Yea one of you guys has a big thread in the organics section. Thanks for posting that.
I was debating on buy a premixed mineral and nutrients kit to save money on shipping unless I end up finding a local shop. I wanted to have leftovers to use for teas, but I could just buy an extra few boxes for teas. Ive found a cew different premixed, the most well known being the coots mix. Whats in your mix?
Im making my own worm farm and compost and theyll stay inside. Will be fun to research different items for better quality EWC/Compost.
If I may humbly offer some advice on creating your compost pile, I found it to be fantastically easy to amend my compost/leaf pile as I was assembling it, meaning the whole typical "lasagna" method, but only layering high nitrogen inputs along with the regular organic amendments. Works perfect to where you never have to add anything to your soil mix other than aeration and maybe peat, but with enough compost even peat isn't needed.
For example.
layer of leaves, then grassclippings, then amendments, I like the super slow release ones, like fish bone meal, crab meal, hair clippings, dog-hair, greensand, etc. Don't forget to add the normal ones in there too, like neem, kelp , and alfalfa meals, etc etc.
I guesstimated on the total amount, but I found that when fully FULLY aged and composted, it's really hard to overdo it.
My compost pile is pretty much gone now, but I stupidly made it at the base of a redwood tree... what a dumbshit move that was...
the redwoods roots grew up INTO the pile like three feet high into the pile, I have these massive wirey globs of roots that are sucking all my precious compost up...
If you are short on grassclippings any high nitrogen input will work to activate the thermophilic composting
fish meal, guanos, blood meal (yuck), alfalfa (awesome to use fresh from the animal feed store)
For informational uses only, I added roughly about 20 cups of amendments to my pile as I was making it, but I also added more when tuning it too. My compost pile made probably 4 or 5 cubic feet of compost, maybe more.
I keep saying this, and sorry to the RIU veterans that keep reading it, but a compost pile is perhaps THE most important thing I have .
I also have a wormbin as well, but I really think my compost is the best shit I've ever done for my plants.
Not to mention it literally makes growing almost idiot proof.
OH and ALWAYS make your compost pile three times the size of what you think you need... it's amazing how much it "melts"
Good shit though man, I wish I would have discovered it back in the 90s