Turn the pile once a week during the first few weeks. Since most decomposition takes place in the hot center of the pile, this ensures that all parts of the pile eventually move into the center. The increase in airflow through the pile that turning allows also speeds decomposition.
Simple organic activators you may have on hand are lime (limestone), blood meal (yes, it's dried blood), fish meal, and poultry, rabbit, and horse manure. Rabbit food (pellets) and dry dog food are also organic activators that are often have on-hand.
Although the composting process will occur naturally over several months or years, with human help the entire process can be completed in as little as 4-6 weeks. Four essential ingredients are needed: oxygen, moisture, and a proper Carbon:Nitrogen ratio.
When conditions are ideal, compost can heat up within one day, Andrews said. After the pile cools down to an ambient temperature, transfer it to the second bin. It usually takes another two to six months to decompose or cure.
Many gardening and composting sites recommend adding urine onto compost heap to help speed things up. With cold composting this provides the bacteria with a source of food which can be digested quickly producing heat rapidly.
For garden plants in need of a genuine nitrogen boost, once or twice a month is generally fine, though some people will add highly diluted pee a couple of times a week. If you have more pee to give, try your lawn, trees and bushes.
Benefits of urine on compost
Human urine is beneficial as part of a composting system as it has a high nitrogen content along with containing potassium and phosphorus. These three are the main nutrients that are essential to healthy plant growth and ones that you see referred to as NPK on plant fertilizer labels.
– Coffee grounds can be an excellent addition to a compost pile. The grounds are relatively rich in nitrogen, providing bacteria the energy they need to turn organic matter into compost.
However, micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes–even though they go unnoticed in your compost pile–are responsible for most of the organic material breakdown. They are chemical decomposers because they use chemicals in their bodies to break down organic matter.
Manure that is piled and left alone will decompose slowly. This can take three to four months if conditions are ideal. It can take a year or more if the starting material contains a wide carbon:nitrogen ratio (as is the case when manure contains wood chips).
Drag pastures
Pull a pasture harrow, a piece of chain link fence, or a set of iron bedsprings behind a tractor, truck, or ATV to break up piles of manure in pastures. This makes nutrients more available to plants and reduces parasite loads by exposing larvae to sunlight and air. Drag your fields at least once a year.
Adding too much manure can lead to nitrate leaching, nutrient runoff, excessive vegetative growth and, for some manures, salt damage. And using fresh manure where food crops are grown poses risks for contamination with disease-causing pathogens.
Vegetable root crops such as beets, carrots, radishes, and potatoes are particularly sensitive to adding horse manure. Salad greens are another vegetable type that can be damaged or burned by applying horse muck to the soil.
In addition to high pH, lime provides free calcium ions, which react and form complexes with odorous sulfur species such as hydrogen sulfide and organic mercaptans. Thus, the biological waste odors are not “covered over” with lime, but actually destroyed.
Because the manure will rot down and the soil level will sink a bit. You can just put the manure on the top of the soil and leave it, which will work. I prefer to dig it in to the soil because I find it breaks down quicker and the benefit of the manure is spread throughout the soil. It also stops lumps forming.
Simply ageing a manure pile for three months can kill about 60% of the weed seeds present, and bacterial counts start to drop within days after the manure leaves the animal. Then, when the aged manure is mixed into the soil, soil microorganisms clear out residual bacteria in about a month.
Horse manure can also be used in throughout the year and needs no special treatment. Just scatter it over your garden area and work it into the soil. It's as simple as that! Horse manure can be a great way to give your garden a boost.
Put the right stuff in. Good things to compost include vegetable peelings, fruit waste, teabags, plant prunings and grass cuttings. These are fast to break down and provide important nitrogen as well as moisture.
Special instructions: Drain any excess liquid down the sink before composting filters and tea bags. Remove any staples from the tea bag before composting. Put nylon and other fabric-based tea bags into the garbage (tea leaves can be separated out for the compost).
Let's just start out by saying: putting egg shells in your compost is okay; they are a rich source of calcium and other essential nutrients that plants need.
Banana peels are a great ingredient for your compost or worm farm, adding lots of nutrients to the organic recycling process.
Urine is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus and has been used for generations to help plants grow.