New to composting.... sort of

[ChickenMomma91]

The past few years I've tried composting in a 55 gallon plastic barrel. It didn't work out very well, it was hard to stir and got kinda yucky in the bottom. Things decomposed quite well but you had to tend it every couple of days. So I finally scrapped it at the end of this past season, I dumped what I had on the gravesite of my semi failure of a SBG along with the cleanings of my chicken coop (I only scoop everything out 2-3 times a year) and then tilled the heck out of everything and laid black plastic mulch on top to keep it well heated. so since about Halloween my garden has been put to bed in a sense.

I plan to rebuild my composting plan, making a new compost bin out of an old pallet I've yet to accuire with plenty of ventilation through the slats and a semi enclosed base. my main question is what should I NOT put in the compost, I know now 'diseased' plants and such but I had so tomatoes I lost to blossom end rot, I caught it warly for the most part and clipped them off at the branch then tossed them into the very back of my yard possibly landing in my neighbors (whoops) so the nones I found were removed quite far from my actual garden but could I compost those? Or the cucumbers that had issues?

 

[canesisters]

Sounds like you have a good plan.
I don't have anything to offer since I compost everything and anything in a big, open pile with no plan and little attention - but I want to follow and see what others will be offering.

 

[digitS']

Blossom End Rot isn't quite a disease, ChickenMomma91. It may have been caused by a mineral deficiency or just by variable soil moisture.

BER can show up in other plant fruit including cucumbers. A common problem with cucumbers is powdery mildew. The spores are out there and just waiting for optimum conditions to infect plants. That's my understanding of it, anyway. I'd expect other microorganisms to out-compete that mildew and it would die off during composting.

There may have been other problems but it doesn't sound like you would have much to worry about. I'd like to see a list of diseases that can survive composting but I'm not sure where to look for it. I've pretty much tilled, buried, or composted all garden wastes except weed seeds. What I have suspected was "early" blight has prompted me to toss those plants, if I remember right - 12 or 15 years ago.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm an extremely relaxed composter too. What I don't put in are diseased plants, plants with pests that might overwinter, noxious weeds because of the seeds, and roots from noxious weeds like Johnson grass.

Blossom End Rot is not caused by a microbe. It's caused by calcium not getting to the fruit, usually because of too much or too little water. It's possible your soil could be short on calcium but really unlikely unless it is a sand. Clay usually has plenty of calcium. Compost that includes chicken poop from a laying flock usually contains a lot of calcium. The hen's bodies does not absorb all the calcium she eats so some comes out the rear end. That's another reason chicken poop is so good in compost.

It's possible your soil pH could be off and if memory serves there is another mineral needed, magnesium I think but don't trust me on that. I'm going by memory on which one it is. That's why Epsom salts can help if you put a little in the soil when you plant tomatoes, peppers, or other things that can have BER. Some of my tomatoes, especially the paste type, seem to be more susceptible to BER than others. There are several things that can cause or contribute to BER but it's usually moisture that's the problem.

Bottom line, since BER is not caused by a microbe, I toss those into my compost. If I had blight instead of BER uh-uh, not no how, not no way.

I don't know what issues you had with cucumbers.

One rule that I violate all the time is to not throw meat, dairy, or grease/fats on the compost. There are a couple of reasons you are not supposed to. They do attract critters you don't want around. I'm all the time trapping rats, possum, and raccoons around my compost. Mice, well I get a few of them but I don't think I'm making a dent in that population. Those things draw flies too so there are a lot of maggots crawling around down in there. That part doesn't bother me, I figure maggots just speed up the composting process. If the chickens can get to it, they love those maggots.

Another potential problem is that meat, dairy or grease can go putrid, stink to high heaven. Getting the chicken poop too thick can cause that too. That's usually not a problem, especially since my compost is off by itself, but every now and then, oh boy!

The last time I started my compost coincided with chicken butchering day. I bagged up all my compost, 9 chicken feed bags worth, and had the area all cleaned out. When I butchered the chickens I tossed the stuff I usually bury in my garden in there and covered it up with several layers, corn stalks, sweet potato vines, grass clippings, chicken poop, and other stuff. Since it was buried deep and sealed in there, nothing dug it up. When I bag this batch I'll find a lot of bones but the feathers and other stuff will be compost. Those bones take forever to break down.

 

[Beekissed]

Why not just compost in your chicken coop? That's what I do and it works wonderfully, keeps the coop smelling nice by digesting the feces quickly, creates a healthy micro life in their environment and even provides some heat for them in the winter months. I measure 10 degrees warmer than outside temps at roost height on our coldest winter days.

Helps if you have a soil floor in your coop, but many just waterproof their wooden floors and do it anyway. Instead of cleaning out your litter, just use materials that compost down well and then trap moisture underneath the litter pack so that it can work on digesting the manure and materials. Keep layering it in like lasagna but don't stir it up if you can avoid it...that just releases that much needed moisture in the middle of the litter pack. Just layer dry stuff on top, flip the nightly roost deposits into the mass lightly or just throw dry stuff on top of them.

When I clean out my coop in the spring, I don't take everything out, just enough to put directly onto the garden and clear out the deep compost in there so I won't bump my head on the ceiling.

This hoop coop converts manure and bedding to compost pretty quickly since I stopped using pine shavings in the bedding. I use leaves, aged wood chips on occasion, a little straw and hay on occasion, green stuff from the gardens, corn stalks and shucks, pine needles and cones, kitchen and canning scraps, etc.

Here's some of the stuff I put in.....

And here's what I pull out in the spring....

Pretty much the work is done for me except the putting in and taking away, no guesswork and no worry about is it composting, will it compost, how to make it compost. Just keep the middle of the deep pack moist by capping it off with dry stuff and it just does it on its own.

 

[henless]

Beekissed has a great idea, just let your chickens do your composting!

I started out with a homemade 3 bin composter. It worked really well, but it was hard for me to turn all the compost. This summer I tore it down and I just let my chickens do all the work now. I clean my coops out in the spring and put it all in the runs. When I need some compost, I go out in the runs and rake back the top layer and dig up what I need.

This is what I got about a week ago. I made a sifter for my wheelbarrow to separate the larger pieces.



It left some really fine compost to top dress my beds. This is chicken poop, leaves, pine straw, pine shavings, garden leftovers & grass. Really hard to find any individual pieces in it.

 

[baymule]

I've done that for years. I love to cruise neighborhoods and pick up leaves, all bagged up. Let somebody else do all the hard work! Then I dump leaves in the coop, the chickens love it and they make my compost!

 

[Beekissed]

That's what I do now too....someone else does the hard work and I get to keep my own leaves on the yard for the flock's fall and winter foraging sites. It's a win/win/win.

I now have only two places at which I gather leaves and both bag up to 90 large bags per year, one site has maple and the other oak, which he mulches. The maple goes to the coop and the oak goes lightly on the garden and more heavily on the orchard.

Makes for great, great bedding and composting.

 

[canesisters]

I have been doing it wrong!! I dump the stall cleanings from the barn into the chicken pen - they level a heaping wheel barrow load in less than an hour... but there is nothing left to take back out.. just the same old dirt floor chicken yard. I should dump INSIDE the coop!

 

[ducks4you]

I started researching composting about 8 years ago. I think that you are looking for FAST composting and have become disappointed. Charles Darwin wrote a book after observing how earthworms decomposed leaves into dirt. Just piling up vegetation will break it down. I have to pile up chicken and horse manure every week, at least the horse manure. Just leaving it to decompose works, and I learned that horse manure takes 4 months to break down to be safe to use for my plants. I can use it immediately in warm weather for my roses. Part of that education was to listen to my elders talk about how women would grab a shovel when the milkman's horse dropped a load for their roses.
Horse manure creates heat when it decomposes. I started on my DD's back yard this year and circumstances made it more of 2 year project. I had to put some perennials into beds later than I wanted to, late October, so I dug deeper and put fresh horse manure at the bottom below the garden dirt for each plant. I wanted the dirt to stay warmer longer and encourage Fall root growth. All of them look good the last time I looked at them.
I don't have it on this computer, but I saved a few articles at my work computer, but they all require extra work to speed things up, including one article that suggests that you create 4 piles and an empty space, then you move each pile each week to the next spot.
You can spend a LOT of money on tubs and apparatus, in fact I was talking to a lady with little confidence in her own gardening skills. She told me that her MIL was a "Master Gardener" who spent several $thousand every year landscaping. I can tell you that here we like to find cheaper ways to enjoy our shared hobby!
In England horse owners bag up stall cleanings, which is horse manure, urine and soiled bedding, and leave it on the side of the road for gardeners to take for free. You can call local stables and see if they would let you have some. We horse owners ALL get our sweet feed in plastic 50 lb bags now and with some duct tape you can safely load, tape shut and transport this is in the trunk of your car. (You'll probably want to use Preen on it next year because they will be some seeds, although most people feed pelleted now, so not so much as there used to be.)
YOUR best bet is to educate yourself and then you will find the way of doing that works best for you!