Wee, Weeds and Worms.

silentrust

Ok, I am trying to make organic compost and ideally would like to have it in less than three years.

I understand one way to speed up the process is to have a wormery. I am told another way to put healthy nutrients into your compost is to pee on it, as well as put seaweed into the mix.

Does anyone know if this'll work. Seaweed is just lying around and I have an infinite supply to pee but will it actually make for good compost? :-)

redser7

I've no experience with wormeries but wee and seaweed are both great. They add great nutrients and also act as great activators to heat up and speed up the composting. If you make it well you can have good compost in a year. The smaller you chop stuff the better/quicker it will rot down. Don't forget to mix brown with green.

silentrust

redser7 wrote: »

I've no experience with wormeries but wee and seaweed are both great. They add great nutrients and also act as great activators to heat up and speed up the composting. If you make it well you can have good compost in a year. The smaller you chop stuff the better/quicker it will rot down. Don't forget to mix brown with green.

Thank you so much for this chief. I was thinking of buying a bag of regular compost for the new compost bin and then adding seaweed little by little. I live with four girls who have been less than enthused about my plan to urinate on top of the pile but luckily myself and the other man o' the house have no such qualms - hopefully the worms won't mind too much either.

redser7

Nah they'll love it.
Btw, diluted fresh urine is a great fertiliser to use on plants. Google it.

jprboy

Old thread on this subject here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056341473

dfbemt

I have both a compost bin and a wormery and I also add my liquid delights but only to the compost bin.

Worms are more of a hobby but they cannot cope with huge amounts of food waste. Compost bin never gets full and I keep filling it to the brim. Just get the green and brown mix right, fork through it every so often and in about 12 months you will have lovely brown crumbly compost.

Pee is great for keeping the flies away, especially when you have just added a lot of fruit scraps.

Bonus with the wormery is the 'worm tea' that you collect. This is a great liquid feed for all your plants and veg, if you grow any. My hanging baskets thrive on a drop now and again during the Summer.

Can vouch for both.

silentrust

dfbemt wrote: »

I have both a compost bin and a wormery and I also add my liquid delights but only to the compost bin.

Worms are more of a hobby but they cannot cope with huge amounts of food waste. Compost bin never gets full and I keep filling it to the brim. Just get the green and brown mix right, fork through it every so often and in about 12 months you will have lovely brown crumbly compost.

Pee is great for keeping the flies away, especially when you have just added a lot of fruit scraps.

Bonus with the wormery is the 'worm tea' that you collect. This is a great liquid feed for all your plants and veg, if you grow any. My hanging baskets thrive on a drop now and again during the Summer.

Can vouch for both.

Thank you so much, this is really helpful. Out of interest do you produce enough worm tea for your garden? I read that you have to wait a while to get any. It sounds great and if there is any going spare I suppose you can expand the garden.

I imagine a daily dose of urine would be too much for the compost bin to handle but might stand up and do my bit once a week. Will keep it from the family though, what they don't know can't hurt them!

My Potatoes

silentrust wrote: »

I was thinking of buying a bag of regular compost for the new compost bin

Why not just use the bag you've bought?

My Potatoes

silentrust wrote: »

Ok, I am trying to make organic compost and ideally would like to have it in less than three years.

The more you put into it, the faster you'll get compost out.
A single person living alone, about 18 months.
A family of four, about 9 months.

silentrust

My Potatoes wrote: »

Why not just use the bag you've bought?

Apparently you need some to stop the worms from escaping in the first few days!

joseph brand

silentrust wrote: »

Ok, I am trying to make organic compost and ideally would like to have it in less than three years.

I understand one way to speed up the process is to have a wormery. I am told another way to put healthy nutrients into your compost is to pee on it, as well as put seaweed into the mix.

Does anyone know if this'll work. Seaweed is just lying around and I have an infinite supply to pee but will it actually make for good compost? :-)

One great thing about a composter, is that the more fresh fruit and veg you purchase, the more material you have for your composter. It might encourage you to try to eat healthy. AFAIK, seaweed has salt in it, so make sure to rinse it in fresh water.

If you can gather enough green material (grass and seaweed), brown material (twigs, toilet roll inserts and newspaper) and kitchen scraps (potato skins, apple cores, egg shells, used coffee grounds etc), you'll easily have compost for next spring.

Last year, I took a trip to my nearest country lane and filled a couple of large used log bags with road-side nettles. Most of the nettles went into the composter, and I used the rest to make a liquid fertiliser. A simple process really, which involves steeping the nettles in a bucket of water for about 3 weeks or more, as far from the house as possible. The stench from the bucket can strip the bark off a tree.

I tried to help my compost process along by adding in a bit of soil from my garden, which has worms and other organisms inside. I also found some wood lice hiding round my garden and offered them free accomodation, so long as they helped break down the twigs and woody bits.

The best piece of advice I can give in regards to organic fertiliser is to grow some COMFREY. The leaves can be scattered at the base of plants, put into the composter, or used to make a liquid fertiliser. And the bees love their flowers.

For anyone having to deal with slugs eating your cabbages or whatever, comfrey leaves are supposed to be a good distraction. I'm testig it out since last night, along with the ever dependable beer traps. (bottom of milk carton filled with your cheapest beer, sunken into the soil)

I've planted comfrey plants at the base of my apple trees, and they are both thriving. Here's a pic:

My Potatoes

silentrust wrote: »

Apparently you need some to stop the worms from escaping in the first few days!

Ah, from the wormery. I was thinking of the compost bin.

My Potatoes

joseph brand wrote: »

I've planted comfrey plants at the base of my apple trees, and they are both thriving.

I'd say those comfrey are robbing the apple trees of nutrients. Comfrey is very high in potassium, which it extracts from the soil. To flower and fruit well a plant, such as an apple tree, will need plenty of potassium.

joseph brand

My Potatoes wrote: »

I'd say those comfrey are robbing the apple trees of nutrients. Comfrey is very high in potassium, which it extracts from the soil. To flower and fruit well a plant, such as an apple tree, will need plenty of potassium.

Thanks for your reply.

I have looked into it, before I planted the comfrey, as it's near impossible to move afterwards, due it's roots system. I read on many sites that, under a fruit tree, is an ideal position so I decided to dive in with both feet.

Last year there were almost no apples (due to weather), so this year I will see if the comfrey has an effect.

From here:

Plant comfrey at the base of your fruit trees and simply chop-n-drop the material right in place; breaking the leaves and stalks into smaller pieces will accelerate decomposition but is not necessary. This is an effective way to build topsoil rapidly and reduce off-site inputs. From my experience I’ve been able to get anywhere from 3-5 cuttings throughout the season. One fella recently told me he cuts his back 7-8 times! I like to wait for the first flush of flowers in early summer because they provide excellent bee fodder.

Wiki:

Comfrey is an excellent source of potassium, an essential plant nutrient needed for flower, seed and fruit production. Its leaves contain 2-3 times more potassium than farmyard manure, mined from deep in the subsoil, tapping into reserves that would not normally be available to plants

The base of my apple trees will get a healthy blanket of comfrey leaves.

I'm very apprehensive about chopping the plants, since the bees are buzzing away in the flowers, and we all know the stress our bee population is experiencing.

My Potatoes

Sounds like robbing Peter to pay Paul to feed Peter!
I keep my comfrey plants and apple trees apart.

My Potatoes

Sounds like robbing Peter to pay Paul to feed Peter!
I keep my comfrey plants and apple trees apart.

silentrust

joseph brand wrote: »

One great thing about a composter, is that the more fresh fruit and veg you purchase, the more material you have for your composter. It might encourage you to try to eat healthy. AFAIK, seaweed has salt in it, so make sure to rinse it in fresh water.

If you can gather enough green material (grass and seaweed), brown material (twigs, toilet roll inserts and newspaper) and kitchen scraps (potato skins, apple cores, egg shells, used coffee grounds etc), you'll easily have compost for next spring.

Last year, I took a trip to my nearest country lane and filled a couple of large used log bags with road-side nettles. Most of the nettles went into the composter, and I used the rest to make a liquid fertiliser. A simple process really, which involves steeping the nettles in a bucket of water for about 3 weeks or more, as far from the house as possible. The stench from the bucket can strip the bark off a tree.

I tried to help my compost process along by adding in a bit of soil from my garden, which has worms and other organisms inside. I also found some wood lice hiding round my garden and offered them free accomodation, so long as they helped break down the twigs and woody bits.

The best piece of advice I can give in regards to organic fertiliser is to grow some COMFREY. The leaves can be scattered at the base of plants, put into the composter, or used to make a liquid fertiliser. And the bees love their flowers.

For anyone having to deal with slugs eating your cabbages or whatever, comfrey leaves are supposed to be a good distraction. I'm testig it out since last night, along with the ever dependable beer traps. (bottom of milk carton filled with your cheapest beer, sunken into the soil)

I've planted comfrey plants at the base of my apple trees, and they are both thriving. Here's a pic:

Joseph, thank you for so much useful information in one post, have now copied over to my journal.

Macy0161

My Potatoes wrote: »

Sounds like robbing Peter to pay Paul to feed Peter!
I keep my comfrey plants and apple trees apart.

The tap root of comfrey would go a lot deeper than Apple Tree root's, wouldn't it?

redser7

But surely they would rob moisture in the soil too? They are well known thugs (very valuable thugs) and it would strike me as being a bad idea to grow them at the base of any plants. All the advice I've ever read is to put them somewhere out of the way on their own.

My Potatoes

I see the comfrey as competing rather than complementing the apple.

joseph brand

redser7 wrote: »

But surely they would rob moisture in the soil too? They are well known thugs (very valuable thugs) and it would strike me as being a bad idea to grow them at the base of any plants. All the advice I've ever read is to put them somewhere out of the way on their own.

My Potatoes wrote: »

I see the comfrey as competing rather than complementing the apple.

See this post here:

my comfrey is a foot or two or less away from most of my fruit trees, it makes a wonderful mulch and the roots go to china..so they bring up a lot of nutrients that in those dying leaves in the fall that feed your tree..the tree gets its sunlight through its leaves not its roots, so as long as the soil is moist and fed with the good mulches ..what could it be robbing?? I may be wrong but I love to have my comfrey as close as possible but allowing for mature trunk size.

Look at the bottom of these pear trees, there is comfrey behind and in front of them and they are growing like wildfire..they are only 4 or 5 years old.

The poster included a photo.

There is also a video on YouTube:

Comfrey may be the most talked about permaculture plant. It is commonly planted under fruit trees because it does not compete with tree roots, but it does compete with plants that do compete with tree roots.

Tree roots tend to spread outwards, about the same distance as the branches, from the trunk. Comfrey's tap root goes perpendicular, i.e, straight down.

Yet another link:

Comfrey roots can grow down 8 - 10 feet and out to a 3 - foot radius bringing up minerals and nutrients that have leached down for thousands of years. Comfrey is a “dynamic accumulator”— each plant a super “nutrient - pump”— producing versatile, valuable leaves — year after year.

10 feet down!! ". . . . . to boldly go where no man root has gone before."

silentrust

Glad to see this thread is branching out. Ha ha. :-)

redser7

Very interesting, thanks! Would seem to go against common sense, but maybe not in this case.

jprboy

Is there a recommended ratio of urine to plant material in a compost bin?

Is there such a thing as too much of it and how can you tell if you've exceeded the quota !

dfbemt

jprboy wrote: »

Is there a recommended ratio of urine to plant material in a compost bin?

Is there such a thing as too much of it and how can you tell if you've exceeded the quota !

Urine typically has an N-P-K of 11-1-2 and is as good as a commercial fertiliser. It also helps with wetting the compost heap.

Too much of anything is a bad thing. There is no exact science to the actual quantity amounts. If the pile is too wet add some shredded browns to soak it up a little. If it gets too dry start adding more greens or pee.

Composting takes patience and like anything, the more attention you give it the better it will be ie shredding / chopping before you add anything, turning over from time to time.

dfbemt

silentrust wrote: »

Glad to see this thread is branching out. Ha ha. :-)

This was a serious thread. Now you're just taking the piss

silentrust

dfbemt wrote: »

This was a serious thread. Now you're just taking the piss

But how much? That's the question? :-D

My own opinion is twice a week. Think we also said that male urine is best?

Gautama

I dilute my urine with water to a ratio of 1:2.

I use a watering can to apply it, and I try to get the contents of the compost bin damp but not too wet. Also spray the inside of the bin; that'll trickle down to the lower levels. I add it whenever the contents seem to be drying out. A fair bit during the summer, then occasionally during the spring and autumn. Never during winter.

Two of these per summer should suffice:

jprboy

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Still?

Mine is sparkling !

silentrust

jprboy wrote: »

^^^^^^^^^^^^
Still?

Mine is sparkling !

Thank you for making me laugh so much I sprayed tea everywhere! :-)

redser7

silentrust wrote: »

Thank you for making me laugh so much I sprayed tea everywhere! :-)

'tea'?