ingredients... what do you think

Happy Spring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so excited for this coming few weeks. We are due with our 3rd blessing on 5 May and I am in serious nesting mode. I need to get our garden in so I have something to look forward to after a lot of sleepless nights. There is a person on Craigslist with a mixture of rabbit, chicken, pig, and horse manure. Leaf compost. worm castings, greens (grass clippings, turnips, radishs etc) and composted logs and wood chips. For a very fair price. $10 for a 50 lb bag. They raise all the animals, and and use the compost in their garden. This would make my day a whole lot easier, I am just wondering if this is "too good to be true". What do you think :?

I think I would grab it and run before they change their mind. Sounds like some really good stuff if you ask me and wish they were in my area when I needed it.

Recently I picked up some old horse manure, and twelve 5 gal buckets of fresh cow manure.
Added the horse manure to my Mels Mix, cow manure to my compost bins.
The cow manure is doing wonders to my compost pile, horse manure, I am sure will be working .What you are describing is very valuable
If I was you, I would go to their farm, met them, if all seems good, go for it.
Be the best $ you will spend on additives.
So far, everyone I've met on Craigs have been top shelf.

thanks guys, so help me with the math. I need 24 cubic feet of the magic. They sell them in 50lb bags. So (check math here) if a 40lb bag is approx .75 cubic feet, then... well, I am lost.

let me try that again....

I am going to stick with cubic feet and then assume that 40lbs= 1 cubic foot.

Between our garden and the garden for our daycare, I will need 40 cubic feet of compost. I will need 40*40=1600 lbs. Now divide that by 50 (for 50 lbs in a bag) and I get 32. So I would need a total of 32 bags. That seems like a lot. Did I do that wrong?

Well, it depends on how wet it is. The wetter it is, the heavier it is. Volume should be close. I know the compost at the store may say 1 cu. ft, but, it may weigh 40lbs or may be closer to 50. I sure wish someone had some standards.
Sounds like a good compost!
Jo

bnoles wrote:I think I would grab it and run before they change their mind. Sounds like some really good stuff if you ask me and wish they were in my area when I needed it.

+1 AND you will be supporting your local farmer! Grab as much as you can fit into your vehicle. Go back for more if you need it.

KelliK wrote:let me try that again....

I am going to stick with cubic feet and then assume that 40lbs= 1 cubic foot.

Between our garden and the garden for our daycare, I will need 40 cubic feet of compost. I will need 40*40=1600 lbs. Now divide that by 50 (for 50 lbs in a bag) and I get 32. So I would need a total of 32 bags. That seems like a lot. Did I do that wrong?

Are you just going to use that bagged stuff neat or are you going to use the MM formula for your beds ???

I am replenishing our beds and mixing with peat and verm.

KelliK wrote:I am replenishing our beds and mixing with peat and verm.

OK .
Beds 6 inches deep with MM ??
How many square feet of beds ?
or
Give each bed as a width x length size ?

(I am deleting what I wrote earlier).

I just realized that I have a bag of potting compost in my hallway :-)
I calculate its volume to be about 40 litres (labelled as 50 but has settled) and it weighs about 19 kg....so...

1.4 cu ft would weigh 42 lbs

=>1 cu ft weighs 30 lbs

=>40 cu ft wighs 1200 lbs

1200 lbs would be 24 * 50 lb bags

but I am guessing that your compost will be quite a bit heavier than this potting stuff so 32 bags is probably nearer the mark.

Because I just got bored this morning I ran some numbers and one was gallon to cu ft. 1 cu ft. is 7.5 gallons. Weight does not relate to volume.

CWJ

As a simple observation I found that with a standard 30 inch tall tall empty plastic 35 pound dog feed bag I needed 1 & 2/3 full bags of my five way compost blend per four square feet to each 6 inch deep bed for making my MM
It became much easier to calculate things .

It is a fair guide to aim for if you have several beds to fill and decide to do the first bed as a guessimate exercise to work out the real policy for all the other beds.

Kellik ...I'm guessing here do you have a single bed of 40 square foot squares
If so 17 bags of the mixed compost will be the amount you need .... go for twenty if you can afford it .

Don't worry about measuring exactly use a household bucket to measure out ..five of your peat , five of vermiculite and five of your mixed /blended compost then mix it well .

I am planning for two locations of beds. First and foremost- our garden at home. We have a 6ftX12Ft raised bed DH made for me last year. Its on a little bit of a slope, so i am calculating that bed to hold 1 foot in depth. Because this is our second year gardening and we had such good yield last year, my wonderful Husband took most of the soil out at the end of the season and used it around the yard to fill in holes, thinking it would help the grass to grow. And because the boys (age 2 and 3) had so much fun helping me work in the garden, they decided it was the perfect area to put their dump trucks and tools (rakes/ shovels) and build a city. So I have only about 1/3 of my mix still in the box (and trampled), and will be replacing the soil with mels mix using the compost source from the craigslist ad (unless you think something else should be added).

The other location is our day care's Montessori and Pre- K raised beds in the playground area. They have a total of (five) 2FtX4FtX1Ft beds, now filled with playground mulch due to a couple years of neglect. We are going to go and dump them, put weed block down on the bottom and convert them into SFG's so the kids can grow a salsa and flower garden this year. The hope is that the kids will learn more about food, and where it comes from, get the gardening bug, and then can the salsa and either take it home, or use it as a fundraiser. Because this is the first year, I will need to make fresh mels mix.

The total volume for our garden is 72 cubic feet.
The total volume for the daycare boxes is 40 cubic feet.

I will probably use the same method I did when filling our garden last year. I will take a bucket or two of each ingredient, put it on the tarp and mix, then put in the garden or in the boxes.

I just want to make sure I calculate how much we will really need so I dont overpay for materials. I know, its better to have too much than not enough, but our budget would like to have "enough".

It was too good to be true.  I grabbed 20 something bags of the compost, mixed it in with some peat and verm, topped off our garden, and lo and behold clovers popped up. Not to mention I was pulling rocks and nails out of the soil!!!!  I was almost constantly weeding and I am almost positive it was from the new soil mix, as I didn't have any clovers last year.  The garden produced well, but not as well as it did last year.

So how can I replenish my beds this year and kill all the clovers?  BTW, my dog keeps digging in the garden, that is why I am needing to refill it.  I am thinking of putting up chicken wire around the outside to keep him out.  unless I can fashion a spray hose and motion sensor.....

Make your own. As ways go, it's the trustworthiest. Do you have the space?

Any herbicide-free leaves around to use for the carbon part of it? Nitrogen piles up pretty easily from kitchen scraps and coffee grounds. If you want it ready in time, you may have to use a quick-composting method like the Berkeley 18-day method. But getting started now would still be best, so you get enough volume going to eventually spark a real heat reaction even if you can't get the pile cooking now.

yes, I think this year I am just going to revisit a couple 'ol spots and make a few connections with some local farmers.  See, we have ONE DAY of sunshine and my heart and head are in the garden.

When you top off the garden this year there is no need to make more Mel's mix, simply top off the garden with compost only.

If you can, avoid box store bagged composts. Look around your area for compost. Use online freecycle and Craigslist farm and garden section. Ask at your local grain and farm store.

The clover is something you can turn under in the garden or pull and toss into the compost pile.

Mulching after you have established plants will help with weed suppression, moisture retention and keep the mix at a cooler temperature.

A dog run or fence will keep the critter out of where the hound doesn't belong.   

KelliK wrote:  unless I can fashion a spray hose and motion sensor.....

These can be purchased! Scarecrow or Havahart are the 2 brands that come to mind. There are some posts about using the Scarecrow in the forum somewhere.

GG