You can replace a rotating tumbler with a cement mixer! So much easier to aerate large quantities, only labour is shoveling in, turning on (if electric or fuel driven) or wheel turning by hand (if manual). Doesn’t sift but that’s easily solved by pouring out on to a wire rack above your wheelbarrow. I’m not fussed with debris that doesn’t pass through, it goes straight back in to original pile. I’m not young anymore so this solves back breaking time consuming labour. Also use cement mixer when turning piles. Best investment to labour proof any age conscious gardener well in to their ‘tender years’. I’m 51, i only get ONE BACK but I’ll be gardening until I drop dead 😂
@@WineberryHill thanks, forgot to mention for those pot gardeners who make their own potting mix use the cement mixer! My gosh, makes making your own soil mix for pots fun & an absolute breeze!!!
When I expanded my garden, I knew I had to add more compost bins. I have a mix of wood bins (which survive ok here) and ready made black bins. I get a lot of stuff like tree trimmings and in a good year, a huge amount of fruit waste from the orchards. I think I'll have to make a "passive" pile next year with that stuff. It gets cold here, but not below freezing for very long at a time, so a hot pile slows down but does not stop (it seems). I also don't have / don't worry about pest problems (I have mice, rats, mole, voles, rabbits, hares, beech martens, badgers, deer but no raccoons -YET) for the same reasons as you. For pests in or near the house I have a cat! (Who also hunts everything up to hares as big as he is). I have spoken to a neighbour with horses about manure for next year, and I've also got a dairy farm opposite where I could source more good material. I can also at the right time pick up the grass, leaf and twig waste from the public area round the village pond. "Vitamin P" is a vital garden resource!!
Great video but I feel a bit overwhelmed. We’ve just moved into our new (farm)house about 90mins outside of Melbourne, Australia and the list of jobs to do is massive. There’s an existing three part composting system on the property but it seems it’s just been used for dumbing garden waste so we’re going to have to start from scratch. I suspect it’s a nesting area for rats and snakes so that’s going to be fun. But I’m determined to get our little homestead up and running and I think you’re right, the world is challenging at the moment so best I get a wiggle on. I want our place to be a largely self sufficient little island of calm in a sea of madness. Thanks again for the video. I’ve subscribed and look forward to rummaging through your other content. Cheers 🥂
Pace yourself. I have over a decade of work into this property...my only goal is to move the ball forward, and I view it as a success even if it's only a centimeter at a go!
I like your 3 bin design. There is three things that I would add to my compost to make it extra good and they are, cardboard, hair clippings and as a booster, good old pee.
I'm in stage 3 of my composting experiments (already mentioned it below another video). 1.) Passive compost. Just throw on top. Feed it from above. Ran it several years. Threw cubicmeters of material on top. But not much coming out of it. 2.) Turbo compost. Real big amount of lawn clippings mixed with leafs, paper stuff. Turned the whole bunch twice a day. Two weeks, the lawn stopped to heat. One indistinguishable big brown mountain. Success with a lot of labour involved. To much labour. But the worms by now go totally crazy in the same mountain. Roughly 1/3 of starting material left. Will become nice soil, but to much efforts involved. 3.) Layered compost. Used pallets to fence in 1,20m by 1,20m. Then in layers i added lawn clippings (nitrogen) versus brown stuff like leaves, cardboard, wood chips. After each layer of lawn clipping i added a very thin layer of EM-starter mixture (charcoal dust, basalt flour, EM melasse). That bacteria-mix directs the process away from rotting to fermenting. (I also threw in charcoal, kitchen scraps and other "good" stuff.) When the whole thing's build up (in layers) it gets a good shower and afterwards it's closed airtight to have the anaerob bacteria do its fermenting job an create "Sauerkraut" for about 6 to 8 weeks. After that air's allowed to move in and with it worms and other soil building buggers. As i was to curious i had an intermediate one go for about 3 weeks and the material looked like the turbo compost and was quickly inhabited by worms. Labour is only necessary once in the beginning. The outcome seems like more than 2/3 of the starting materials. Looking forward to more than a squaremeter of beautiful black soil next spring... ;) One thing to add: If you run a composting toilett, studies say, that even antibiotics are not measurable anymore after 2 years. Some say one year. Closing circles doesn't seem to be a bad idea... ;)
I'm thinking of doing a large passive area and letting my chickens scratch in the area for a few weeks then transfer to my pallet compost bins, they still have access to the bins but they can't go down deep enough to turn compost.
Mass quantities of worms throughout the process (over 100 per compost fork full). The bed in the greenhouse has hundreds of thousands in the raised bed.
I am so glad there is finally a counter top composter you suggest. I have looked at them but never liked any before. I will check it out. Thank for the info
Appreciate the videos!! I'm starting garden beds in south Louisiana. Heavy clay starting point. I dug down couple feet and started layering in compost, chopped leaves, microbiology teas, and the native soil broken up with peat. My question is this, after letting beds sit for a while do I till it all together or just let it stay layered to not disturb the life underground. Thanks
There aren't hard rules since every situation is unique. The goal is to allow the soil biome to improve itself, BUT if there isn't a well established biome yet you certainly can mix the material to reduce compaction. Keep your perspective on a scale of years. Experiment with different portions of your soil to see what works best for your situation.
Do you compost coffee grounds daily by chance? I’m looking to start a countertop compost like you mentioned, but I feel like my daily coffee grinds (60 grams) would fill up the unit pretty quickly and not leave much room for other organic materials.
Yes we do, to be honest I don't worry to much about the details of my early compost inputs. Most often I dump the kitchen compost into bin 1, and so there is still a bit of decomp and mix that will happen .
I have a small bin outside my kitchen. I put all my kitchen scraps in there. There are black soldier flies that eat the scraps and worms finishing their waste. This process is so quick the bin never gets full.
Not really, especially since this is the passive composting area. it will be many years before I would even consider using the soil from it. The ink will have been broken down completely by then.
Yep, in fact that idea was the kernel that started me down the path of building the greenhouse. For me, I came to the conclusion that it would require too big of a pile for it to be useful (about 50% of the floor space). Additionally there are a LOT of VOC's (over 2 dozen different ones) produced by decomposition that would make the air in side the greenhouse a bit sketchy (for the people...not the plants).
Cold lacto-fermented composting (the improved Water Witte method) is a better method. It does not have the 2 adverse effects of hot composting (which is not practiced by nature): 1. The resulting compost is less than half the weight of the original pile. It's a sorry loss of carbon due to the decomposition activity of aerobic microorganisms, which unfortunately emits a lot of CO2, a greenhouse gas. So it's a polluting method. Besides the loss of carbon is a waste for the fertility of our soil. 2. The resulting compost contains few microorganisms because of the high temperature, so is of little use to soil fertility. Cold lacto-fermented composting uses anaerobic microorganisms and the result is compost with virtually no carbon loss (so it's non-polluting) and, since it's made cold, it contains an enormous diversity of microorganisms useful for soil fertility. Everybody should practice the cold lacto-fermented composting because it does not require to turn the pile, it is less work. However, it takes a little bit more time to obtain a well decomposed compost ready to put in the garden but it is worth it. It has its limits because when you have a lot of organic matter to compost it takes more space than hot composting which can be made in huge and high pile but not the cold composting. But in a homestead we should always start composting with the following methods: 1. Surface composting directly in the vegetable garden but it is rapidly limited by the quantity of matter to compost 2. If you have the space, cold lacto-fermented composting should be the second choice because it allows to sequester the carbon in the soil to increase its fertility instead of instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere 4. If you are not in a hurry, ordinary cold composting is perfect. You just add the matter as and when you have material to compost, without too much regard for the ratios of green and brown matter 3. Hot composting should be the last choice because it the most pollution form of composting. That is why nature does not do it.
@@WineberryHill It has its limits because when you have a lot of organic matter to compost it takes more space than hot composting which can be made in huge and high pile but not the cold composting. But in a homestead we should always start composting with the following methods: 1. Surface composting directly in the vegetable garden but it is rapidly limited by the quantity of matter to compost 2. If you have the space, cold lacto-fermented composting should be the second choice because it allows to sequester the carbon in the soil to increase its fertility instead of instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere 4. If you are not in a hurry, ordinary cold composting is perfect. You just add the matter as and when you have material to compost, without too much regard for the ratios of green and brown matter 3. Hot composting should be the last choice because it the most pollution form of composting. That is why nature does not do it.
Overall I prefer non-leeching materials like concrete, stone, and certain metals. I'm torn on treated lumber for garden beds...I prefer CA treatment to ACQ. Regardless the chance of harmful leeching is low...but not zero.
Soil is everything.
Yep.
You can replace a rotating tumbler with a cement mixer! So much easier to aerate large quantities, only labour is shoveling in, turning on (if electric or fuel driven) or wheel turning by hand (if manual). Doesn’t sift but that’s easily solved by pouring out on to a wire rack above your wheelbarrow. I’m not fussed with debris that doesn’t pass through, it goes straight back in to original pile. I’m not young anymore so this solves back breaking time consuming labour.
Also use cement mixer when turning piles. Best investment to labour proof any age conscious gardener well in to their ‘tender years’. I’m 51, i only get ONE BACK but I’ll be gardening until I drop dead 😂
Great tip!
@@WineberryHill thanks, forgot to mention for those pot gardeners who make their own potting mix use the cement mixer! My gosh, makes making your own soil mix for pots fun & an absolute breeze!!!
Excellent video and a very cool compost setup. The urinal won me over!!
Thanks for watching!
This is excellent information. Great setup you have there!
Glad you like it...Thanks for watching!
Good Soild and enough water in you are set.
6:14 14 seconds of GRAMMY QUALITY MUSIC WELL DONE!
Thanks for watching!
Love this setup! 💚
Glad you like it, Thanks for watching!
When I expanded my garden, I knew I had to add more compost bins. I have a mix of wood bins (which survive ok here) and ready made black bins. I get a lot of stuff like tree trimmings and in a good year, a huge amount of fruit waste from the orchards. I think I'll have to make a "passive" pile next year with that stuff. It gets cold here, but not below freezing for very long at a time, so a hot pile slows down but does not stop (it seems).
I also don't have / don't worry about pest problems (I have mice, rats, mole, voles, rabbits, hares, beech martens, badgers, deer but no raccoons -YET) for the same reasons as you. For pests in or near the house I have a cat! (Who also hunts everything up to hares as big as he is).
I have spoken to a neighbour with horses about manure for next year, and I've also got a dairy farm opposite where I could source more good material. I can also at the right time pick up the grass, leaf and twig waste from the public area round the village pond.
"Vitamin P" is a vital garden resource!!
Good farmer grow soil. Thank you for sharing
Thanks for visiting
Great video but I feel a bit overwhelmed. We’ve just moved into our new (farm)house about 90mins outside of Melbourne, Australia and the list of jobs to do is massive. There’s an existing three part composting system on the property but it seems it’s just been used for dumbing garden waste so we’re going to have to start from scratch. I suspect it’s a nesting area for rats and snakes so that’s going to be fun. But I’m determined to get our little homestead up and running and I think you’re right, the world is challenging at the moment so best I get a wiggle on. I want our place to be a largely self sufficient little island of calm in a sea of madness.
Thanks again for the video. I’ve subscribed and look forward to rummaging through your other content.
Cheers 🥂
Pace yourself. I have over a decade of work into this property...my only goal is to move the ball forward, and I view it as a success even if it's only a centimeter at a go!
@@WineberryHill Good advice, thanks. I’m determined to enjoy the process as much as the result
nice vid. would rethink the azomite, ton of aluminum. the others are fine
It does but in the form of Alumina, and the he alumina in Azomite is not biologically available because it's bound to silica.
So Cool!
I get about 4-5 years out of my wood pallet compost set up. But I think when it's done I'll consider cinder blocks.
I spend a lot of time maintaining things that I could have just done once. It is nice to have it done.
Yeah and I'm getting too old to rebuild mine. I just finished mine. It's really cool. How can I send it to you?
I sent you a pic of mine. It's really cool. Not as techy as yours but still nice.
I like your 3 bin design. There is three things that I would add to my compost to make it extra good and they are, cardboard, hair clippings and as a booster, good old pee.
Thanks...and I totally agree.
Yeah, I tear up lots of cardboard for my bins. And small amounts of wood ash.
I have nothing to say really, but I appreciate your content, and wish to help with the yt-algorithms.
Thanks much!
I'm in stage 3 of my composting experiments (already mentioned it below another video).
1.) Passive compost. Just throw on top. Feed it from above. Ran it several years. Threw cubicmeters of material on top. But not much coming out of it.
2.) Turbo compost. Real big amount of lawn clippings mixed with leafs, paper stuff. Turned the whole bunch twice a day. Two weeks, the lawn stopped to heat. One indistinguishable big brown mountain. Success with a lot of labour involved. To much labour. But the worms by now go totally crazy in the same mountain. Roughly 1/3 of starting material left. Will become nice soil, but to much efforts involved.
3.) Layered compost. Used pallets to fence in 1,20m by 1,20m. Then in layers i added lawn clippings (nitrogen) versus brown stuff like leaves, cardboard, wood chips.
After each layer of lawn clipping i added a very thin layer of EM-starter mixture (charcoal dust, basalt flour, EM melasse). That bacteria-mix directs the process away from rotting to fermenting.
(I also threw in charcoal, kitchen scraps and other "good" stuff.)
When the whole thing's build up (in layers) it gets a good shower and afterwards it's closed airtight to have the anaerob bacteria do its fermenting job an create "Sauerkraut" for about 6 to 8 weeks.
After that air's allowed to move in and with it worms and other soil building buggers.
As i was to curious i had an intermediate one go for about 3 weeks and the material looked like the turbo compost and was quickly inhabited by worms.
Labour is only necessary once in the beginning. The outcome seems like more than 2/3 of the starting materials.
Looking forward to more than a squaremeter of beautiful black soil next spring... ;)
One thing to add: If you run a composting toilett, studies say, that even antibiotics are not measurable anymore after 2 years. Some say one year. Closing circles doesn't seem to be a bad idea... ;)
Superb!
Great job!
Thanks!
*I absolutely love the Liquid nitrogen input* 😂
Vey convenient!
Great information, thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
I'm thinking of doing a large passive area and letting my chickens scratch in the area for a few weeks then transfer to my pallet compost bins, they still have access to the bins but they can't go down deep enough to turn compost.
I love it! The beauty of composting is there really aren't any rules. Just different durations of decomposition.
Great video!
Hey, thanks!
This is grear thank you
Thanks for watching!
Assuming you already have a worm bin? If not, it’s a great tool inside for composting year around. Better than the countertop composters.
Mass quantities of worms throughout the process (over 100 per compost fork full). The bed in the greenhouse has hundreds of thousands in the raised bed.
I am so glad there is finally a counter top composter you suggest. I have looked at them but never liked any before. I will check it out. Thank for the info
We were surprised how well it did.
Appreciate the videos!! I'm starting garden beds in south Louisiana. Heavy clay starting point. I dug down couple feet and started layering in compost, chopped leaves, microbiology teas, and the native soil broken up with peat.
My question is this, after letting beds sit for a while do I till it all together or just let it stay layered to not disturb the life underground. Thanks
Yep, time is certainly involved. Adding earthworms will help.
Would you recommend no till after adding worms and just let sit? Or should I till before worms? I have 500 wigglers coming in this week
There aren't hard rules since every situation is unique. The goal is to allow the soil biome to improve itself, BUT if there isn't a well established biome yet you certainly can mix the material to reduce compaction. Keep your perspective on a scale of years. Experiment with different portions of your soil to see what works best for your situation.
That raccoon music 😂
My liquid nitrogen solution is a small movable stool on bin #1... i distribute it manually over the top
Nice!
Active composting doesn't require bins. You should try it sometime, it'll definitely keep your compost from freezing up in the winter. lol
Do you compost coffee grounds daily by chance? I’m looking to start a countertop compost like you mentioned, but I feel like my daily coffee grinds (60 grams) would fill up the unit pretty quickly and not leave much room for other organic materials.
Yes we do, to be honest I don't worry to much about the details of my early compost inputs. Most often I dump the kitchen compost into bin 1, and so there is still a bit of decomp and mix that will happen .
I have a small bin outside my kitchen. I put all my kitchen scraps in there. There are black soldier flies that eat the scraps and worms finishing their waste. This process is so quick the bin never gets full.
I have so many "tamed jungle" jokes and I'm not going near any of them. 😂
Will you please write a book!
The red and blue ink on the bags doesn't worry you?
Not really, especially since this is the passive composting area. it will be many years before I would even consider using the soil from it. The ink will have been broken down completely by then.
I recently read about someone who kept a couple of compost bins inside their greenhouse as a heat source. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Yep, in fact that idea was the kernel that started me down the path of building the greenhouse. For me, I came to the conclusion that it would require too big of a pile for it to be useful (about 50% of the floor space). Additionally there are a LOT of VOC's (over 2 dozen different ones) produced by decomposition that would make the air in side the greenhouse a bit sketchy (for the people...not the plants).
Cold lacto-fermented composting (the improved Water Witte method) is a better method. It does not have the 2 adverse effects of hot composting (which is not practiced by nature):
1. The resulting compost is less than half the weight of the original pile. It's a sorry loss of carbon due to the decomposition activity of aerobic microorganisms, which unfortunately emits a lot of CO2, a greenhouse gas. So it's a polluting method. Besides the loss of carbon is a waste for the fertility of our soil.
2. The resulting compost contains few microorganisms because of the high temperature, so is of little use to soil fertility.
Cold lacto-fermented composting uses anaerobic microorganisms and the result is compost with virtually no carbon loss (so it's non-polluting) and, since it's made cold, it contains an enormous diversity of microorganisms useful for soil fertility. Everybody should practice the cold lacto-fermented composting because it does not require to turn the pile, it is less work. However, it takes a little bit more time to obtain a well decomposed compost ready to put in the garden but it is worth it.
It has its limits because when you have a lot of organic matter to compost it takes more space than hot composting which can be made in huge and high pile but not the cold composting. But in a homestead we should always start composting with the following methods:
1. Surface composting directly in the vegetable garden but it is rapidly limited by the quantity of matter to compost
2. If you have the space, cold lacto-fermented composting should be the second choice because it allows to sequester the carbon in the soil to increase its fertility instead of instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere
4. If you are not in a hurry, ordinary cold composting is perfect. You just add the matter as and when you have material to compost, without too much regard for the ratios of green and brown matter
3. Hot composting should be the last choice because it the most pollution form of composting. That is why nature does not do it.
Interesting!
@@WineberryHill It has its limits because when you have a lot of organic matter to compost it takes more space than hot composting which can be made in huge and high pile but not the cold composting. But in a homestead we should always start composting with the following methods:
1. Surface composting directly in the vegetable garden but it is rapidly limited by the quantity of matter to compost
2. If you have the space, cold lacto-fermented composting should be the second choice because it allows to sequester the carbon in the soil to increase its fertility instead of instead of releasing it as CO2 into the atmosphere
4. If you are not in a hurry, ordinary cold composting is perfect. You just add the matter as and when you have material to compost, without too much regard for the ratios of green and brown matter
3. Hot composting should be the last choice because it the most pollution form of composting. That is why nature does not do it.
Would you discourage PT wood? Truwood claims that it poses no risks when in contact with garden beds/compost bins.
Overall I prefer non-leeching materials like concrete, stone, and certain metals. I'm torn on treated lumber for garden beds...I prefer CA treatment to ACQ. Regardless the chance of harmful leeching is low...but not zero.
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for watching!
Do bears ever bother your compost bin?
No, they tend to stay up on the top where all the berries are.
Brasil
Does your chicken bedding go into your long-term compost?
No, I start it in the geobins and it eventually migrates into the 3 bin system.
Is nobody going to comment on the urinal in his compost system?
Yeah, I was surprised nobody commented on that sooner...
I thought you were going to tell us you got compost worms in your kitchen. 😂
...not yet!
Wine is not made from berries
Tell the berries!
Wot??? 😂
I've got 4 bin plus my chicken coop is next to 4th where I dump all my chicken compost in after 6 month
Excellent!