Taylor Eagy

Bryant RedHawk wrote:

Manures are not a part of good compost unless you are trying to compost manure, Soil on the other hand will be desirable for helping with bacteria/fungi introduction and to cap the heap for moisture retention.
If you want to use the potting soil you mentioned, go for it, just use it as thin layers between your browns and greens. or you could use it for the cap material.
Urine is a source of Nitrogen (ammonia compounds such as urea), consider that an amendment not a part of the actual heap build.  

Humanure requires fairly high heat within the compost heap, the pathogens will not be killed off unless you are building specifically for that sort of manure (this goes for dog manure too).

Redhawk

Thanks Bryant. If manure is not part of a good compost then why do so many permaculture designers like Geoff Lawton recommend this formula for an 18-day compost: 1/3 greens, 1/3 browns, 1/3 manure? Then adding an activator like comfrey, nettles, yarrow, fish, animal body, urine, etc helps speed up the process. They recommend a minimum of 1 cubic meter in pile size.

Rebecca Norman wrote:Since those things still have green leaves on them, they might be "green" enough and not require any manure. If they are chopped up and piled, and once in a while turned and mixed, you'll get to see if they are breaking down. If they seem to be too dry or too "brown" and not breaking down, you can add some urine sometimes. Might be easier to source than manure; you can keep a can or plastic container in the bathroom and discreetly carry it out if you can't pee on location :)

If they were sprayed with any weird preservatives they might take a long time to compost. Luckily I don't think the items you listed are in the grass family, so they shouldn't have any aminopyralids in them, which is the one scary family of persistent herbicides that can cause long term trouble in compost. But I have no idea about florists' practices. Can you ask the florist who supplied them?

Thanks Rebecca. I'll definitely try the urine. Has anyone tried using human manure? I read that manure with at least 80%+ vegetative matter is ideal for composting. If I ate vegan for a day and collected the manure would that be safe to compost or would I have to age it?

1. I just collected a lot of greens from a wedding and plan on composting them. It is a mix of cedar branches, shrub branches, and carnations. I plan to shred everything down into little pieces but will this work fine in a compost?

2. I can't have any animals on my property so I can't source herbivore manure from my property. I've been told 1/3 greens, 1/3 browns, and 1/3 manure is a good composition for compost. I could try to find some farm that might have excess manure and offer to take some off their hands, but is it necessary to use manure?

3. I also have some unused potting soil. Could I throw that in the compost pile as well?

Dan Grubbs wrote:

Xisca Nicolas wrote:My first thought was for the advise to sow in pots with sterile medium! How on earth are plants managing to grow there? Is there anything different at their beginning of life?  

My understanding of growing in a sterilized soil is that growers artificially supply plant food to the growing medium. Scale notwithstanding, this is, in my opinion, not far from industrial agriculture that supplies plant-available food on the surface of dead nor near-dead soil. You simply have an inert growing medium into which you sow and roots grow and you artificially supply plant food. Many houseplants are maintained this way.

I don't believe sterilized soil is a living environment as is healthy soil. Yes, it doesn't have the bad microbial life you want to avoid, but it is absent the mandatory microbial colonies. This breaks the food cycle of plants in soil and thus you have to artificially introduce plant-available food.  When it comes to producing food, even for a single family, I ask why do this when you can enjoy the benefits of healthy soil and all it provides with little intervention on our part.

Most people probably just use the commercial plant nutrient solutions that only provide a small limited amount of what could be provided by microoganism and the diverse amount of minerals in the soil. I thought hydroponics was all the hype until I learned more about microbiology in the soil and I thought the same as you. How could you possibly recreate the entire food web in a hydroponic system? Well apparently it's possible to get pretty close. Apparently, these microorganisms and microarthopods can live in coir, peat, or rock wool mediums.

There is a good book on how to add biology to the soil and hydroponic systems: https://www.amazon.com/Adding-Biology-Soil-Hydroponic-Systems-ebook/dp/B001PTG6LM

You still have to make good compost and compost tea to develop the bacteria and fungal colonies and apply it to the medium. This could show that plants grown in a hydroponics system could be considered "healthy" enough to compete with soil grown produce. Although we could get pretty close, I'm not convinced we will ever be able to recreate a system that produces plants with the same level of density and diversity of nutrients as plants grown in soil with similar energy costs.