How to make a composting bin

[greenesthash]

hello, i use terra canna professional soil. i was wondering how i can add nutrients into this soil.

this is my idea of a composting bin:

so i have this big metal bin, i add 50l of soil.

then i add chicken waste, egg shells, banana peels etc.

some leaves from trees in my garden

earth worms

what else can i add?

then just mix it all together and wait? that's it? in a few months i'll have nutrient rich soil?

how do i know it won't burn seedlings? i'm very new to composting

 

[Bob Loblaw]

No meat, no milk or dairy, no bones. You should mix it every few days, keep it damp but not soaking wet.

I welded an old discer blade on the open end, stuck a rod through and mounted it sideways up on 2 old sawhorses = easy mixing. Grass clippings are good, paper, coffee grinds, egg cartons etc are fine. Some enzymes are fine but you've already put some in with the chicken waste and soil. I put like 2 scoops of soil off the garden in mine.

I too are new to composting... mine is getting close to done I did put a lot of wood shavings in mine and crabapples off the ground.

I've no idea how you're gonna know how rich it is or what nutes it contains. Mine is for the garden.

 

[greenesthash]

i see thanks, anyone else can weigh in on this? especially on potential nutrient burn

 

[Emilya Green]

If you are really trying to create a minerally rich soil that can sustain our plants growth all through a season, you are going to have to work at it. Just guessing and throwing scraps at it is not the way to approach this. There are known recipes out there that have been proven to provide the right balance of nutrients, look up clackamas and subcool for those recipes. I strongly recommend going by recipe or your resulting soil might not be able to support life. A certain balance must be achieved between all of the elements in the soil... and if you end up with to much of one thing you can lock out other things, or you may not have enough of another thing to get you through the grow. Guessing is not an option... some wood chips for example can suck all the nitrogen out of your soil... did you check?

You really don't want to try to start seedlings in a strong composted soil... you can definitely burn some young plants to a crisp in soil that is too strong. Put your new strong soil in the bottoms of your containers and let the roots work their way into it, and use a good starting soil for your seedlings at the top of your continer, such as Fox Farm Happy Frog.

 

[SmokingWings]

hello, i use terra canna professional soil. i was wondering how i can add nutrients into this soil.

this is my idea of a composting bin:

so i have this big metal bin, i add 50l of soil.

then i add chicken waste, egg shells, banana peels etc.

some leaves from trees in my garden

earth worms

what else can i add?

then just mix it all together and wait? that's it? in a few months i'll have nutrient rich soil?

how do i know it won't burn seedlings? i'm very new to composting

Using a metal bin will work but would not be my "go to" container. The best, and easiest way, to start learning how to make your own compost is to make a compost pile. I have used concrete blocks (cinder blocks) to make the side and one time I used pallets.

Just find an out of the way spot in the yard, maybe behind a garage or shed and start the pile on the ground. That way the earthworms will find their way there on their own. Excess water, either from a heavy rain or from watering the pile, will drain out and into the ground. Once you find the best spot you can put up some sides to hold the material in a neat looking pile. That was where the pallets or concrete blocks came into play.

Start adding organic material. Like @Bob Loblaw mentions avoid meat scraps and dairy products. Leafs from the trees in the fall, grass clippings, weeds pulled from flower or vegetable gardens, the trimmings when pruning shrubs, the flowers themselves or the flower plants, old vegetable plants.

Avoid putting to much of any one thing on at a time. Examples include not putting on more than a couple inches of grass clippings since they will start to decompose anaerobically which means without enough oxygen and that can cause that foul smell that can upset family members and neighbors. Leaves are great for a compost pile but to many at one time will slow the process down. Again, best to mix stuff up so throw on a bunch of leaves and then throw on weeds pulled from the garden then another layer of leaves.

To many wood chips are bad because they take a lot of time for the micro-organisms to break down. And the micro-organisms will use up a lot of the available nitrogen to break the wood down. It will all be released back into the compost when the organisms die but if there are to many chips then it could take a couple of years. A couple of wood chips or pieces of sticks that fall out of a tree never bothered my compost piles but I avoided an large amounts.

I have seen commercial composting operations where the workers had compost piles that were 90% chipped wood but those piles would be 2 years before they were ready. In order to pull that off the workers would mix in material from nearby traditional compost piles a couple of times a year. The extra nitrogen from the compost would speed up the process and help the wood chips decompose faster. Without that extra compost those wood chip piles could take up to 5 years.

There are some decent articles available on-line on how to build a compost pile. I don't know how a google style search works out on a cell phone but using a desktop or laptop computer gives hundreds of web pages to look at using just the keywords:
how to build a compost pile

Collect and keep mixing the material and you will have world class compost in a couple of months. Add that compost to the other ingredients in your super soil mix and you are well on your way to better growing. And properly mixed and aged, that compost will not burn your plants.

 

[bobrown14]

I purchased plastic bins made specifically for vermi-compost. They have a lid with side ventilation and no bottom. Place it on soil.

You can put all your non meat and non dairy kitchen scraps along with anything else that decomposes. The worms will find the pile in the bin. It takes all year and into the winter. What I do is use 2 bins. 1 bin this year and after the new year we start using the 2nd bin and leave the other bin finish up over the winter time (bacteria dont care about the cold). By spring time there's vermi-compost ready to go. You can actually add in amendments to the bin like rock dusts and kelp meal etc. These are helpful for the worms.

Vermi-composting is all about the worms. Keep them happy and you will have the best soil you cant buy in a bag.

If you live out in the country you can add bones and dairy. The racoons will make short work of them they wont last overnight. The reason for not adding them is rats if you live in the city or suburbs. Last thing you want is rats.

 

[nivek]

in my opinion,, it is important to know this about compost. compost is more a soil conditioner than a fertilizer

however, you would know better than i if one can intensify compost,, the article below says one can



this from planet natural

Myth Busting
Don’t believe everything you hear about compost. The most common composting myths … exposed!



Read more
1. “Compost is a fertilizer.”
This one dies hard, and its persistence points to our cultural ignorance about plants and what sustains them. It persists because there is some truth in it as reluctantly acknowledged in the section revealingly entitled “Adds (a few) Nutrients.”
As admitted in that section, albeit through gritted teeth, compost does contain low levels of primary and secondary nutrients and important quantities of micro-nutrients. However, composts do not usually contain enough of the primary nutrients to qualify as a fertilizer or to satisfy the needs of most plants.
But compost does contribute to plant nutrition, not primarily through the nutrients it contains but through those it makes available to plants.

 

[bobrown14]

I've read most of her articles and get real skeptical. She's very very specific on her myth busting to a point where it sorta "sounds" comprehensive but when you read them closely and pay attention to her detail its very specific then she will say at the end some sort of catch all where it may or may not cover all aspects of this or that myth.


That and she studied horticulture for 40 years and just started gardening like 5 years ago.... which I find a bit weird. How do you study horticulture and not be a gardener?

Similar to being and engineer and not owning a tool box or any tools.


I agree with this one tho - compost is not fertilizer. Compost is composted plant material.

She will also say that there is not difference between organic and chemical fertilizers and she uses Glyphosate (round-up) "occasionally". These 2 point to credibility in my neck of the woods That wood be a loss of credibility.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Thanks ever so much for all the info on wood chips. I had my concerns putting them in there I think it was from something I've heard many years ago, something to the affect that wood chips are not great for the garden. Now I know why, I will drag my chips down to the local grass bin as I did before.

I threw a couple of extra scoops of sheepshit in there, I'll give it a couple more weeks and empty it in the garden and start again. Ya it took quite a while for those chips to start turning (6 weeks), They have a ways to go I'm sure, I'll dump that in an area and keep an eye out for nitrogen deficiency in that section next season...hmmm I guess I''ll dump the rest of that little shit pile in there.

 

[bobrown14]

They aren't be very careful about your selection of the type of wood chips. Some yes they will work but the vast majority will not work.

Here's the jist of it.
Microbes break down wood into compost. The microbes need food to break down the wood. That food is Nitrogen. You will have a short to medium term Nitrogen shortage specially in a container. In a garden they work a little better. I wood not use wood chips in a container.

You go ahead and try it and see how things turn out for you. I hope for the best for you.

If you start seeing yellowing plants with less vigor - that will be the Nitrogen shortage I speak of. Your solution will be to up-pot to some soil without the wood chips mixed in.

 

[bobrown14]

I've watched a pile of wood chips that the forestry service piled up in the woods near our house. We walked our dogs there all the time. It was very close to where I would go to collect worm castings (wild crafting EWC - is a thing) and watched the wood chip pile over several years. It took about 5 years for any plants to start to grow in the pile.

This is in the woods where there's all sorts of great soil all around but nothing wood grow in the wood chips not even mushrooms. After about 5 years finally small understory plants began to grow and the wood chips by that time were hard to tell they were wood chips looked like top soil mixed with a bit of wood debris.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Thanks
My personal paradise is downstairs in coco, I've no intention of growing my bud in compost (for now). That was the original poster he/she did not mention the wood chips it was I and I use that compost for my garden out back.

I'm glad I mentioned it though, I was too lazy to look up something that I really should have especially since it was on my mind.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I've watched a pile of wood chips that the forestry service piled up in the woods near our house. We walked our dogs there all the time. It was very close to where I would go to collect worm castings (wild crafting EWC - is a thing) and watched the wood chip pile over several years. It took about 5 years for any plants to start to grow in the pile.

This is in the woods where there's all sorts of great soil all around but nothing wood grow in the wood chips not even mushrooms. After about 5 years finally small understory plants began to grow and the wood chips by that time were hard to tell they were wood chips looked like top soil mixed with a bit of wood debris.

That pile had no nitrogen to help it along.... I'm assuming....dead wood?lol and no nitrogen to attract/feed the little ones.

 

[bobrown14]

Just a pile at the edge of the woods. Yeah there was no poop mixed in. I wood compost them and have used composted wood chips in my outdoor gardens with GREAT result as a top dress. I dont use them in containers.

They work for sure but not very quickly.

You wont be able to take wood chips mix that with potting soil and grow plants in it. This is the sort of thing that we see sometimes. The plants take a month or 2 to die.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

Well now that you say that I was thinking about using wood chips as a mulch under the strawberries to keep them off the ground. I think straw would be better (dry out quicker) but I do have the wood chips handy.... ya shavings for the mulch but chips/dust I think to the local grass bin.

 

[bobrown14]

You can use it for that for sure. The wood chips on top of the soil should be fine as a mulch. For annuals not so much Peat is a better choice. The strawberry patches around these parts the farmers use straw I've noticed.