when to empty compost container
by Leslie
Doug,
Hopefully this is easy and quick for you. I just read about your kitchen compost containers. It doesn't seem that you collect too much at once. Once a container is full, do you then just immediately put it in your garden somewhere?
thanks
Doug says when the kitchen compost bin is full, we just dump it into the large compost pile, compost bin or compost drum out in the garden. Whichever one is empty and easy gets the kitchen waste.
Compost Tea
by Lorie
(eastern NE)
I have been corresponding with a man in PA who has started a compost tea company. It is not the tea bag type but comes in a liquid concentrate that is to be sprayed on the plants and also applied as a soak. Are you familiar with the benefits of this as opposed to using fish oil? I'm aware that micronutrients are not the same as fish oil, but the price difference between these two approaches is significant. Thank you...LOVE the newsletter; learn much.
Doug says that real compost tea usually only lasts a few hours without aeration before it starts to decompose. Bacteria are produced in huge numbers and without oxygen and food, the large numbers are too much for the tea and they begin to die. So my guess is that there's not much left in the way of great microorganisms by the time you ship this product.
I'd learn to make it myself. You only need a handfull of good compost to get 5 gallons of tea - and that will do several acres of garden.
Having said that - even good compost tea isn't going to provide all the nitrogen a heavily growing garden is using. (the research is mixed on this) That's where fish emulsion and other organic sources of nitrogen come into play.
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manure and compost tea
by Cyndy
(Illinois)
Doug, I had previously asked this by replying to your newsletter, but wanted to ask in the proper place. We are moving to a new home which has no garden nor landscaping worth keeping so I have a clean slate as far as that goes and will be preparing many beds to plant as well as a new vegetable garden. I already do some composting with what we produce and I am looking for sources of manure locally. In your opinion (?cause I know you LOVE to give them, which is great!) which manures are best for gardening in order of preference ( ie; rabbit, chicken, horse, cow ect.) and also which are ?hot? and which can be placed directly into the beds during preparation this spring along with some compost? We are going to be in short supply of enough compost for all that I plan to plant. Thank in advance, I love getting your newsletters. They keep me planning for spring!
Doug says that whatever kind of manure you can get is going to be better than the ones you can't get. :-) And the key point here is that you don't want to use that manure "fresh" but rather composted (no manure can be used fresh on a garden without burning plants).
Once the manure is composted, it can be used successfully on any garden area.
If you don't have enough, then you learn to make compost tea from the compost and that gives your garden all the microorganisms it needs. :-)
Compost tea for indoor seedlings
by Pat Glessner
(Richmond Va.)
I am starting over 100 daylily seeds from the Lily Auction. When the majority have germinated I would like to give them something like compost tea, but don't want to do the 5 gallon system with the aquarium pump etc. Is there a way to mix up small batches inside or would a weak solution of fish emulsion work better? Zone 7 Virginia. They are growing under lights indoors, to be planted around May.
Doug says the simplest and best system is to use a weak fish emulsion. Depending on your seedling soil mix, you're not going to get too much benefit from a compost tea on seedlings.
And my daylily seeds are in the frig (damp stratification) waiting for a spring sowing as soon as the ground thaws. They grow really well outside so I don't bother with the extra hassle of growing them indoors. :-)
