Finished My MM, Compost was a headache

Well I finished gathering my compost tonight. It was quite the headache trying to find 5 different kinds (looks like a common complaint after reading down through this board). I tried my best and visited every big box and greenhouse/garden store within 25 miles of me. It is a little less then ideal, but I think I will be OK.

Here is my mix:
Vermiculite (of course...)
Peat Moss (easiest thing for me to find...)
Compost:
Mushroom Compost - Wheat straw, Gypsum, dolomite, Crushed Feathers, Cottonseed Meal, Peanut Meal, and "other" select ingredients
Cow Manure Compost - Didn't say exactly what was in it...I presume mainly cow poo and some sort of carbon
Composted Manure - Cow manure, Poultry Manure, Sawdust, wood chips, and excess silage
Compost & Manure - Bark fines, Poultry & Other Livestock, potash
Chickity Doo Doo - 5-3-2 Organic Fertilizer from composted poultry poo

I had a very hard time getting away from the cow and poultry manure...that seems to be all that was available. I tried to make sure the ingredients were different, even if the bags were similar. All were from different brands (and different composting companies...I checked to make sure two bags weren't from the same company just branded differently for different stores). I know my Nitrogen is coming from mostly Cow and Chicken droppings, but I couldn't find anything else. I couldn't find horse, rabbit, or worm castings even.

I mixed enough tonight to fill a 4'x8'x8" bed, I have one more 4x8 bed to fill.

Welcome Big Country, and good for you to have one box mixed. Its been a common complaint about difficulty finding the 5 different composts. Its not so easy. Once you make your own compost pile, you'll have the perfect balance because it'll be a complex mix from a dozen different things. Good luck.

Yes, I forgot to mention that I have already started my own compost pile but it won't be done this year likely. I'm doing "trash can composting" and I have fashioned one can already and it is about half full. We are still working on filling it and then I will make a second can to fill while the first can finishes. I drilled 2 1/4 inch holes with a hole saw all over the can and then used a plastic pop-rivet gun to attach fiberglass screen over the inside of the holes (to keep critters out and allow good air circulation)

In the first can compost can:
Mulched "forest floor" as my carbon source. --- Basically I took my yard rake up in the woods and raked the "floor" into a pile, bagged it and dragged it down to my mulching push mower. I mulched this and am using it as my bulk carbon source. The composter is about 3/4 of this mix of mostly leaves but also small sticks (mulched) and whatever else happened to have dropped there in the woods. Mostly dried leaves though.
The other 1/4 is kitchen scraps and leftover food. So far there have been lots of tea bags and coffee grinds and filters (We make LOTS of iced tea so we have a lot of tea bags...we go through about 3 gallons a week). Also there has been veggie scraps, left overs from spinach lasagna (no meat), some leftover biscuits and various bread/noodle left overs, Apple cores and peels, and about 6 shovel fulls of Horse manure (The neighbors horse "free ranges" in our yard and leaves us lots of surprises...I was mad at first...now that I'm composting I'm more OK with it. HA)

Sunds like your composting is in good progress. How lucky to have a natural compost maker available with that neighborly horse. Just be sure to compost its waste for 6 mos so be sure any medications, worming, etc are composted thoroughly before using on your garden beds.

Good luck.

I hope the horse will not be able to free range in your garden.

I will be putting up deer netting around the beds to keep out the miscreants.

Here are pictures of the beds:

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t11132-new-sfger-lots-of-picutures