Compost - I struck Gold today

Lat Sunday I went out for breakfast at the local village Hall where I buy my organic eggs. I had asked the lady who sells them about chicken poo and she said I could collect some next Thursday (today).

So I went off this morning, found her place, and her husband kindly used his back-hoe to dig into the centre of the pile. He dug out two slovels full, and filled four 5gal buckets for me, place them into the trunk of my car, and on asking what I did with it I launched into SFGing and worm farming. When I asked him could I buy one of the buckets to make a worm casting harvester, he said I could keep the four buckets and there was no charge for the chicken poo and when I wanted some more, let him know.

How lucky can you get. The chicken poo was dark, dark brown, and only had a little smell which I think would soon disappear when exposed to air.

Now, do you think it can be used directly on the garden after being mixed with my finished compost?

Sounds like you hit the "Big Time". I would be cautious with your new find as chicken poo is one HOT manure. It would be best to add it to your compost pile and let it age a good 6 months after which you should have some really good stuff.

Hi

I am a neophyte gardener - never done it before! But, I am excited about this new hobby and square foot gardening! My issue is I have NO compost and do not know where to get it, other than using straight cow manure. I want to get my garden started early next week so I would like to find a source for compost. Any help?

Apparently this stuff had been there for several years. It took me exactly one hour to push it through a 1/4" wire mesh and there
nothing there that I could identify except for a couple of chicken thigh bones. In fact, I could pass it off as worm castings to the uninitiated. (Honest, I would never do such a thing )

If another agrees with you, bnoles, I will take your advice and add it to my current composting pile. I do in fact have enough finished compost to get me through the spring and summer so it would be no big deal to let the chicken poo age.

Mimi

Mimi T wrote:Hi

I am a neophyte gardener - never done it before! But, I am excited about this new hobby and square foot gardening! My issue is I have NO compost and do not know where to get it, other than using straight cow manure. I want to get my garden started early next week so I would like to find a source for compost. Any help?

What you have to do Mimi is to purchase bagged compost as you will not be able to use any compost you make for some months.
Look through the compost threads to see how to start a new garden using bought stuff, your have to be careful of the ingredients.
Go to the home page (the green bar at the top of this page). After you have clicked on Home, you will find a column on the left with the work Hover, Click on that and find topic No.2; How Many composts do I need. Read that thoroughly and then come back with questions.

I would use it in the garden. As to hunting up compost sources, try craigslist farm and garden and Freecycle. Also any local farms.

Thanks, Bob. Lots of food for thought there.

Congratulations Kelejan!

Mimi T wrote:I am a neophyte gardener - never done it before! But, I am excited about this new hobby and square foot gardening! My issue is I have NO compost and do not know where to get it, other than using straight cow manure. I want to get my garden started early next week so I would like to find a source for compost. Any help?

to the forum, Mimi T!

Was Kelejan's answer helpful? Also, have you read the book? I find that that helps a LOT, then the forum kind of "fills in the gaps" (as well as the social aspect) There is a new, 2nd edition of All New Square Foot Gardening, but I just have the first ANSFG myself (I also have the older 1981(?) edition, but I usually refer to my 2006 one.) Buy it, or at least check the library for it, if you haven't read it yet.
Anyway (I do tend to ramble) --Don't just use straight cow manure, especially if it's fresh (composted or aged is fine,then you are 1/5th of the compost part down, 4 to go!)
Start with any garden supply place near you, like a private place or an Agway or even, if you must, the big box places. Look for, say, mushroom compost, "Chickety-doo-doo" (if you don't have your own chickens), marine products compost(especially if you're near a coast), earthworm castings, and the like. (No, that is not a full list, just some quick thoughts.) Hope to see you on again soon, with your own "gold" stories.

Hey, New Friends!

Thanks to those who encouraged me to compost myself. I am pretty sure the husband will not cooperate with that. BUT, I did find chicken manure and two other kinds of compost material. The chicken manure came from Tower View Farm on Taylorsville Road, just south of J-Town. The others came from St. Matthews Feed & Seed, on Chenoweth Lane. I realize that purchasing compost is not ideal, but in my case it was the only option this year.

Should I go ahead and plant Kale and Broccoli or save my starts for the fall?

Mimi T wrote:Hey, New Friends!
Should I go ahead and plant Kale and Broccoli or save my starts for the fall?

That all depends on what the weather is like in your area. Do you know your hardiness zone? That's the best way to know.There are links to planting charts on here; I just checked in real quick, so don't have time to provide a link.

I live in Zone 6. However, the night before last we had a frost! The weather report says that from here on we should be in the eighties. I did go ahead and plant my broccoli and cabbage. If they don't do well, I will just replant in the early fall.
My tomatoes have dark rusty-looking spots on the leaves. I wonder if it is because of the abnormally wet weather that we've been having. I took a leaf to one of our local nurseries and they couldn't identify the problem.
Thanks so much for posting!

Up to now I have two regular sources of used coffee grounds and one friend who lets me have all her veggie peelings and anything else that is compostable such as eggshells, TPs, grass from  her lawn that has no weed killer stuff etc. She eats tons of veggies so drops off little packages every couple of days.

Today I got to know my newish nextdoor neighbour a little better. As I no longer have a car, she has offered to drive me when I want to do some heavy shopping. So I took her up on it a couple of days ago and noticed that she bought tons of veggies.  So today, when I was chatting to her, I asked did she compost, as she was talking about getting plants from the nursery etc.  She said no, and did not want to, no time for that sort of thing.  So, she is now going to give me all her stuff that she puts out for the garbage collection each week. So we will see how that goes. Narurally she will get some compost for the tomatoes she intends to grow and hopes to let me have as many toms as I like. Which will be most welcome as I will not waste anything. lol.

I think I am beginning to build my own network  here. One at a time.  

Note: there is one thing that I find a little annoying about this Forum and that is that there is no year date on any posting.  I started this thread on April 25 2013 so that it looks as though I have been very busy these last few days.  

You ARE quite the networker!    

Regarding post dates:  Click on 'Profile' in the green navigation bar at the top of every page.  Then click on the 'Preferences' tab.  Near the bottom, you will see an option to select the date format of your choice.  Pick one that includes the year.  This is what mine looks like.

How's that for express service from boffer? Thirteen minutes.  Wow!

Thank you so much, boffer.   In the past when someone has resurrected a thread I have read through the lot before I realized that it was not current.    I really must explore this site more thoroughly first instead of whinging.  

PS. Just noticed that I joined this forum on April 24, 2011, four years ago and it has taken me that long to get the year entered in my posts.  

Glad I could help. I happen to know that you know that it never hurts to ask questions. Don't wait so long to speak up next time!   

NICE, Kelejan! 

My neighbor gives me her juicing remains.  Gotta check w/ some of our local chicken/llama/goat farmers...

Have a couple neighbors who let me "have" their llama poo. My flowers love it and the colors (of the flowers, not the poo!  ) are much more vibrant using it.    I do seem to have more weeds/dandelions tho after using it.

Although you can use it fresh without burning, as with all manures its better to compost it first to kill most of the remaining weed seeds.  Llamas digest food more completely than farm animals but still.   Compost when possible!

Kelejan
I have just read back through this thread and you said that there were "chicken thigh bones"...  in the compost??
Should there be chicken bones on chicken manure... does that mean that chickens are eating......       Chickens ?   

I've found chicken bones in bagged chicken manure.  I can only assume that some dead chickens get tossed into the manure/litter pile at some commercial facilities.

I also found a horseshoe in a bag of cow manure.   

I'm glad I don't have to buy bagged compost anymore.

GWN, Yep. A sick or injured bird is pecked down. If the injured or mortality aren't removed, they end up in the manure/bedding = compost. When I worked as a health inspector, some of the operators walked the buildings picking up the mortality and quickly dispatching the injured so they wouldn't be slowly pecked to death. That meant only the healthy birds made it to market time. I still only buy chicken from that company.

GWN wrote:Kelejan
I have just read back through this thread and you said that there were "chicken thigh bones"...  in the compost??
Should there be chicken bones on chicken manure... does that mean that chickens are eating......       Chickens ?   

I guess there should not be chicken bones in the compost, but I should imagine that over the years a dead chicken may be tossed on the chicken farmer's compost heap. If I remember there were only a couple of bones and because the compost was about four years old at the place he took the backhoe to that I actually noticed them after sifting.

Part of my interest....   LAST year I started a  Bokashi compost .........I think I read about it here.
It was a great compost for over the winter, and the compost fermented rather than composting
Anyways....... you could put anything in that compost, ... and I put chicken bones etc in there.

because by the time it was done there was nothing left but the bones.
I ran out of the base mixture for this and have left it this year, though