Motherfuckers constantly asking me how my growing soil's so rich and creamy; wait, that rich and creamy shit's the skin of my favorite SGs; the compost is rich and crumbly. To make a long story short, for years I made my compost from leaves and grass clipping and a little blood meal sometimes and urine - golden showers into the compost when the need arose - and, no, I never whacked off into it if that's where your mind no doubt went -- and I made it in a hoop I had created out of some one-inch hardware cloth which isn't the best way to build up heat but it definitely got hot. This year I decided to try something different so I bought me some 'official' compost bin things and here they are:
This is the "Biostack," a contraption with four box-sides that stack up to match the height of the pile. It has a folding top that doesn't keep flies out but this particular unit is only being used for further composting mulch I got elsewhere at this time, as an experiment. The PVC pipe has a lot of holes I made in it to aerate the pile down to the bottom, which is brick for the front foot and dirt for the back 1.5 feet - the idea being to draw some earthworms to the pile (although I'm gonna get a worm-setup one of these days)
This here's a unit called the "Earth Machine." It's round, as you see and has a removable screw-on top and a door below to remove 'finished' compost. I'd like someone to tell me what the point of that is since, with frequent turning of the composted materials there's never gonna be a time when the "unfinished" shit's on top and the "finished" shit's on the bottom - it's always gonna get tossed together. Anyway, this particular unit is being used for some compost I had been building in my wire hoop, then on the ground for a while, made up of leaves and grass but with the addition of all of the kitchen scraps (carrot shavings, banana peels, anything else, coffee grounds, etc.)
Still haven't actually answered the original question, though. The reason my compost is so fucking great is because of this:
This is a Sear's Craftman chipper/shredder with an 8 HP Briggs & Stratton engine - and it so trashes the brown material I run through it that the organic bacterias and nitrogen released in the pile has no problem whatsoever in breaking down the materials into dark-brown gold for me. I bought this unit new 16 years ago and it still looks and runs as new 'cause I bought it a Rubbermaid shed to live in at the same time. It hasn't seen as much duty as it should but I'll tell you - I can not start it up for 3 or 4 years, then, when I get the bug, she starts right up and does what she needs to do.
And don't think the tomatoes don't appreciate it.
This is the "Biostack," a contraption with four box-sides that stack up to match the height of the pile. It has a folding top that doesn't keep flies out but this particular unit is only being used for further composting mulch I got elsewhere at this time, as an experiment. The PVC pipe has a lot of holes I made in it to aerate the pile down to the bottom, which is brick for the front foot and dirt for the back 1.5 feet - the idea being to draw some earthworms to the pile (although I'm gonna get a worm-setup one of these days)
This here's a unit called the "Earth Machine." It's round, as you see and has a removable screw-on top and a door below to remove 'finished' compost. I'd like someone to tell me what the point of that is since, with frequent turning of the composted materials there's never gonna be a time when the "unfinished" shit's on top and the "finished" shit's on the bottom - it's always gonna get tossed together. Anyway, this particular unit is being used for some compost I had been building in my wire hoop, then on the ground for a while, made up of leaves and grass but with the addition of all of the kitchen scraps (carrot shavings, banana peels, anything else, coffee grounds, etc.)
Still haven't actually answered the original question, though. The reason my compost is so fucking great is because of this:
This is a Sear's Craftman chipper/shredder with an 8 HP Briggs & Stratton engine - and it so trashes the brown material I run through it that the organic bacterias and nitrogen released in the pile has no problem whatsoever in breaking down the materials into dark-brown gold for me. I bought this unit new 16 years ago and it still looks and runs as new 'cause I bought it a Rubbermaid shed to live in at the same time. It hasn't seen as much duty as it should but I'll tell you - I can not start it up for 3 or 4 years, then, when I get the bug, she starts right up and does what she needs to do.
And don't think the tomatoes don't appreciate it.
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i love compost