Hello I’m looking to start my own compost pile and I was wondering what is good to add and what’s not I’m new to composting and I thought it would be good to see what is needed ty all
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I add all healthy (no diease) Vegetable, fruit, cannabis, and yard scraps. Also chicken poop, rabbit poop, and egg shells. Straw, leaves, kelp, crabmeal, minerals, and neem meal in small amounts as the pile grows. Every couple of weeks i move it around until it gets four or five feet high then i move to a bin to sit for six months to a year. After that i move it to my final bin for use. My current set up has been going for over six years or so.
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Ill get on this when i get home! Hahahah much love
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Here is my first pile building.
Here is my empty waiting area.
Here is my compost ready to use.
Some prickly pear pads waiting to be chopped up and mixed in.
My aloe growing next to my compost. This is what i feed to my plants.
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Do u just chop up the aloe vera
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I take one leaf and cut the rind off then put it in a bowl. I use an immersion blender to mix well with water. I put that in a five gallon bucket full of water and mix with a stick.(whatever you want to mix with)
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Niiiiice!..
[Hippy Mode ON}
Its so nice it is to see people recycle scraps for reduced waste stream and used to grow premium cannabis. This is beautiful natural gardening…
This is what I’m talking about folks, if you are going to go full organics, stick to your guns and dont reach for the synthetics. Make a pile!
Sungrown organic flowers are simply amazing,
[Hippy Mode off]
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So as of plant matter dose it matter how much of what like say could I make it 80% Patty and prickly pair cactus?
And can I add lawn weeds?
If that is all you got then use it. Just make sure you add an equal amount of hay or some carbon source. You can use weeds but if they are seeded then you will have them come up in your compost later on. Use your kitchen scraps as well. (vegetables, fruit, stale bread, old pasta)
This explains balancing your compost a lot better than me. I eyeball everything and use time to fix what i get wrong. If you do it better than me you will get faster compost.
http://homecompostingmadeeasy.com/carbonnitrogenratio.html
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Thank you for the help bro
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I like to use fall leaves and next spring/summer grass for browns and greens. They say the ideal compost C:N ratio is 30:1 but anything can go except dairy and meat scraps. There are great vids by Elaine Ingham out in you tube when making thermal compost the ideal temp is between 135-165 to kill off pathogens and weeds seeds, piles should not get above 165 degrees or you risk pile going anerobic, then you must turn or fluff the pile this is where the workout comes in and people fail at it it’s a wise decision to buy a good thermometer that’s 2-3 foot long Reotemp is one I use min dimensions are 3x3x3 for necessary heat build up . When is done cooking I cure it for a couple months then run it through my vericompost bin but this step is not necessary!
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There are other methods to compost too if thermal doesn’t fit your style Bokashi, verimcomposting or others that I employ which may be easier for new starters hope that helps!
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Ahh compost. I love compost. The earthy smell, all the critters, and the benefits to the garden??? Why dont everyone have 10 already!? Hahaha anyways. Making a compost pile for cannabis is just like making one for anything else. Except for cannabis most of us want the best of the best. The best bud and the best nutrients to grow the best bud. So thinking like this were not gonna want to recycle all our food scraps unless you eat a 100% plant based and garbage free diet. (Then you are also a composter check out humanure)
To start out this compost pile go collect a few pallets. I like to make mine with 3 walls leaving an open space ontop and one wall open for easy access. Then you wanna get some bricks. Depending on the size of the compost bin you made you want to lay down some bricks. Start right at the back wall and place them all the way to the open space and out of the compost bin by half a brick. Space the bricks a foot apart and make then 2 or 3 high. Now you want to start piling some stemmy material in there. I use cannabis stalks, nettle stalks, yarrow stalks, barley straw and timothy hay. Pile them around and over the bricks. This makes it so weeds dont block the air cannels you made with the bricks. You could even spray the stemmy material down with some IMO and LAB for beneficial bacteria. In a average pile you should have 30-70 parts carbon to every part nitrogen. In good compost the ratio is 10 or 12 to 1. The ideal ratio is 25:1. Now you want to add an activator. Manure, human urine, seaweed, alfalfa etc. This is to start up the composting process. I like to add many things for the nitrogen part. Nettle, yarrow, alfalfa, cannabis, clover, comfrey, whatever you have. Just make sure you keep the C:N ratio around 25:1.
I like to layer carbon, nitrogen, and some soil/compost/manure, etc. You can leave this now and you wont need to touch it till its done. Remember. Only add organic materials, make sure your compost pile is no smaller then 3 feet x 3 feet. And make sure it heats up enough to kill any unwanted seeds, pests, and pathenogens. A simple hand can do just dont burn yourself. You can also buy compost thermometers. Oh and while youre at it go ahead and make another one. Use one for recycling kitchen wastes, and the other for your cannabis only. You can add things to the pile if you wish. Just mix them with carbon first. And if you do add things the time for composting obviously increases. Once this is fully composted you want to take a really big smart pot. As big as you can. Put it on a pallet And start piling in some more carbon. I like to use barley straw and timothy hay as it breaks down fast. Now start putting a layer of thermal compost in there till the carbon is covered. Now topdress some kelp, neem, little rock dust and powdered malted barley (powderize it yourself dont buy powder). The barley speeds the process up a ton! Now mulch, compost, topdress, mulch, compost, topdress and repeat untill the pot is filled. Now add some worms. I prefer to use both red wigglers and euros as it gets the job done faster. Now mulch it with some carbon, do the topdresses, and water it in with LAB, IMO, aloe and fulvic acid. If you add more worms itll speed up the process, just dont add too many, remember they will reproduce and regulate their growth depending on the food source.
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There is also bokashi composting. This is where you have a two bucket system. One has holes in the bottom and goes inside the other. You add food scraps to it (you can even add little meat) then cover it with a bacteria inoculated bran. You can buy to bokashi brand bucket and bran or you can make your own. To make the bran get some organic wheat bran and spray it down with some LAB and let it dry out. Thats it. Now once you cover the food with the bran you put the cover on it and leave it for two weeks or so depending on what you added. Once you come back you will have a big clump of fungi and bacteria and a bunch of juice (leachate) in the bottom. Take out the compost and you can add that to your worm bin or compost pile. This will cause it to break down faster. Take the leachate and dilute it in a spray bottle and spray it around your house and yard. Bad bugs hate it good bugs love it. Youll notice pests around your house will drop in population. Also give your babies a spray. I dont like to feed my babies the leachate so i use it like that.
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Nice write up @lotus710 for beginners I would leave the bricks out and build it on good old earth , soil on the bottom would aid in decomposition. I like to sprinkle the lasagna layers with a previous compost batch or a couple of handfuls of soil between layers for your innoculum Lotus has it down !
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Seeds are killed off at temps 135+ maintained for 3/4 days if your using questionable starting material that’s why temps are important and rotating the outsides of the pile to the hot center to kill seeds and pathogens .
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Sorry dude. I fixed it. The bricks need spacing in between them for that reason. The bricks are great for providing a drought underneath. When the compost heats up the bacteria still need oxygen which the bricks help with. Without the bricks youll want to turn the pile every once ina while. But even then if you dont itll work!
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Dude, it looks like a weed to you, but how does one root the prickly pear pad.
I rescued a piece of a one of these and can’t figure out if it could root or not.
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