Long time lurker, first time poster. This is my first year composting but I grew up in a composting homeschool family. I started out with a large tumbler (husband thought my pile was yucky), and just as I expected it is always too full, but works well. I am an excellent ball-buster. We have 4 burn piles on our property scheduled for controlled burns when fire season ends, but I hate burning them and releasing all that smoke in the atmosphere. We have a big tractor and we could afford a truckload of manure or compost to pile on these, is there any way we could convert all of this to compost instead of burning it? I know the sticks and stuff would take quite a bit of time to breakdown.
by LuckyLouGardens
10 Comments
What’s wrong with leaving a big pile of sticks on your property? It’s great for wildlife and will break down over time.
I never understood people who insist they need to set all piles of brush on fire. Let the brush pile be a brush pile!
A brush pile is already a compost pile. just more coarsely chopped 🙂
Post updates! Really glad to see people moving away from just burning
If you want compost from wood in large amounts you need a woodchipper. I have some sticks in my manure compost, as an experiment. I think they have been sitting there for 5 years. Its also very annoying to turn the pile…
Manure is basically free around here, i just pay a little something for the transport.
Use the tractor bucket to Smash down the brush piles that should break it up some
No one has mentioned peeing yet?
Chip it up and it’ll decompose faster. You also could make biochar
I think your best bet if you want to get actual compost from it in a timely manner is to either rent or buy a PTO driven chipper and chip absolutely everything you can. It will definitely take a lot more labor than burning but with manure and chipped wood/straw/leaves you’ll be absolutely cooking in terms of making compost. Even larger chunk woodchips can take years to decompose in a compost pile much less branches/trees. If there is no rush you could just make a big pile and leave it for several years too
There are fewer and fewer viable burn days (California).
Everyone around us burns their brush piles except for us. What can’t be made into firewood is either left on the ground, chipped, and/or composted.
Chip it and mix with manure. I have composted huge piles of dead Himalayan blackberry by mixing it with manure (about 50/50 or so) and turning it with my Bobcat. The bigger the pile the hotter and faster it will break down in my experience. You should be able to find free manure and most people will load it for you with their tractor.
Having a tractor will make it easy to turn and it will get hot! Everything will break down pretty quick.