Cow manure and compost
I want to start a compost and am real excited about it. We have lots of trees (leaves in the Fall - brown) and we have the grass clippings (green). We don't have a big yard so we don't have a great deal of green. I have my food and know what to add and not add. I have access to a great deal of cow manure and would love to use it but can I put it in my compost? The cow farmer friend of mine suggest I get it in the winter when the piles are frozen and easier to handle. I also have lots of shredded paper - can I use that? What about the trimming from the bushes can I use those? I read somewhere to use pallets and I have enough to make a 3 bin compost bin. How long does it take to decompose so that I can use it next year? We have nothing but red clay and I really need to amend the soil so I though I could use this compost to it's full capacity. I live in Virginia if that helps.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Robin on -
You can and should compost cow manure. A hot pile will kill weed seeds and pathogens. Yes to shredded paper too. Are the bushes quite woody? If so, they'll take a while to break down. Sift them out of the finished compost and toss them into a new pile. If they're large pieces they might be more trouble than they're worth.
If you turn the pile as it starts to cool down you'll have finished compost in weeks to months depending on the size of the pile, what's in it, etc. Don't add anything new to the pile once it's cooking. I filled my bins over the summer as I harvested, added leaves in the fall and had finished compost in time to use it before the snow came and ground froze. Good luck!
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Permalink Reply by Pat Martin on -
That sounds great! Like a Christmas present. Will I have enough green? I keep reading equal amounts of green and brown.
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Permalink Reply by Darrol Shillingburg on -
Pat,
I recommend a couple of books on composting that I have found extremely useful - you have a lot of resources to work with and can create the "finest of composts" with some specific information about C/N ratios, temperature ranges and composting stages.
The first is "Organic Gardeners Composting" by Steve Solomon - available from Amazon.com
The second is "Compost, Vermicompost and Compost Tea, written by Grace Gershuny and published by the Northeast Organic Farming Asociation - its one of their Organic Principles and Practices Handbook Series - nofa.org
Happy composting - regards,
Darrol
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Permalink Reply by Ron on -
I once had a clay based soil and went about as follows:
I dug trenches a spade head depth "about 300mm deep and the same wide" and filled these with "compostable" materials - anything from greens to browns, newspaper, cardboard, etc.
To this I added a sprinkling of raw manure.
This was then watered (flooded) and covered as in a raised bed affect.
I then added ash and a sprinkling of fertilser to the top soil and worked it over without disturbing the buried materials.
This will break-down your clay based soil and cause it to become more granular. Agricultural lime will also aid you in doing this.
Then, as seasons pass, you mix the compost and soil thoroughly to get a very rich bed that can be used over and over again.
Some vegies thrive in heavily composted ground so you can apply this method all over untill you have done your whole garden. A friend once used sawdust from the stables to mulch his entire garden. He battled the first year as the manure was kind of strong but thereafter it became extremely spongy and fertile.
Good luck hey- remember you get out what you put in!
Regards
Ron
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Permalink Reply by Pat Martin on
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This is such good information. I had several large trees taken down and had the stumps ground. I heard the stumps would burn everything so it had to age. So I can do both your procedure and your friends and I should be good to go. What time of the year did you do this, the Spring or the Fall? I only have cow manure so the sprinkling doesn't seem feasible - maybe more like a thin layer. I will try all these methods and thanks for the info.
Pat
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