I'm planning to have a container garden on the deck this year, comprised mostly of herbs and flowers, with a few veggies such as squash / zucchini, and tomatoes thrown in the mix.

Since I'm a fan of DIY projects, and a bit of an amateur horticulturist, I decided it was a good opportunity to start making my own compost and organic fertilizers.

I ordered a tumbling, dual-container barrel-style composter, and have been reading up on how to get it properly started. Most of the recipes include some type of manure (usually cow or horse, but also sometimes chicken, sheep, or deer).

It's not that I find manure icky and don't want to handle it. I'm just curious if I would be able to skip it and still have a good quality compost made of leaf-litter, grass-clippings, kitchen scraps, etc.?

Getting hold of horse manure would require me literally cold-calling some random farmhouse, knocking on their door, and asking if they wouldn't mind me shoveling out a 15 gallon bin of manure. Something I find more distasteful than the feces itself.

I -can- order some "compost starter" if I absolutely need to, but I have a bucket of home-made fish-emulsion fermenting right now (mostly leaf litter, some sardines, kelp-meal, and molasses), which will be ready to be strained and separated in about a month. I was planning on using the leftover solids as my "starter".

Any problems with that, or advice?