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| 9:31:09 PM - Mon, Feb 15th 2010 |
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| We cleared some land last week and did a schred and chip job on the trash. Can we use this material for compost? I intended on building a good size compost bin and using the material--oak leaves,tree moss, dead branches pulverized, etc for large flowerbeds we are building presently. Any suggestions?
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| 10:00:58 AM - Tue, Feb 16th 2010 |
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Composting wood chips.
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Well, my advice is putting down a layer carbon based material like wood chips, old leaves, paper that is around 10cm thick, followed by a layer of high nitrogen material, this can be animal manure, coffee grounds, fresh grass clippings, fruit or vege scraps, bone meal and eggshells. Keep this layering system up until the pile is around 1-1.5m high.
An addition of a little bit of lime can also help to encourage microbes and worms into your compost heaps, as this raises the pH of the heap, since the normal composting process will make it slightly acidic.
You want to keep the pile moist/damp but not dry or wet, wet will suffocate any life in the compost heap, and slow down the process, it will also make it smell bad. Dry will just mean that the processes can't happen, and it will take a very very long time.
You will need to turn the heap every few days with a garden fork or something similar, just to aerate it.
Going like this, it should probably take around six months before you can use it! But, it will be great stuff, good for suppressing weeds and putting some life back into the soil!
Also check google out for more help, sites like these are useful:
Also, remember this, things like newspaper have many very important trace elements in their ink, like molybdenum and boron!
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Edited On 10:03:22 AM - Tue, Feb 16th 2010 by Potassium
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| "Gardening is a kind of disease. It infects you, you cannot escape it. When you go visiting, your eyes rove about the garden; you interrupt the serious cocktail drinking because of an irresistible impulse to get up and pull a weed." - Lewis Gannit
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| 10:45:05 PM - Wed, Feb 17th 2010 |
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| If you follow Potassium's advice above, it will be the fastest method of getting compost. There are lazier methods if you don't need it for a long time. Also, you can use all or some of it as a layer of mulch, which helps keep down weeds, retain moisture and will slowly break down and enrich the soil.
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