home made compost + manure good enough?

It's been nearly 4 years since I last did SFG.  I was in Maryland then and now I'm in SW Florida.

I just learned that our growing season is now and i'm excited to get started again.

I have been making my own compost using Black Soldier Fly Larvae for about a year now, knowing that I would get back into SFG eventually.  I don't have a ton of compost, but was moreso testing the ability to harvest BSF larvae for a future project. 

My question is.  If starting out to get the volume i need i use cow manure, will my home made compost be enough to supplement or do i still need to source more types?

mike

Welcome back to the Forum!

The BS fly project sounds interesting. Are you feeding them strictly from the kitchen waste or what? I also have a wood frame, open bottom box with the larvae. They will go through all kinds of rotten fruits and veggies that I wouldn't think of feeding to the worms. A great way to dispose of waste and get something back in return. However, I found their castings to be quite wet.

As far as using manure and BS castings as the sole sources of compost, the more sources you can find to add (mushroom compost, veggie compost, lobster compost, etc.), the better your compost part of the Mel's Mix should be.

We used to juice aggressively and I would feed them the leftover fiber and stuff.  In addition my wife and sister in law have an all natural food truck so all veggie and fruit waste goes in there as well.  OCCASIONALLY i'll put in in meat based material.  

Once rtere was a rat that was eating my larvae and it got stuck in there and died.  I decided it was fitting for the larvae to get revenge so i stuffed it down under the surface. They DESTROYED it.  It was awesome.

mike

mcharles13 wrote:
Once rtere was a rat that was eating my larvae and it got stuck in there and died.  I decided it was fitting for the larvae to get revenge so i stuffed it down under the surface. They DESTROYED it.  It was awesome.

mike

That's just gross.


But in regard to your original question, my answer is yes, homemade compost and aged manure should do just nicely, IF your homemade compost contains a rich variety of ingredients and not just grass and leaves. If you can get other types of quality compost that is great too.

Just be careful to not cut corners, that will lead to poor results in the garden.

Charles, are those little chicks in your avatar?  They almost look like little kittens... 

Can you hit the beach and add some seaweed to your compost?

CC

Did I misunderstand the original post? I thought that the home made compost was only black soldier fly castings? I thought Charles was asking if using the castings and manure only for compost was sufficient? Maybe I misunderstood.

sanderson wrote:Did I misunderstand the original post?  I thought that the home made compost was only black soldier fly castings?  I thought Charles was asking if using the castings and manure only for compost was sufficient?  Maybe I misunderstood.

It was not very clear, so I answered in generalities.

Yes that was my original question is the compost castings and manure enough? I was not sure because my castings are made from vegetable, fruit and protein sources as well as hundreds of thousands of dead larvae after I stopped the procedure. I halted it a couple of months ago at the beginning of the summer and put a top on the trash can to let it all rot.

CapeCoddess wrote:Charles, are those little chicks in your avatar?  They almost look like little kittens... 

Can you hit the beach and add some seaweed to your compost?

CC

Yes those are chicks with their initial down coat.  Only one of those chicks is still living right now though.  When we moved from Maryland to Florida we brought them with us and quickly learned they were not allowed.  We were threatened a $200+ fine per bird if we did not get rid of them. We harvested all but one and then found out literally 2 weeks later the law changed and they were allowed.  We were livid...buuutt...they did taste great.


Yes we are close enough to the beach that i should be able to get seaweed.

Hi , 
Being on this side of the pond and not the USA one it took me a while to understand you post. "Two great nations separated by a common language sort of thing" .

 I'm taking it as " Is the poop from the maggots which are from black flies any good  for making a manure based better compost.

Answered with a ginormous "YES "
 
Bear in mind that when making a dung manure based compost  you need plenty of bedding with it as well as all your normal greeen freahs waste matter

If it is made of just pure dungs it is likely to be unbalanced 
  
The herbivore dung in excess will make it tend to be an acidic composting .
 
Too much fish and neat bird poop will do the opposite atend to be alkali  often giving off lots of plant burning ammonia untill it is fully composted which could take a couple of years unles you practice making your compost along the lines of the Berkley 18 day hot composting method .


 If you've not had a good hours read of the 18 day method it's well worth it  just to get a better flavour of what ingredients /materials can always be used to make a better  balanced compost

My guess is that BSF castings are similar enough to worm castings. That is, it is a useful non-vertebrae "manure" but not to be used in great quantities in the compost blend. In that light, adding barn manure and 3 more types of compost (bases of tree, leaf, produce, sea weed, crustacean shells that has broken down in large hot piles (for weeks) or large cool piles (months).