Should You Turn Your Compost... Or NOT?
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- This has become a question with an ever increasingly interesting answer. What does your gut tell you? What are you doing these days? Are you making hot composts? Are you turning composts? Let's deep dive into this topic together.
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Back in the 4th grade we had to learn a poem...
Good, Better, Best
never let it rest
Until your Good is Better
And your Better Best
We all need to remember, although we teach "best practices", society thrived by using less than ideal methods. I feel we sometimes discourage novice gardeners by not encouraging them to do what they can with what they have. Let them see what is possible and to set goals, but let them know that less than perfect is still better than not starting at all.
Hi Matt, I have a compost pile like you've described but add to it every year, over 45 yrs...and we have amazing forest floor microrizal fungi. Other areas without this compost, the diversity is actually decreasing at an observable rate. Thankyou for your book. Blessings.
I never turn anymore, My piles are too big and life's too short. BUT I do aerate. I do a small scale (10-20cubic yards) Aerated Static Pile composting system. Using a bounce house blower to push air through the heap from underneath via perforated drainage tubing.
Can you add a photo of your set-up on your site?
@@connieholzmiller7783 there's no function on RUclips to add image comments, but search Facebook for Fangorn Forest Garden and you'll find it a few months back.
@@tribalwindfangorn forest?!
I live in Tulsa, where the city maintains a massive tub grinder to process its green waste. Residents can pick up as much as we want for our own use .. and I use a LOT. Currently I'm doing trials with beds of Stropharia Rugose Annulata on one side, and accelerated decomposition through the application of home made liquid fertilizer on the other side - half fungal, half bacterial, but in both cases, the piles remain static, and let the microbes and fungi work at their own pace. It is definitely slower than turning, but I believe that the finished product will be much more beneficial. Want more compost? Start more piles!
I agree that the static compost is a brilliant method with a great product - the only issue is the time frame as it takes a full year to get usable compost.
My understanding of Dr Elaine's compost method is that it has equal long lasting/long term benefits - if it is bio complete - and takes about a month to complete and be usable. I don't think the issue with Dr Elaine's method is the turning - it is in the materials- and having the right "stuff" to bring in and grow all the critters in your mix.
That is why she encourages people to make small, sample piles - using a Varity of materials locally sourced (because she discovered what works in one area gets you nothing in another). Of course all of that said - it is a big time/material commitment to develop THE compost recipe for your place - but once done - you've got it and can reproduce it. Both methods - done right - can give you amazing compost. Unfortunately, neither is pain free...
The greatest benefits from compost ever recorded have been from the Johnson-Su method. The published papers on it are online as well as directions on how to do it from the University itself.
I'm sold on the Johnson-su method even if it takes a longer. He has found that farmers can get a significant crop response by dripping an extract into the seed furrow. The extract only needs 2lbs of the compost per acre and each reactor gives about 700lbs finished product. In a recent JS compost corn trial he replaced about 256 lbs of Nitrogen with that biology with only a 6% yield loss. All that happened in the first year. Dr. Johnson other trials have shown that the biology and the plant productivity increase year after year as long as regenerative farming practices are followed (especially use of diverse cover crops in the off season)The key to long term static compost is that the feed stock breaks down enough so that fungi begin to sporulate and the diversity of bacteria and other microbes get raised significantly. Here's one of his lectures if you have the time. ruclips.net/video/l9QxntLXMAI/видео.html
Good video. Last year i used a quasi bioreactor. It looked like the one from the professor but i did turn it a few times over the winter season. I think that the compost was more fungal by the end of it because the place where i dug deep, put down the compost, and planted a small mulberry tree did amazing. The results were outstanding when comparing it's companion mulberry in a nearby spot with better soil but no compost. The garden loved the compost too. This is now year two of a heavy em1 quasi bioreactor compost.
Im a big fan of your work! Dan Kittredge led me to the rabbit hole but your definitely the white rabbit that ive been following for some time now! Wish i could afford to take your course this season but ive been watching and reading all your free content, and there is a ton! Great job and keep up the fascinating research! 👏
I am enjoying your book so much, it's exactly as you said: transformative! I have to reread each passage for comprehension, and it feels great to give my brain this workout.
So far as my composting adventures have gone, a mouldering pile that the chickens work on for some time, then kind of hugel mounding over that is working well thus far.
All my best to you and your family
I was always wondering why there was the necessity of turning: oxygen! Thanks for sharing the idea with the oxygen tube. Love that !
I am now mostly doing chop and drop or moving half composted stuff as mulch onto my veggie beds and then I am trying not to dig anymore.
But still, I sometimes get my compost pile full. It is just an open pile with a metal wire holding the stuff in place. My neighbor told me yesterday ( for the second time) that I should cover my compost because otherwise all the good stuff would be washed out by rain. How much about that is true?
Rain will lower the temps and leach out anything soluble so YUP :)
So if it is just like the first 12cm of soil, shouldn't composting in place have the same effect?
Great video
I think it depends on your situation. We built bed with compost from a facility. Now that we've learned more it was clear what we bought was at best mulch. We struggled growing. We've recently finished our 1st pile and trialed it against "top" bagged and facility compost. It results are undeniable. Our home made compost is far superior. So for us, hot compost is the answer for now. Once we have enough, we'll pivot to other ways.
It all depends on what you want to do and how quickly you want to regenerate the soil.
Agreed.
If you want a complex bacterially & fungally rich compost, go Johnson-Su.
If you want a bacterially dominated compost, go hot pile with primarily green & brown veg scraps & turn, turn, turn.
You want fungally dominated, go cold leaf mould.
I am fed-up & beyond all the multi-step, complicated add in, add on methods. Bubble this. Brew that. I'd rather just hire a witch.
@@flatsville1 😂🤣.
@@downunderveggiegardendiaries I am just about ready to go "in ground" deep bucket/tower worm composting in all beds with a cold leaf mould mulch overlay & say "Screw it."
As I look at minus zero degrees & the snow piling up, I would have had yet another Johnson Su Bioreactor freeze up...unless it was insulated with bales & were under a poly bubble cover?
Still thinking through the post-motem on the last two that partially froze. One went too dry that year & likely became hydrophobic before when I was finally able to run water to it again. Only the bottom third produced the clay-like (worm castings) material. In a different year, that JS partially froze, then got swamped in heavy spring rains. It needed bale insulation & a poly bubble too. I gave it time to dry out (too much time?) but, again, only partial clay-like material.
Waow... this is amazing to hear from you. We here in Pakistan and India were already tryin the no turning forest way of compost.... so this validation from you is huge 💚💚💚💚
Hi fatima,could u please help me?I started farming a year ago returning back from abroad and looking for a compost expert locally in Pakistan.
@@ejazahmed3843 sure where are you practicing in Pakistan?
@@naturallyfatima5205 I'm based in sheikhupura.
Nice... THKS
If you have logs and big branches you can also compost them. Build a raised bed 2 - 3 feet high fill it in, top up with soil and compost every season. Grow food, the wood inside will decomposed within 1 -2 years depending on the humidity and you will get humus. I am lazy in turning my compost I just them sit until its ready to use, like the forest floor.
Great videos, been asking myself the same questions
since Matt suggested I build mulch piles nearby!
For my acre of Soil building, I've settled on a combo
method that can be somewhat altered as needed
for PH, and for it's ease of use and building. (I'm 66)
Because I have a 1-2% grade, and hose water
with a simple drip and timer system,
I'm building hedgerows, on contour, that have lots of
air, being no higher/wider than the Johnson-Su method
I've tried. The materials can be dialed a bit, based on
the FREE chopped organic ingredients I get from my yard,
my neighbors' and the two community gardens where
I volunteer. So far-so good I built them throughout Fall.
Now after WINTER rains, I'm turning the whole hedgerows
downhill for SPRING, covering the new weeds and unearthing
nice wormy plantable soil where the hedgerows were.
Next in mid-SPRING, I'll repeat and tweek this 'mash-up'
of my soil building endeavors for Fall turning.... fun exercise!
Wonderful video, Matt! I've trained under Dr Elaine Ingham and was curious about the loss of nutrients in a gas form and how to reduce it! I can't wait to get to the Compost section on the book!
EM and biochar will help transform and trap as well as cap the temperature on a pile. :)
Was extra wonderful having Elaine list the EM members herself LIVE the other day and talk about rhizophagy as an alternative to the traditional soil food web structure she helped discover.
Great talk... Does feeding the soil have a saturation point if you constantly apply compost and that nutrient curve flattens or does it keep building. I know thats where the carbon soil regenerative animal agriculture fallacy falls over where a depleted soil will improve from a low base but hits a ceiling after a few years.
I suppose a factor depends if your system is an open loop or feeding and extractive depletion system that has loss and you are taking / depleting somewhere else to feed a product.
I guess creating a circular bio system that functions on a loop is the ultimate input extraction ratio. The real additives is nitrogen and carbon sequestration from the atmosphere being that bonus free externality to our extraction of food but humanure needs to be part of that cycle in some way... maybe to fuel that composting material and obviously not a directly to a food growing area to buffer the health concerns... anyhow.. thinking about the composting greater function on no loss but stacking and building. benefits.
Man this is a great video. I've just turned my 5th thermal compost in 4 months, and it's been difficult to reach the 3 turns needed for organic regs, and of course it doesn't get that 1:1 F:B ratio under the microscope. I would love to try the Static, Johnson Su Method. The one caveat I've seen really quality compost makers (Vivian Kaloxilos, Keisha+Casey Wheeler) make thermal compost with decent fungal numbers. I guess it's all about the recipe and the method, which sometimes is guarded by quality compost makers.
Much Love Raleigh!! Miss you brother!!
"Because fads come and go... but my terra preta is forever." Well, at least for hundreds of years anyway. I tend to make a hot compost heap over the summer, turning and adding more grass clippings as it fades from the hot range, to keep it hot. I turn it one final time in the fall and let it go cold over the winter to use the following spring. That gets mixed into my existing soils or for starting new beds, and I add the ashes, biochar, ground bones and marrow, clay dirt etc., to turn it into self-sustaining terra preta.
If you were to sell your pile, how much would you sell it for??
Could you add biochar and rock dust to the bioreactor, would this amp things up/be helpful?
Biochar is great habitat but also it's great at neutralizing N so it can take the heat out of a compost pretty easily unless compensated BUT rock dust is a microbiological catalyst so it's great for boosting life.
@@ThePermacultureStudent In your book you talk about building a terra preta pit. That is anaerobic but could you get a similar effect using those materials in terra preta but aerobic forms to make a terra preta tower?
I'm adding rock dust to my bio reactor, and wanted to add biochar, thanks for asking this question Suzie!
Long live the natural farmer.
I thought vegetables preferred bacterial dominate soils.
If you pause the video when the pH chart is on there you can see the F:B ratios per plant type in a succession
I started a Diego Footer variant on the Johnson-Su bio-reactor this weekend. 6ft diameter with 2 ft diameter air core.
Good to hear Diego is still at it!
Bravo!
Shewwwieee after last years shortages and my local bulk compost delivery said this year may be worse... I’m upping my at home compost production! I added so much leaf litter to my beds in the fall too in prep. Big black bags of leaves to break down and piles everywhere hahahaha!! Hoping the spring garden will produce well enough without a good application of compost.
So I’m doing mostly cold but some hot aha
I have been building No-Turn piles that are Soil Food Web style, but covered in a thick blanket of straw and poked with chimneys and has finished safely at 45 days consistently. Checked under scope, as I took their foundation courses. From there it seems fungus can develop in the soil itself, no?. Is it necessary to wait a year as w Johnson-Su or just let the soil develop fungi on its own with the fast thermal compost?? Time value seems advantageous for quite a few reasons. Just my thoughts and input. Thanks for the work you do..
Good instincts - applying the Johnson-Su waiting period is EXACTLY what the professionals using Elaine's methods are doing.
I’ve recently obtained a monthly source of sawdust, around 500 pounds each month. I’m planning on using it with the chickens to make compost. I was wondering what you would do with it?
KNF no stink chicken coop
Makes sense as it occurs in the natural environment.....so why push nature...it happens natural with tm
Fantastic!!!!!!!!
I've got 2 semi truck loads of aged and semi aged wood shavings mixed with rice Hulls. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. I have a 1 acre Berry Farm which I plan to increase to 6 Acres over the next few years. I am thinking doing a salatin "pigarator" on the entire piles. I also have a season's worth of AEA products on the way. Any thoughts?
Pigerator sounds good but I'd inoculate the wood shavings for sure and water in carbohydrates like watered down molasses and then cover it for a week or two to speed up the fermentation process.
@@ThePermacultureStudent Thanks for the quick reply!
@@ThePermacultureStudent So what would you inoculate the wood shavings with? I have some biological products from Tainio.
😇compost and its effects. tis important to note that whichever compost you use, whether by the Ingham Method or Johnson-Su, that we all have different soils. indeed, on the same farm - different soil types and different mineral compositions. this is why studies like that by Dr. David C. Johnson have to taken with a grain of salt, so to speak. His results are those of his soil. Can we extrapolate and say it will work in our particular soils? we could try it in our soils and observe and be really present to the process. Results are important - they are that by which we judge what we do. what may alleviate this is the use of the microscope to know what is in your soil and if you have enough of them. by this i mean that it may be shown that if you have this and that microbe and so many of them, your crop is going to be good or bad, given of course that all other factors. the plant-soil-microbe system and systems have elements. it sometimes feels the microbes are the intelligence of the system - would not care to substitute my choices of (soluble) nutrients to feed the plants as against what the microbes feed the plant. but the intelligence of the system comes from the whole even of course as we can tweak the elements of the system but be most present and careful...blessings to all
Did you mean to say the OLD Dr Elaine Ingham way?
I interviewed her 2 weeks ago on this - she still prefers her original method for speed but does recommend using chimneys like the Johnson-Su method as another option according to her most recent students. Elaine has long been my soil mentor and now is a peer and family friend - we talk about all this and she read my most recent book before its release.
Hi Matt just found you and love it! I’m planning on adding my compost twice a year. It’s not as good as yours😂 but it’s got lots of red wrigglers in.🤠💗👍🏻🪱💪🔥