New to this forum. Enjoying all the new stuff I'm learning. Feeding Bambis alfalfa will get verrry expensive. I have both cows and horses and can't tell any difference in how hot it is or which one has more weeds, although my grandfather always swore horse manure was too hot. You can use green manure, but don't pile it up thick on anything or it will burn (it starts cooking). You can mix green in with your native soil, and it will be fine. I planted larkspur and delphenium directly into green manure and they were gorgeous and healthy. I used to plant my annuals with a scoop of composted manure and got many, many weeds immediately around the plant. I blamed the manure and started planting them with a spoonful of Osmacote. I still have lots of weeds. I realize now it was the combination of turning over the weed seeds to sunlight when I planted along with the added nutrients. It doesn't matter whether it's manure or a commercial fetilizer. I'm going back to the manure as it's free. My conclusion: Weed seeds are everywhere and when you turn them over to the sunlight and give them a boost with manure or commercial fertilizers, they go nuts.

Wonderpets, I am so glad you are finding such pleasure and satisfaction with gardening. Me too! I hope you will soon find the same satisfaction with composting. Don't make it complicated. You are ready to start now. You don't need to read another book, altho feel free to do so, of course. I read everything I can get my hands on about gardening. I love to go to the library and check out my limit of books and I have learned quite a bit along the way. I was the one who said something about wet/dry in another post, I think. That was just to give you an easy way to figure if something was likely a higher nitrogen-content material, or a higher carbon-content material. I still think my analogy stands. The wet coffee grounds and filter, the vegetable scarps, the old slimy lettuce leaves - these are all "wet" and would go towards nitrogen or greens. Shredded paper, twigs, fall leaves - these are all "dry" and would go towards carbon or browns. Just like someone said, plant material will have some of each but will be predominantly carbon or nitrogen as far as composting is concerned. You can just go ahead and start composting anything that you already have. The only time my compost really got slimy is when I used fresh and somewhat wet grass clippings that my neighbor had, and he gets his lawn treated and fertilized so it is very lush. I won't do that again. My grass clippings are not so lush, and not a problem. Also if I have watermelon rinds or melon rinds with some of the fruit still on it, I will see flies. I try to pour my shredded paper from the shredder over that, or my grass clippings, or some dirt if you have it. In addition to the very useful saying "IACBTC," here's another one: "Just Do It!" (I think I got that from NIKE shoes???). Anyway, go ahead and start. Nothing drastic should happen, and you can refine your system as you get more experience and read more. Have fun!

After reading through all these messages I don't see that the OP ever got an answer to the question. I can't help you with information about nitrogen in pine needles, but I thought I would try to reengage the readers toward the original question. Still I have other thoughts on what you asked and what has been said. If you are getting temps anywhere above the outside air temperature, your pile has at least some "greens." At 145 degrees F your pile had plenty of greens. All the USDA requires to kill the pathogens is 120 if I'm not mistaken. Regarding green and brown leaves: the color of the leaves has nothing to do with whether they are "green" or "brown." Materials that are considered "green" are those with a relatively high amount of protein. Protein is made from amino acids which carry nitrogen in them. Thus high protein (but dry and brown) wheat and coffee grounds are much more "green" than most green tree leaves. Most grass plants carry their protein in the grass blades until the grass goes to seed. Then the protein is stored in the seed. On the other hand, "brown" plants simply are those that have minimal protein in them. Their physiology is dominated by carbohydrates (sugar and cellulose). Any material which is a seed, nut, bean, or is otherwise considered to be high in protein is a green. Most animal dung is considered to be green because it has plenty of protein left in it. Much of that protein is from the bacteria inhabiting it. Soil microbes do not eat (or decompose) nitrogen and carbon. They decompose protein and carbohydrates. This is very important to understand if you are trying to manage your pile. As soon as you drift away from the biology of the compost and try to make it a chemical process, it is very easy to become disoriented regarding how all this works. biological approach ==> protein and carbohydrates chemical approach ==> nitrogen and carbon Kimmsr said early in this thread that nitrogen was one of the more volatile nutrients in compost. This is because when you have too much protein, the protein decomposition process can result in ammonium materials. When they get wet the become ammonia which you can smell either as recognizable ammonia or as the sour or worse smells of rotting meat. In that sense, nitrogen is volatile, but you can control that off gassing by covering the pile with plenty of low protein materials like leaves (but not grass). These materials seem to absorb the odors and hold them in the pile. Note also that the chemical fertilizer suggested by spiced_ham above does not contain protein and thus is not a direct food for the compost microbes. It is usually a salt and probably responsible for more microbe deaths than for benefit. Spiced_ham went on to say, "You will end up with more finished compost in the long run because the pile will not have to respire off as much carbon to get to the final 10-15:1 C:N ratio of stable humus the way it would if you were adding high nitrogen vegetable matter." I think I would disagree with that but I don't really understand it. Compost piles do not normally respire carbon. Microbes digest it along with protein, vitamins, and minerals. If the pile is not managed you might get a "methane" smell which indicates gassing off of carbohydrates, but that would be abnormal rather than normal as he indicates. The lack of any gassy smells indicates you are not losing carbohydrates. If you are trying to tune up your pile and you have too much carbohydrate, the solution is to add protein, not salty chemicals. Personally I'm not that concerned with the ratios of materials in my pile. It starts with 20 or 30 bags of other peoples' tree leaves tossed on the open ground. Then we start burying banana peels, pumpkins, and kitchen scraps. It might be ready next year or not. It certainly never heats up with the minimal amounts of protein it gets, but it always decomposes.

What do you do with animal manures in an organic garden? Frequently many people ask questions about the use of animal manures in their gardening schemes. Thousands of years ago, the ancient organic farmers used animal manures as a mandatory and essential agent for soil conditioning and plant fertilization. Today many people are fearful of the use of any animal manures in gardening, due to more and more scary reports of potential diseases. Also there are less farmers today that apply animal manures in their farming techniques, than several hundred years ago. So the world is finding it harder and harder to dispose of animal manures in our society today, than several centuries ago. So what do you do? First of all you must understand that any type of fresh animal manure behaves a lot differently in the soil than mature compost or well aged manures. NOTE: Well aged manures act a lot like mature compost in the soil.: 1. Fresh manures are too strong and raw for most growing plants. It contains a lot of available soluble nitrogen in the form of ammonium or proteins. Most raw animal manures contain the wrong form of nitrogen and the wrong form of bacteria for gardening use, from the original animal's digestive tract. This can burn or kill plants if abused. Compost will never burn or kill plants. 2. Also animal manures by themselves are classified as "greens" or high nitrogen sources. The soil needs composted organic materials that is a blend of "browns" (high carbon materials) and "greens", in order to maximize the correct balance of soil microbial activity and the availablity of nutrients in the soil for plants. Animals manures are best incorporated in a soil building program when mixed with high carbon materials like straw, leaves, or untreated sawdust. Using more browns than greens in any animal manure based compost will also help neutralize NaCl salts via aerobic microbes faster. Using molasses products in a tea form is a even faster and better way to speed up microbial activity, growth, and internal heating in the pile, to stabilize and balance out the nutrients in the organic matter in the compost pile. 3. Fresh manures also contain too many complex undigested materials like pathogens, or NaCl salts from animal feeds, that may harm plants or soil organisms if not careful. Compost has all these things broken down and digested by aerobic microbes. 4. Many animal manures have urine mixed in it. All raw bird manure is always premixed with urine and manure. Urine contains mostly urea in it. Urea is one of the oldest, safest, and free sources of nitrogen known to man. Urea breaks down fast in the soil, the compost pile, or in a compost tea brew. Human urea alone, has a NPK ratio near 45-0-0. Vegetarian animals like cows or horses, produce poop that is more easily digestable by aerobic microbes than say carnivorous animals like chicken or pig manure. Chicken manure is a great manure, but it is more stinky, more alkaline, and has far more available ammonium nitrogen in it, than say cow or horse manure. Some composting experts are successfully composting human manure under controlled conditions. Both fresh human manure and chicken manures contain some heavy metals and pathogens in it. However, the metals in not an issue in composting, due to the widespread acceptability of chicken manure composting. Many people are cautious of composting fresh pet manures like dog and cat poops. There has been some reports of fresh cat manure having ill effects on unborn children with pregnant woman. NOTE: The main reason why most organic books and websites are strict about only composting vegetarian animal manures or plant wastes, is because the average home gardener is a passive composter. These conservative authors play it safe, so that the average composter doesn't hurt himself, or create stinky conditions that may attract pests, or disturb the neighborhood. Only an active hot composting process can totally guarantee a safe, healthy, mature compost from potentially risky materials like human manures, meat products, or other questionably high nitrogen organic materials. Keep in mind that products like bone meal, blood meal, and fish emulsion are all great acceptable natural fertilizers made from cooked meat products, under controlled composting conditions. Remember to only compost any animal manures or meat products that you feel totally comfortable with as an "experienced" composter. Horses only digest about 1/4 of all the grass and grains they consume. Therefore horse manure is a very weedy manure. On the other hand, cows have 4 stomachs. So their manure is more digested, and has less weed seeds in it. ********************************************************** Well aged animal manures are the best for all gardening tasks. If you only only have fresh manures, hot composting is definitely the answer to all these issues. However, if you hot compost any fresh animal manures to internal temperatures at or above 140 degrees F, for several days, mixed with enough high carbon materials, you can guarantee a safe, healthy, mature composted product, that has removed almost all of the potential pathogens, diseases, and weed seeds in the original animal manures. ********************************************************** Another option, is to bury or till in any fresh manures into the soil in the winter time before spring. This gives the manure enough time to break down, and the aerobic microbes to grow and release the humus created from the manure into the soil. However, you still got the risk of new weed seeds sprouting in the spring from the fresh manures. In a no-till garden, you can apply any type of animal manure on top of the soil during the fall/winter season, then grow a thick legume/grain cover crop combination before spring. This will also supply nutrients to the cover crop as it grows, as well as give the soil microbes enough time to digest the manure into humus into the soil. In this method any new weed seeds are choked out or green mannured whenever the cover crop is mowed or chopped down. Never use fresh animal manures in any aerobic tea brewing method either! Whatever pathogens, NaCl salts, or diseases in the original material will grow tremendously in the tea. It's best to use well aged compost or composted manures in any tea brew. Aerobic bacteria and fungi are the best microbes in composting and soil building that digest and destroy most disease causing bacteria. Some anaerobic bacteria is harmful to plants and soil organisms. In conclusion, if you decide to use animal manures in your composting scheme, there are many benefits: 1. You may be able to find a free soure from a local farm, horse clinic, police department that uses horses, zoo, etc. This gives you a great free source of "greens" for your compost. 2. All animal manures are great sources of beneficial microbes to stimulate your compost piles. This increases the compost decomposition rate. 3. Animal manures really increase internal heating in hot compost piles. 4. All composts have lots of beneficial aerobic bacteria and fungi growing in it for soil building and plant fertilization. Animal manures are naturally high in actinomycetes as well as bacteria also. 5. All animal manures are rich in NPK and calcium. Therefore they usually alkaline when fresh. However, all mature composts have a near neutral pH after the organic matter has been broken down by the composting process. 6. If sawdust is mixed in the poop, you have extra potassium in the mix. Straw and hay is rich in phoshorus also. 7. All animal manures break down fast. 8. Many animal manures have urine (urea) mixed in also. This is extra nitrogen for the compost. Under a well managed aerobic hot composting system, animal manures can still play an important part in modern natural farming as it did centuries ago. Happy Gardening!