Kasey Kroner

L. Johnson wrote:RED gardens on Youtube shows a few versions of this style of composting. He goes over trench composting, composting directly on the ground and covering with sheet mulch, and a talks in great detail about composting in general.

On a small scale Ruth Stout style composting is similar as well. Dig a hole in the garden, bury your compost, cover it up.

Thank you for the references I'll be sure to do some more homework on these methods.

Melissa Ferrin wrote:

Kasey Kroner wrote:
I have goats, rabbits, chickens and turkeys so plenty of access to hay, straw and droppings with the ability to bring in fresh and aged horse manure.

I see you said you used a chicken tractor, why not run the goats, rabbits and turkeys in moveable pens too, kind of Joel Salatin style?

I guess I'm looking for a quick way to produce deep compost, but I like your thinking! I'll be fencing in the garden area so maybe setting up a shelter in there and penning the goats would work... that would actually save me the work of hauling their bedding from their pen. I planned on doing meat chickens again this year so letting them free range in that area with the goats would work as well.

Mike Haasl wrote:I would just spread it out on the surface and let the soil biology pull it down into the soil for you.  I'd probably put the poop on first, then hay, then straw.  Tilling in high carbon materials (like straw) may tie up nitrogen as they decompose and hinder growth of plants for a year or two.

Thank you for your input Mike. This last summer I was spreading it out along the surface and ran chicken tractors across the area to shred and til in the materials. That was definitely effective, but only for the top couple of inches or so and it's still tough for me to judge the overall quality and water holding capacity due to the weather out here still be relatively mild. I may be getting too impatient and trying to push for too much too quickly.

Hello, I'm looking for some advice on an idea for composting a large area. I want to til into my sandy soil with hay, straw, and animal droppings in an attempt to turn it into a large amount of compost in that area. I've been trying to find answers to this via Google and the closest I could come up with was "in-situ" composting. Would this be an effective way of composting?

I have goats, rabbits, chickens and turkeys so plenty of access to hay, straw and droppings with the ability to bring in fresh and aged horse manure.