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| Hi Folks,
Is it true that the primary thing (besides a little residual ash) that green matter adds is nitrogen (and some moisture) which fuels the micro-organisms (well, at least the primary ones that do the work initially). When you are lower then the optium ratio you can make that up by just adding nitrogen? What is your experience? Do you add nitogen if you get out of balance? Thanks! Bob |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| 95% of my compost consists of fall leaves (browns). I try to balance out the high carbon ratio by layering in urea, 46-0-0 to provide the nitrogen. Works well for me... hortster |
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| Thanks for the reply hortster. Wonder what happens if you add Nitrogen and Potash, like 20-0-20. |
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| For the most part green vegetative waste does have higher N then most browns do, except for animal manures which are usualy brown but have more N then does vegetative waste. That N is utilized by the bacteria that will be digesting you compost as a fuel so they can work on the Carbon material and the optimal mix of high N to high carbon is 30 to 1 or roughly 1 part of a high N material to 3 parts of a high Carbon material. Some research indicates that synthetic fertilizers in compost can harm the micro organisms while other research does not. |
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| I'm too cheap to add fertilizer to my compost. If I'm short on N, it will still break down slowly. I only add waste stuff to the compost. It's much worse to be short on carbon. Then it can become a stinky mess. Karen |
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| Thanks for the responses. Good info. |
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- Posted by toxcrusadr 5 (My Page) on Mon, Oct 22, 12 at 12:41
| If there is not enough N in the pile, it will draw N from the air, which is how nature breaks down organic matter wherever it falls. It just takes a lot longer. If you have fertilizers you want to use up, there are two approaches: Sprinkle a cupful into each compost pile and it probably won't be enough to make much difference, OR do some calculations to figure out how much of everything you're adding. It would be theoretically possible, for example, to estimate how much Cl- you're adding to a volume of soil. Rather complicated though. I would choose the first option, avoid things known to cause problems (as you already listed) and spread it thin enough over a long enough time that it won't have drastic effects. |
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| If you are in typical fl sand, with its extreme carbon deprivation under the best of circumstances, the use of salt fertilizer will in a very short time burn out the little bit of native OM in the soil. |
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| pnbrown, You're definitely right about that. What's the alternative? Currently my solution is to load it up with so much OM that the soil composition changes, at least for one season. Also..Thanks Toxcrusdr Thanks, |
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