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We have a compost bin to which I've been adding kitchen scraps (and some garden waste) over several years. I have never used the resulting compost (mainly because I have a ready supply of horse manure which is easier to work with). Why we still add to it, I don't know. Just habit maybe.

The bin never fills right up because the base material just keeps compressing and rotting down.

Is this compost now better than ever or is the stuff at the bottom now too far gone (is "too far gone" even possible with compost?)

Tea Drinker
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2 Answers2

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I don't think "too far gone" is possible. If it gets too anoxic then spreading it out on your beds and giving it a day or so to aerate will fix that.

Eventually all the carbon will reduce (=>peat/lignite) in low oxygen conditions; or oxidize (=>carbon dioxide) in high oxygen conditions.

winwaed
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It may not be "too far gone", but both nitrogen and phosphate are rather easily leached out. A compost pile that you've allowed to sit for years is probably rich in humus (think forest floor) but potentially lacking in certain macronutrients. "Better than ever" is unlikely if the pile has been rained on.

Do you let your horse manure rot for a year or so before you use it? What are you using for bedding?

You may not need or want to build a separate pile for your kitchen scraps and garden waste. My experience with horse manure is that the combination of bedding and manure actually has a rather low nitrogen to carbon ratio. When our kitchen scraps don't get fed to the chickens, I dump them into onto the manure pile -- either before the day's deposit, or inserted into a hole a couple of feet deep into the pile and then re-covered. The kitchen scraps break down very fast in that environment, and the extra N from the kitchen helps speed up the manure breakdown too.

bstpierre
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