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Determine Readiness for Composting

3:44
5:51
25.4K views

At 3:44 in

Mrs. Stoney Ridge found the cucumber patch!! Everything Hay Series: How to tell if it's dry enough

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What happens here

After performing both the top and underside moisture checks, make an informed decision about whether the organic material is sufficiently dry for composting. The video's speaker concludes that his hay is not yet ready for baling due to lingering moisture. For composting, especially when using hay as a 'brown' (carbon-rich) material, it should feel damp but not wet or soggy, and should be brittle but not powdery. If the material is still too moist, it requires additional drying time in the sun and air, or it may need to be 'turned' (raked) to expose wetter areas, mirroring the hay-making process, to achieve optimal moisture levels for a healthy compost pile for your raised beds.

Goal: Evaluate the organic material's readiness for composting based on tactile tests, aiming for damp but not wet material to serve as an ideal 'brown' component for your raised bed compost.

Tools and materials

  • Cut Organic Material (Hay)

What they say

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confirms that I don't need to do that this is not high quality horse hey this is cow hey / goat hay so it's it's not really really high quality hay in some places it is in some places it's not I know where it is and the hey that's going to be goat hey we'll be marked for goat hey and the hey that's cow hey we'll be sold for cow hey pretty cool so I'll show you again we'll go over here and we'll dip into this hey a little bit and we'll show you what the top feels like and looks like and then we'll show you what the bottom looks like alright so this is one of the final wind rows that we did this is in the very center and this is one of the deepest wind rows that we have we've got a lot of hay to get up guys what a beautiful scene so here's what we have and on the very top you can see and you can probably hear it's dry it's mostly dry okay you still got that green look to it but some of its turning brown now you want to maintain all that green that you possibly can then we turn this over a little bit just get it and turn it over and much more green on this side okay and softer you can just feel the softness by tomorrow afternoon this will be ready to bail so I'll go ahead and I'll rake it up at about 11 a.m. and we'll get started bailing probably 1:00 p.m. tomorrow and we'll be sure and take

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