enough to allow the one below it to slip into the slot. The wood, excepting the treated 2x2 corner, is all old growth redwood that came from a job I was on, they were actually sending this stuff to the dump. It is all 7 1/2" x 1"(a solid inch thick) and I used little cross members to not only reinforce the corners but also to hold them 1" apart for air in/water out. When I first built them I painted a red X thinking I might need to have them marked for stacking but they turned out close enough they'll stack in any order or any direction. I also used liberal amounts of exterior glue.
You could probably use treated wood instead for the sides