using compost...

Been a minute RIU fam, but I come seeking knowledge. I've been a chems grower for a few years now and when I do good I do great, when NOT so good, it's shit. So, I've been composting... everything, lawn clippings, fallen twigs, old root balls, kitchen scraps, even some old dog food that got wet, into the tumbler. I've been adding, turning, watering this barrel for about a year now. What kind of mix ratio do you all use? I know this will be slower than my coco grows, which is what it will be mixed in with, some recycled coco, I'm just looking for something that doesn't need near daily attention. That will grow some fire even if I'm occasionally a lazy fuck.

Do you have any pictures of the compost? When was the last time you've added material? you want to give it some time to "cook" without adding any new material for quite a while before using it.
I would avoid adding dog food to your primary compost. Techically everything is compostable given enough time but some things take longer than others. Dog food will take a long time to break down and will decrease the activity in your compost, and slow down the rate at which everything else in your compost breaks down as well. If you really wanted to compost dog food, I would add it to a secondary compost off to the side that you can let compost for a long time.

Compposted natural soil is my choice. You may not get quite as much as with chemicals but the odds of have a trouble free grow are a lot better.

For my little indoor winter grows I am now using (excelent) soil form my outdoor garden mixed with about half compost. To test the soil I will sprout one bagseed just to see how it does. After a couple of weeks if the plant looks OK then I'll drop my good seeds.

Your compost sounds like your plants arn't going to be hungry. There's really no way to tell what you will end up with because we don't know what your base soil will be, but the compose sounds great. When you can mix it all together with your hands and not feel dirty it's probally pretty good soil.

Funkentelechy said:

Do you have any pictures of the compost? When was the last time you've added material? you want to give it some time to "cook" without adding any new material for quite a while before using it.
I would avoid adding dog food to your primary compost. Techically everything is compostable given enough time but some things take longer than others. Dog food will take a long time to break down and will decrease the activity in your compost, and slow down the rate at which everything else in your compost breaks down as well. If you really wanted to compost dog food, I would add it to a secondary compost off to the side that you can let compost for a long time.

Click to expand...

I do have to agree about the dogfood.

Not something I regularly do, just a bowl got left out in the rain and I threw it in back in the summer, variety right? Last thing I added was about 3 weeks ago. I emptied my Dynatrap in there (about a half a gallon of dead bugs).

I like the suggestion of throwing less valuable seed into a tester bag. So now the question is what to try.

When growing in containers it seems like the general recommendation is for compost to be between 15% and 40% of the total mix. It probably depends a lot on the quality and composition of the compost.

To keep it simple you could just do equal parts compost, aeration (like perlite), and peat (or coco). Add a few cups of dry amendments per cubic foot and you've got a rocking super soil.

Fwiw, I'd say you can put any organic matter into your compost, it's all going to rot and get broken down eventually. I think the reason they say not to put meat (like dog food) in there is because it can attract rodents or other unwanted critters. But as long as it doesn't contain heavy metals I wouldn't sweat it too much.

weedstoner420 said:

When growing in containers it seems like the general recommendation is for compost to be between 15% and 40% of the total mix. It probably depends a lot on the quality and composition of the compost.

To keep it simple you could just do equal parts compost, aeration (like perlite), and peat (or coco). Add a few cups of dry amendments per cubic foot and you've got a rocking super soil.

Fwiw, I'd say you can put any organic matter into your compost, it's all going to rot and get broken down eventually. I think the reason they say not to put meat (like dog food) in there is because it can attract rodents or other unwanted critters. But as long as it doesn't contain heavy metals I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Click to expand...

I have a question I've been trying to chase down. Is perlite bad for the worms and other micro whatevers that might be in living soil?

It's probably a sure thinh that the dog food will be gone buy the time it's used. It's so little that it's not going to hert anything.

I just Googled this. There were a lot of links. I just grabed this one.

• https://composthq.com › composting › composting-dog-and-cat-waste
  The Dos and Don'ts of Composting Dog and Cat Waste
  The major reason that you shouldn't compost this kind of waste is that because cats and dogs are omnivores, their waste can carry harmful bacteria that may not be killed by the composting process. If this bacteria comes into contact with human food - and compost is often used for food crops - then it could make people very sick.

DancesWithWeeds said:

I have a question I've been trying to chase down. Is perlite bad for the worms and other micro whatevers that might be in living soil?

It's probably a sure thinh that the dog food will be gone buy the time it's used. It's so little that it's not going to hert anything.

I just Googled this. There were a lot of links. I just grabed this one.

• https://composthq.com › composting › composting-dog-and-cat-waste
  The Dos and Don'ts of Composting Dog and Cat Waste
  The major reason that you shouldn't compost this kind of waste is that because cats and dogs are omnivores, their waste can carry harmful bacteria that may not be killed by the composting process. If this bacteria comes into contact with human food - and compost is often used for food crops - then it could make people very sick.

Click to expand...

I think that's talking about dog/cat poop, not their food lol

Never heard about perlite being harmful to anything. It's pretty inert, chemically speaking, but maybe it like scratches the little critters or something...? I dunno, there are always other ways to aerate the mix, perlite just seems like one of the more common ones

weedstoner420 said:

I think that's talking about dog/cat poop, not their food lol

Never heard about perlite being harmful to anything. It's pretty inert, chemically speaking, but maybe it like scratches the little critters or something...? I dunno, there are always other ways to aerate the mix, perlite just seems like one of the more common ones

Click to expand...

I know, but the rest is in the same search. I just pulled that one out because it was there. There was all kinds of stuff on animal bacteria and their effect on humans. Who's to say that the amimal products in the pet food isn't infected.

weedstoner420 said:

I think that's talking about dog/cat poop, not their food lol

Never heard about perlite being harmful to anything. It's pretty inert, chemically speaking, but maybe it like scratches the little critters or something...? I dunno, there are always other ways to aerate the mix, perlite just seems like one of the more common ones

Click to expand...

I use perlite in my super soil but I'm to try living soil this year. The goal is to use nothing except what is produced on the farm. Most of the outdoor is ready to plant. Grow room, almost.

Anyhow I don't want to get of track from the OP's thread.

weedstoner420 said:

I think the reason they say not to put meat (like dog food) in there is because it can attract rodents or other unwanted critters. But as long as it doesn't contain heavy metals I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. Where I am we have Coyotes. Not a ton, but enough that you can be guaranteed to have them come around if you add any kind of meat or bones to your compost pile. Another no-no, if you want to avoid attracting deer, is apple cores, corn kernels and corn cobs.

Willy B. Goode said:

Absolutely. Where I am we have Coyotes. Not a ton, but enough that you can be guaranteed to have them come around if you add any kind of meat or bones to your compost pile. Another no-no, if you want to avoid attracting deer, is apple cores, corn kernels and corn cobs.

Click to expand...

We have coyotes, too. But we also have a donkey and they are mortal enemys. The donkey is here to protect the goats.

Back to using compost. One thing not to forget is the water from boiling vegetables. There's a lot of nutes there. You can use it for tea or just moisten your compost with it. Just make sure there's no salt in it. That's easy for me being on a no salt diet.

DancesWithWeeds said:

I use perlite in my super soil but I'm to try living soil this year. The goal is to use nothing except what is produced on the farm. Most of the outdoor is ready to plant. Grow room, almost.

Anyhow I don't want to get of track from the OP's thread.

Click to expand...

best results i've ever gotten is ironically one of the simplest grows i've done.
leaves, grass clippings, and steer manure for the compost ingredients.
compost those three together and the results are not only very impressive but virtually no care is needed past watering the mix once transplanted.
the key is to make sure there is plenty of carbon in the compost (leaves/wood chips) the more carbon inputs you have, the more spongy type humus the compost will make, the more nitrogen inputs (grass, manure, fruits, food scrap) the more nutrients will be available but at the detriment of drainage, mushy more clay-like compost (vermicompost also)
keeping in mind the top two biggest mistakes people make are over watering and over feeding.
which brings me back to the carbon inputs, that spongy humus works as a buffer for the nutrients in making it not avail all at once, also while working as a sort of "aeration" allowing the mix to drain, what you do NOT want is too much nitrogen inputs in the compost which makes the soil retain more water, typically locking out calcium and magnesium due to the acidity of the wet mix. The carbon-based humus is loaded with microbiodiversity as well, so the nutrients are buffered as they are consumed over and over making them avail for your plant as it needs it.
Biochar is a great additive for these mixes also, anything that is composted with nutrient heavy ingredients should have about a 10-15% mix of charged biochar
buy a bag of cowboy charcoal, crush it into bits, throw it in a tea with a nitrogen input such as manure, bat guano, fish meal (stinky tea though)
i do NOT recommend blood meal, for anything really