Thanks!

RickCorey said:
Lately I've been throwing anything woody in a heap like your #2 and mumbling "hugelculture", with the plan of some day accumulating enough to be worth burying under a bed.

But now I'm thinking, after the wood softens a little, and after I sharpen my lawnmower blade, I might just chop up that woody heap with the lawn mower and add the shreds to my main pile. I did that with one batch of low-growing juniper bushes, but I did it on my driveway where the chips flew around everywhere. I couldn't get the chips small enough to compost quickly or small enough to add whole to soil after a brief composting. I think the mower blade was too dull, and the wood too green.

Some day!

Well I use my lawn mower for grass and leaves and *little* twigs, too--it is also noisy, but nowhere near as bad as the chipper.

Forgive me, I thought Rick was talking about wood and the image of him trying to mow-chop junipers in the driveway is comical. For wood--I'm talking tree limbs and branches and woody shrubs and large stalks and the like--I use the chipper, about once a year or whenever the pile gets in my way. And it really does ruin the peace but I get a nice batch of course chips and fine chips and no annoying pile of brush and the peace returns. We used to haul it all to the 'Green Waste' place and then return with a load of compost they made from previously dumped materials--that worked just fine too and I still pick up plenty of compost from them

Yep a chipper would be most handy for that size stuff, I completely agree.

I once worked a job where the chipper was running most days of the week, it was a huge grounds that was maintained by a very small crew using only organic practices, and the chipper was essential. I still hated it!

>> For wood--I'm talking tree limbs and branches and woody shrubs and large stalks and the like--I use the chipper,

Anything thicker than my pinky finger I just throw behind some trees. THEY will stay there until they rot or I get around to sifting a little clay over them to help them stay moist so they rot faster. A chipper would totally be the right tool for that job, but waiting a few years for them to soften might enable the lawn mower to make more progress on them.

I only produce wood when I cut back or dig out the low-lying juniper bushes that some landscaper planted as a no-care space filler. Mostly those branches are like woody vines up to a 1/4" diameter, but a few are larger. I chop them short with some old bolt cutters that I use like lopping shears, then try to shred with the (small, pretty quiet, electric) lawn mower.

With the dull old blade, on the twigs around or over 1/4", that's somewhere between inefficient and futile.

I gathered the chips after each pass and screened out the ones that were still too big and chopped them again.

Wow. That's dedication!

I'll say!
Well, I confess--I waste a lot of precious time and energy doing a lot of things with inferior tools and equipment because I must make do with what I have, too. Sorry 'bout the 'chipper' wise crack. However, there is a true principle about jobs being easier and faster --and sometimes just plain 'possible' when using the right tool for the job. Taking out the sidewalk with a crow bar and a sledge hammer was just a 'proof of concept' for about fifteen minutes and then I rented a jack hammer--for example. And I never would have been able to get all those huge rocks in my rock gardens or dig out thickets of trees without the heavy equipment. I am fortunate to have such a great equipment rental place, close by, that delivers and picks up, whenever I can afford the urge to do something radical.
May I suggest at least sharpening the blades, if not replacing them?

Okay--now back to composting--I'll shut up

Dirtdorph,

No problemo!

Usually I am ALL FOR the right tool for the job. When I go out to anything in the garden, I usually carry 3-4 long-handled tools just because each one is better at some aspect of the task.

>> May I suggest at least sharpening the blades, if not replacing them?

In this one case, desire for a working tool beats out my all-transcendent cheapness. Yes to both, so I can use a sharpened old blade for rough wood chipping and a new blade on things like lawn and leaf shredding.

>> I am fortunate to have such a great equipment rental place, close by, that delivers and picks up,

Drool, drool, drool! I have to mop up drool when I walk through the HD tool rental area, but then picture myself trying to lift it in and out of a trunk ... not again in THIS lifetime!

>> -I'll shut up

No, no, keep it coming. If you can laugh harder at my quirks than I already laugh at my own quirks, then I don't yet fully appreciate how silly I am! Also, anything you might say, my SO has already said ... repeatedly, and heatedly, withOUT tempering the wind to the shorn lamb.

As another SO used to describe me fondly: "Helpless, hopeless, worthless, useless and TOTALLY without redeeming social value". I'm reasonably sure she was at least PARTLY kidding, at least MOST of the time.

P.S. I lived in New Jersey for over five years. I don't think anything that can be printed in a family-friendly forum could seriously offend me.

Using a lawn mower to replace a chipper is only a little dumber than using a pick, mattock and trenching shovel to replace a plow, soil auger or roto-tiller. I do like to get hands-on with soil I'm rescuing.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what the problem was in breaking up concrete with a crow bar and a sledge hammer. "What, didn't he or she have a pick? ... Oh, he/she wanted to do it the EASY way!!"

Several seconds later I heard a faint echo in my head, perking up from some seldom-heeded brain region: "... wanted to do it the SMART way!"

I am a she and my BF was using the pick!
So...do you need some loppers?

So far I'm getting by with my bolt cutters. Someone found them for me at a tag sale or Goodwill, and now they are "my" beloved sort-of loppers.

I do have another pair of pretty cheap things that probably are real loppers (just short handled). I keep them sharp and don't use them on anything that would bend the blades.

I also have a pair of tin snips that I use for light pruning ... my plants are tough and forgiving that I don't use surgically-sharp Fiskars wiped with alcohol between bushes.

I found my big old rusty pick-head abandoned in a falling-down shed in a yard carved out of an ex-farm where I rented for a few years. The lawyer-owner didn't want it and barely knew what it was (PPPFFFTTT).

Making do is a needful art, IMO, and one I also practice, whilst drooling over catalogs online and off that show tools I'd love to own.

However.

One thing I must have, and especially must have for my composting, is a spading fork. Because I've moved a lot and over long distances, with just enough cashola to make it from Point A to Point B, Ihave had to leave a lot of stuff behind including garden stuff and in particular a series of spading forks.

But when I arrive at my destination, it is pretty much the first tool I buy.

Harvested my compost today. I used the unfinished stuff to start the next one. I got quite a lot! I'm pretty much always surprised by how much useable compost comes from one season's composting. It was wetter than it should have been, though. It's fine, just a bit too moist. I think this is because the cylinder was so full I was not really able to lift and aerate the lower portions for a while,and though we've had very little rain, the compost sits in a hole and so water flows down there from whatever! I also have probably overwatered it at times because it's been so dry here and I overestimated how much it needed.

No big deal though. I have a lot to work with, and it's okay that some of it is not fully finished; by spring it will be!

For the first time in a while I'm wanting a sifter, though, to screen some of it. I haven't felt I needed to use one in years, but here it seems it would be handy. I used to use those square plastic nursery flats that were gridded on the quarter inch, but I haven't seen any of those in a while! I even looked around at some websites selling nursery supplies, flats and pots, and didn't find any of those. A few years ago, they were all over the place.

Ah well.

I made a shifter to mount on the wheelbarrow, but as I learned later, I don't actually need one. By being patient and letting the compost reach a more finished state and turning it a few more times, the compost reaches a state that it no longer needs screening. But, when I was needing a lot of compost in a hurry a shifter was very handy and provided some beautiful compost.

I completely agree! One reason I want to use a screen here, though, is that we've added eggshells to the compost and they just don't stop looking like eggshells very soon!

And yes I am in a bit of a hurry here, because there has not been good compost here before, pretty much ever from what I can determine.

You can use a 4-prong cultivator and a steel rake to pull most sticks and twigs out of unfinished compost, if you don't mind a few chips being left.

Once the c9ompost has been rained on a few times, the fine particles will settle and leave the coarse bits on top. Then, you can either rake those off, or call them "mulch".

But I like sifting. If something doesn't go RIGHT through 1/2" mesh, I demote it or "hold it back a year".

I used to figure that slow pieces were probably full of microbes that break down slow pieces. Thus I thought that each piece I demoted to the next pile, or the "young end" of a compost row inoculated the younger compost.

However, since then I've read that the big pieces tend to be broken down by larger soil organisms, and THEN microbes can process them faster. If so, any "inoculation" probably requires wholesale transfer of the outer layer to carry along insects or whatever.

I still think that transferring some of the core of an active pile does jump-start a fresh pile with a big dose of rapidly growing microbes.

I can't find it now, but I've read about "phases" of composting, including (something like) these phases:
- raw material
- hot phase
- warm phase
- finishing

Different populations predominate in each phase, and then mostly get eaten by the population in the next phase!


so microbes can take it the rest of the way.

Good info, Rick.

Here, this batch is all going onto the beds, with some kept out to use in potting. What's going on the beds I mainly want it to look reasonably finished and don't mind a few dark sticks and twigs. For the potting mix I'll no doubt end up sifting and sorting with my little fingers.

Sounds good!

I used to have problems with damping off in seedling trays, so I never add compost to my seedling mix or potting soil.

But a really healthy, aerobic compost pile might add more beneficial or protective microbes than pathogens. That's why many people make compost tea.

However, my damping off problems might have come from over-watering.seedling mixes that were very water-retentive to start with. Maybe I could use compost in seedling trays now. And re-potting adult plants probably never causes damping-off, anyway.

I collected some links and quotes while browsing to refresh myself on the phases and organisms involved:

Colorado State U.
Power-Point-like overview of composting & compost organisms:
http://www.extsoilcrop.colosta...


Cornell: "Compost Microorganisms": Bacteria, Actinomycetes, Fungi, Protozoa & Rotifers.
http://compost.css.cornell.edu...

26-page Cornell PDF Chapter 1:
"THE SCIENCE OF COMPOSTING" (Chemistry, Physics & Biology)
http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/ch...

1–6. Functional Groups of Organisms in a Compost Food Web.

Tertiary Consumers are organisms that eat secondary consumers:
centipedes, predatory mites, rove beetles, pseudoscorpions

Secondary Consumers are organisms that eat primary consumers:
springtails, feather-winged beetles, and some types of mites, nematodes, and protozoa

Primary Consumers are organisms that feed on organic residues:
actinomycetes and other bacteria, fungi, snails, slugs, millipedes, sowbugs, some types of mites, nematodes, and protozoa


Google Images - "compost phases"
https://www.google.com/search?...


image, lots of bugs
http://www.google.com/imgres?i...

This is my bin. Made out of recycled plastic, 1200l and HUGE! Gonna take ages to fill up. Was a fun little project to put together. Just screwing it all together, but nonetheless I'm proud (I'm not a real handy man :p )
I'll post a new pic tomorrow of it in its final place behind the shed.

Congrats on the new bin. It's a beauty!