Predigesting Organic Fertilizers

[Alasgun]

This is all pretty deep for a non academia gardener; as myself. Around here compost is “the beginning and the end” of all we produce. Trying to keep it simple, i’ll just mention “what we do” as food for thought. Im sure others will have opinions also.
We keep a five gallon bucket of bokashi bran and use a big scoop in the kitchen scrap bucket to help with breakdown. It all ends up in the compost pile in a better state than raw kitchen scraps; no offensive smell and a look sort of like “early kraut”; so i know it’s contributing something.
Then in the spring, once everything’s thawed i will turn the pile; which has 6 months of kitchen scraps and Rabbit poop/bedding on top of the previous years lawn clippings and all the garden left overs.
At this first turning i always have a 5 gallon bucket of “lacto bacillis serum” on hand which gets added as the pile is being turned.
Lacto= organic digester. For years, this has been the procedure and to be able to finish compost in Alaska inside of a year is not out of the question if we use these “compost starters” at the right times.

I don’t know what else i could say here and im not entirely sure this is what anyones after?

p.s, you can make a batch of LBS in less time than it took me to pen this. On page 37 of my ‘Alaskans greenhouse‘ pages, you can view the compost trammel recently completed which will give you an idea of how seriously we take this compost thing!

 

[ducks4you]

So...your compost just sits there doing nothing for about 1/2 a year?

 

[Alasgun]

If you are referring to the frozen time…yes. However; i believe the frozen time is useful as well, helping with the breakdown and providing Rove beetles a home I guess i look at it like money in the bank; knowing it will be more valuable when i withdraw it!

 

[Dirtmechanic]

Blood meal worries me. The one time that I bought some, the stuff was so dusty that I was concerned about breathing it, getting it in my eyes, on my skin. Too much like my own tissue ... and what microbes might be living in a bag of blood meal?

We learned about a Climax Forest in school. Right? I suspect that this idea might lead us to a notion of an "ideal" source of nutrient for plants. The mix of species that continues generation after generation after generation. Forest litter contributes to their source of nutrients. Yes, animal species are present but soil microbes must be busy mostly with decomposing plant tissue.

Steve

I told my brother today that the perfectly sized garden for a property may well be the one that consumes all the composted debris from the property on an annual basis.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

This is all pretty deep for a non academia gardener; as myself. Around here compost is “the beginning and the end” of all we produce. Trying to keep it simple, i’ll just mention “what we do” as food for thought. Im sure others will have opinions also.
We keep a five gallon bucket of bokashi bran and use a big scoop in the kitchen scrap bucket to help with breakdown. It all ends up in the compost pile in a better state than raw kitchen scraps; no offensive smell and a look sort of like “early kraut”; so i know it’s contributing something.
Then in the spring, once everything’s thawed i will turn the pile; which has 6 months of kitchen scraps and Rabbit poop/bedding on top of the previous years lawn clippings and all the garden left overs.
At this first turning i always have a 5 gallon bucket of “lacto bacillis serum” on hand which gets added as the pile is being turned.
Lacto= organic digester. For years, this has been the procedure and to be able to finish compost in Alaska inside of a year is not out of the question if we use these “compost starters” at the right times.

I don’t know what else i could say here and im not entirely sure this is what anyones after?

p.s, you can make a batch of LBS in less time than it took me to pen this. On page 37 of my ‘Alaskans greenhouse‘ pages, you can view the compost trammel recently completed which will give you an idea of how seriously we take this compost thing!

Leave it to a Sourdough to give the fermentation talk some extra gas! Brilliant!

 

[flowerbug]

I think there are two categories of (compost-based) fertilizer. One offers short-term quick and direct supplements for the plants, and the other offers food for the soil microorganisms, which targets to build healthier soil health in the long run.

For FBB, I might directly bury them in winter to keep friends in the soil busy and happy.

this is what i do, but also to get the heavy feeding plants the nutrients enough to go all season until we're done i just add more worm compost to the hole. for a large tomato plant i use 1/4-1/3 of a bucket and they seem to bear all season, but our season is shorter than one down south so perhaps add even more or perhaps larger chunks that the worms will break down through the season?

the thing is, even after the season is done there is still residual nutrients in there that is useful for other plantings (from the other plant family rotational crops) so i don't have to add it to that garden again for several seasons and then as i am digging trenches and burying garden debris that helps stir it around from the holes where i initially placed it. still many years later i'll find these holes of better garden soil since i'm not usually digging up an entire garden.

in terms of bones and larger chunks i don't really care how long it takes for them to digest and disappear into a garden. if i find one i'll rebury it. if i wanted faster digestion i suppose i'd find a used food disposal grinder and rig it up outside so i could capture the output and run bones through that or perhaps even a real bone grinder, but we don't normally have many bones around here to deal with to make such a specialty thing worth having. nature can figure it out... i'm happy to let it. same for all the rest of the exterior composting. i just bury stuff and the worms do their thing and the rest of the soil community too. i don't worry about it or work at it other than what i have to do to put up the gardens for the season or to get them ready in the spring for planting. once in a while add some wood ashes (as long as the pH is ok), etc. trace nutrients are in the worm compost from all the food scraps and perhaps some sulfur or lime. that's about it.

no deep thinking needed. i trust that nature knows what it is doing. minus the critters and a few bugs it seems to be working for us. i sure get enough of most things and the gardens do gradually improve. i'm still far enough back with such a large number of gardens that they can still improve another 20 years. i'm not really in a hurry... plus it gives me more time to keep learning. don't want to cram it all in at once. i was told to not be greedy... where's my hammock? i don't actually have one of those but it's a nice thought...

i forgot to mention that one of the basics of permaculture for a garden is to give back to the garden what you produce from it so that you're not depleting the resources it provides. so a few animals of road kill and worm compost from kitchen scraps, buried garden debris, weeds and whatever other organic materials you can scrounge might be enough if you're not heavily harvesting from a garden all the time. if you can find some potting soil from people who have houseplants, other bits of bark from people who burn wood, wood ashes, etc. it can all work out very well through time.

 

[Alasgun]

I believe @flowerbug is spot on and if i had greater acreage i would certainly follow a permaculture arrangement more closely.
We’re square ft. gardeners and i push it pretty hard so there’s no room for fallow areas.
But; the heading of this thread “predigesting organic fertilizer” is exactly what takes place between the microbes and the plants in the rhizosphere; and more than likely where the phrase “feed the soil not the plant” comes from.
It’s interesting to hear the various methods employed by us’ens as we garden around the globe.

 

[ducks4you]

in terms of bones and larger chunks i don't really care how long it takes for them to digest and disappear into a garden. if i find one i'll rebury it. if i wanted faster digestion i suppose i'd find a used food disposal grinder and rig it up outside so i could capture the output and run bones through that or perhaps even a real bone grinder, but we don't normally have many bones around here to deal with to make such a specialty thing worth having. nature can figure it out... i'm happy to let it. same for all the rest of the exterior composting. i just bury stuff and the worms do their thing and the rest of the soil community too. ... i trust that nature knows what it is doing. minus the critters and a few bugs it seems to be working for us. i sure get enough of most things and the gardens do gradually improve...
i forgot to mention that one of the basics of permaculture for a garden is to give back to the garden what you produce from it so that you're not depleting the resources it provides. so a few animals of road kill and worm compost from kitchen scraps, buried garden debris, weeds and whatever other organic materials you can scrounge might be enough if you're not heavily harvesting from a garden all the time. if you can find some potting soil from people who have houseplants, other bits of bark from people who burn wood, wood ashes, etc. it can all work out very well through time.

That's kinda what Eliot Coleman

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said about burying clamshells in his beds. A local Ag agent told him that he will be dead before they broke down completely. Eliot said he liked that bc they would slowly release calcium, instead of instant fertilizer.

 

[seedcorn]

That's kinda what Eliot Coleman

Eliot Coleman: books, biography, latest update

Follow Eliot Coleman and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Eliot Coleman Author Page.

www.amazon.com

said about burying clamshells in his beds. A local Ag agent told him that he will be dead before they broke down completely. Eliot said he liked that bc they would slowly release calcium, instead of instant fertilizer.

Mean while clam shells will cut the bottom of your feet, add useless blockages for roots, and obstacles in tilling. While adding very little. Doesn’t sound smart to me. I’d rather have a balanced soil with available nutrients.

 

[flowerbug]

Mean while clam shells will cut the bottom of your feet, add useless blockages for roots, and obstacles in tilling. While adding very little. Doesn’t sound smart to me. I’d rather have a balanced soil with available nutrients.

you could use crushed limestone grit as it would mostly be the same sort of material. i've never had clam shells or seen them here in bulk as we are a long ways from the coast. limestone on the other hand is around in quantities and many farmers apply lime to their fields.