Jim Brewer

Will it rust out your pickup truck if you take it home?

All that chicken and quail manure?  Lucky you.  

Get a load of wood chips from the transfer station and mix it in.  Keep it damp and wait. Maybe turn it over once in awhile.

Can’t tell you when it will be done, but I can tell you that when it is, the end product will blow your mind.

Maybe restrict use to a top dressing a shovel full at a time for a little while until you are sure it is OK.

My experience is that chopping or crinkling the leaves, even a little bit is more important than anything.  

What worked for me was to put a electric weed whacker with the nylon extended as far as the device allows in an empty but clean plastic garbage can.  Pour the leaves around it and fill up the can.

Flip the switch and slowly pull the machine to the top.  Maybe stirring a little.

It’s not necessary to turn the leaves into confetti.  Just mess them up.

Really makes a difference in the speed of decomposition.

It’s not that hard.  

Get a big pile (about a cubic yard at least) of wood chips.  Mix enough of a heavy N source (chicken manure is ideal) to get it perking; a hot pile.

If you don’t have access to chicken manure, use urea commercial fertilizer and swallow your pride.

About 1/3 to 1/2 reduction.  

Don’t economize.  Do what you have to do to have plenty.  You aren’t making fine wine.

Well, I would take their advice to mean no more phosphate additives.   Not chemical, not organic, like bonemeal.

Given what else you’ve given it, you could no doubt at least skip a year, right?

If you are worried about soil structure you could mulch it good.  Still P in there, but slow.

P is practically everywhere in North American soils. The best you can do is not go out of your way to add more.

I can think of maybe a half-dozen reasons why Chicken manure might be better.  Start with the Potassium and Phosphorus content.  Probably quite a few micros in there too.  That it’s been through an animal’s gut might help with availability and provide useful biota.  

Also a physical advantage perhaps.  The Urea  in manure might be ever so  slightly less susceptible to washing away before being absorbable by the compost.  

When I had my compost tested it was fine as you would expect on N P K.  Deficient to non-existent on about half the minors.  

I visualized my pile spread out about 3 inches deep on the ground, guesstimated the square footage and added the minors based on that, in two separate applications ( half now,  wait a few weeks keeping it damp; turn over and add the other half of the minors). That seemed to really give the pile potency.

I’ve had a bunch of what looked like wine Caps come up after my pile cooked  But I was too chicken to eat them.  My point would be that a pile isn’t disqualified from fungal decomposition by virtue of a Urea composting.

“Finished” is a relative term.  To me it means “useable as a soul amendment.”  Not necessarily “Done decomposing”

Keep it moist.  Continue to feed it N as per extension agent.  

Default to using it as a top dressing if you are worried that it’s not “finished” enough.  The nutrients will release and leach past the root zone.  The bugs insects and critters of all sizes will incorporate it into the soil later when it is unquestionably “finished “

If you’ve just larded the pile with a bunch of N you might consider adding it as a mulch gradually.  I had very good success last year adding my stoked up compost to the new trees one shovel full per week.

I live in the same region and do the same thing for the same reason.  

Unquestionably chicken manure is better if you can get it.  I know, because we inadvertently turned a caliche outcropping by the chicken coop into a permaculture jungle when I was a kid.  

I use it on wood chips. You have to take into account that it takes a few days for the wood chips to develop absorbency.

Make sure all the chips are wet and in contact with Urea in solution, sure.  But disproportionately load most of the Urea from the top.

I start out with maybe a half pound three quarter pounds per heaping wheelbarrow full.  Some of it is tossed in as prills  rather than dissolved.

Keep it damp especially as the pile heats up.  After a few day, gradually add more Urea solution.  Maybe 3-4 oz. of dissolved Urea at a time every couple of days.  (For a pile consisting of 13 wheelbarrows full—-a pickup truck load).

After a few weeks and the pile is cooling down , turn it over adding a pound or two to the interior along the way.  

After the pile substantially cools again go to once a week maintenance.  Dissolve about one ounce of urea in a five gallon bucket of water and pour over the top of the pile once a week.  Halfway through the summer you might turn it over, but continue with the regimen.  

A pile of wood chips like that is a very long term N sink.  Not just for a few weeks but months or years  even if it is “finished”  as described in gardening books. That maintenance dose can go on almost indefinitely.  Continue to feed the bacteria.