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Re: Is it possible to overdo it on the compost?

Square Foot Gardening List - http://myweb.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

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>1. Making compost: I bought a compost bin last year. It's a black square
>yard cube (nothing fancy.) It has produced a little bit of compost, but not
>like what I had hoped. I just keep adding stuff on top and rarely turn it
>and I didn't water it much either. Is that what's missing? How often should
>I turn the pile and how often should I water it?

At least every two weeks, and it should generally be kept at about 50-60%
moisture.  (So, if it is raining and snowing, you can get away with not 
watering it much if at all).  

Turning adds air, which is good for the microbes.  You also can get some
of the edge stuff into the middle, where the pile burns warmer, and so
stuff will compost better.

In my experience(limited; I'm on my first compost pile), things burn the
fastest when they are near the right nitrogen/carbon ratio(30:1).  While 
I don't want to ever get zealous about this, I did go to the trouble of 
looking up the C/N ratios of the ingredients I most commonly add, and 
eyeballed the math when determining how much of each to add.  
When I actually did this, my stuff composted within a few weeks.

For instance, after my wife finished dealing with our apples last year,
we had a whole lot of apple cores and skins left.  I figured out by 
weight roughly how much straw I should add.  I also try to keep my 
grass and leave additions at the right ratio(because they are the biggest
contributors to the pile).  Everything else I just throw in and mix often.

>2. Adding compost: Is it possible to add too much compost? I got some
>"garden mix" from a local nursery last year to fill my boxes, but the dirt
>has compacted by an inch or two just by watering (no, I never walked on
>it!), so I'm adding 25-30 lbs of compost per 4 foot square. Is that too
>much?

What do you mean by compost here?  Is the garden mix a compost-enhancing
substance?  If so, look at the ingredients and see if it is mainly Carbon or 
Nitrogen.  Maybe it's an exact 30:1 mixture, then I would say it would be hard to 
overdo it.  Otherwise, you could overdo it depending on what other stuff you 
put in.

>3. Loosening and turning dirt over. Some web sites say that it's bad and
>that growing dirt should not be distrubed. Is that true? What happens when
>the dirt compacts naturally?

I think you disturb the worm holes a little, and somebody posted a message
on this list last week about research into some sort of fungus that is disturbed
if you till or dig too much.  I'm still so new to sqft gardening, that I am really 
disturbing my soil getting it set up, but I intend on trying to not touch it much 
in the future.(We'll see if that actually happens...)

>4. Are folks in Utah Valley planting yet?

I'm not quite yet.  Just getting the beds ready and doing some weed killing and
general landscaping.  A guy down the street is planting some things, but
he has had his system up and running for a few years now and is trying things
like year-round strawberries and such!  

What he recommends doing now is getting manure and putting it under your 
beds - supposedly the way he does it, he hasn't had too many problems with 
it being too hot by the time he plants. Payson's racetrack(up by their high 
school) offers horse manure free for the taking, if you want to drive down 
here.  Actually, I could probably even be convinced to bring you some
(since I am burrowing a truck to pick some up from right up the street from 
you in Mapleton), as long as you and/or David are willing to help me hose 
out the truck bed before I return it!
(I'm intending on borrowing the truck in the next week or two, possibly 
as early as tomorrow, Saturday the 17th).

If you add some manure into your compost bin, it will get the temperature
up to about 160 degrees and burn everything really quickly.  That is what 
I am intending on doing.


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