"Ecnerwal" wrote in message
...
In article , "Snag"
wrote:
Chicken houses abound around here ... not so many cattle operations ,
but
there are a couple of horses-for-hire places . Might be a good pace to
start
, if someone else hasn't already got a deal with the owners . My only
problem with composting is a shortage of green stuff to add to the pile .
We
don't have a "lawn" , just the wild grasses/weeds that were already here
,
and which I cut occasionally with the weedeater . I can get all the brown
stuff I want , got about 12,000 trees that drop leaves every year ...
maybe
make a deal with a lawn service or something for green

Cows' and chickens' output is usually spoken for or used by the farmer
(or the chickens' is available, but at a price. Still, does not hurt to
ask.) Horse is the one most commonly available for free, since most
horse people are not farmers. Horse people who are farmers will use the
manure themselves.

"Compost color" can be deceptive. When I refer to brown manure, I simply
mean the actual color. From a "compost" perspective it's green material
(high nitrogen), though it's often mixed with enough "brown" (high
carbon) bedding that it can be composted as-is. Chicken, if you get it,
is usually in need of a LOT of additional brown material and a year or
so of aging/composting before use - it's very high nitrogen, as anyone
who's cleaned a chicken coop knows - ammonia city.


We call ours "Our Ladies of the Coop" and when I clean out the small
henhouse I put the hay/manure on a compost pile . 3 hens , and we usually
get 3 eggs every day .


As for leaves, make piles, don't sweat the green/brown content, don't
worry about turning them, and 3 years later you have leaf mold, a very
desirable substance. You might also consider burying wood (dropped
limbs, brush, etc) under your beds (hugleculture is the trendy German
term.)


I can rake up all the leaf mold I want ... but our trees are all oaks , is
that going to make the material on the acid side ? Somewhere I read that ,
but that was a long time ago and I don't remember where .


Your "wild grasses and weeds 'lawn'" could get some alfalfa, wheat, rye,
oats, buckwheat etc. added to it and serve as (more of) a source of
local green material. Or you can simply rake what it does grow when you
cut it, and use for mulch or compost.

If your garden is a "hole in the trees" you might also benefit from
cutting a bigger hole - it will give you more room to grow green stuff,
but more importantly (depending on the size, shape and aspect of your
current hole) it might give your garden more sun, which can be a
limiting aspect of "hole in the trees" gardens. If that does not apply,
then you should ignore it, but it can be a large factor if there is
shade for any appreciable period during the growing season (though I
gather that some mid-day shade can actually be a good thing in the south
- not something I have any direct experience with - local knowledge
rules.)

It's not exactly a hole in the trees , our clearing is probably like
100-120 feet running SE to NW and 60-70 feet wide . The garden gets
limited morning sun , but from around 10 AM on it's all in full sun . I'll
be moving it a few feet to the SW next year , the best results were further
from the tree line . My wife's a bit miffed about losing half or more of
the wild blackberry patch , but I can move those and only lose one year's
crop . And in the move I can make them much easier to harvest and prune .
That patch of wild berries is just that - wild , and while I did clean out a
bunch of dead canes this spring , it's still a pure bi**h to harvest
anything without loss of blood .
--
Snag