Thread for COMPOST, compost discussion, compost tea, etc.

ha, i can totally see that as a possibility, any big enough fragment with an eye: new potato plant! propagation is an amazing thing.

I can totally stan for compost. You can get all micro-managey about it if that's your sort of thing, or you can follow the PIUALIR approach (that's Pile It Up and Let It Rot). Guess which one I do?

note: I have learned that corks (as in wine corks) don't break down so much, which is like DUH QUINCIE that is why they are used to bottle wine. Anyhow, there are lots and lots and lots of corks floating about my veggie patch now.

We have a compost bin where I dump our vegetable scraps and egg shells, but I never turn it and haven't added leaves/straw/lawn clippings in at least a couple of years. It's a nasty mess on top but the overall level of stuff never seems to rise, so it must be breaking down at the lower layers. I wouldn't use it to fertilize the garden until I'd added some clippings, turned it well and let the whole thing break down properly.

Ha, my mom is one step behind even this. She has a wooden fence surrounding her yard and when she has scraps, eggshells, etc, she just throws them on the edge of the fence. She is really playing the decay LONG GAME.

I know this is a *bummer question* – my cat likes to kill lizards and birds and leave them in a certain part of the yard. Would it be ok to throw those in the compost? It's not going to fertilize any food.

They'll get maggoty and a lot stinkier than veg scraps, but I guess they'd break down...? Rotting carcass smell would put me off that, but anosmia means ymmv.

putting lizards/birds in non-food compost is a bit dicey... I'm not the expert here by any means, but in the large-scale pile I work with (we're talking 50' long 20' wide 10' high at the beginning of each year), meat & dairy in small amounts is no big deal cuz it gets above 140 degrees F, killing any pathogens.

the problem with the smaller piles, like what we all have at home, is that the temperature of the active pile doesn't get as hot. also, the meat attracts different species of insects, carnivorous ones, that eat the good worms. this is especially true when your overall percentage of meat goes up. in the large pile I mention, the only meat that goes in is, like, leftover chicken bones and plate scraps. in a small home pile, I'm guessing some birds and lizards would add up to a significantly higher percentage of the total volume/mass.

so I guess my point is, the meat would inhibit the normal compost breakdown process.

The heat thing is really interesting. I am a completely novice and know nothing at all (beyond conventional folk wisdom I've picked up from grandmothers and in-laws) but the rotting process and the generation of heat therefrom - I am assuming it is unlocking the energy that the plants stored in their cells via hot microbe action. But if anyone has a good link on how this actually works, or would like to explain to a novice Why Compost Is Warm, I would love to read that!

no longer have any links bookmarked, but if you want a very basic explanation? cribbing from my old composting assignment: heat generation is caused by the presence of microorganisms which act to break down the carbon organic matter... as the temperature level rises the conditions for heat loving (thermophilic) bacteria to populate the compost occur... aids in killing weed seeds and pathogens... speeds up levels of decomposition of proteins, fats, cellulose... /hortnerd

OK, wow that hortnerd stuff is really interesting to me! Thank you for taking the time to explain.

So basically it's kind of a pile-on (LOL) effect - that the more microbes there are generating "body heat" (or probably biochemical heat from molecular breakdown) the temperature rise attracts other microbes which work more effectively at digesting the compost. (And the heat itself probably has an effect, the way that cooking a vegetable makes it easier to digest.)

This is so fascinating!

I don't use any animal manure or artificial fertilizers on my veg plot, so I have to compost like a crazy man to replace the nutrients in my soil. I've kind of organised a compost collection thing at work and all that goes straight up to my allotment. Well I say organised, but basically I've put a collection bin in each of our kitchen areas and people just chuck their tea bags/coffee grounds/banana skins in them and I wind up with about 4 kilos of material each day. I run commute so it normally means a heavy pack running home - it would make much more sense to compost on site and take the finished compost away with me but there's nowhere really to put a composter without pissing someone off.

Anyhow, I've got a row of 8 large plastic dalek-looking compost bins and basically I fill them up one by one and by the time I've reached the end, the compost process has finished in the first one. It's a pain to try and mix the compost while it's doing its thing, so I just pile it in and leave it alone. I do stab at it with a big metal pole though, just to let some air in. Have never added any worms but it's always amazing how many there are in there. End product is decent enough, but cos there's a high proportion of tea-bags going in, I get left with all these weird ghostly plastic tea-bag exoskeletons blowing around the place.

Aside from that, I've got about four compost bays made out of large wooden pallets lashed together and all my garden waste gets chucked into those. Again, I don't bother turning them, but that's mostly cos there are always frogs/slow worms/lizards living in it and I don't really want to disturb them too much. Once a year though I'll carefully dig a couple of the bays out and use the contents for earthing up potatoes.

Jesus what a dull post.

Not dull at all! It's like most of ILX basically attained The Allotment Age around the same time, and this stuff is now absolutely fascinating!

I get left with all these weird ghostly plastic tea-bag exoskeletons blowing around the place.

this is a problem with the big pile I was talking about, it is maybe 75% paper, and we have to be extra vigilant about hot tea/coffee cups in particular - they have what we call "cup condoms" inside that shiny white paper, a plastic lining that never (well, almost never) breaks down. a big part of our job is educating people about those, and trying to get vendors to stop using them (they are cheaper than the compostable hot cups, money talks at festivals)

universal problem with laminated products i guess, hard to recycle cos it's not easy to separate the layers

so L is now trying this fancy brand for her compost tea starter:

http://earthfort.com/

she made up the first batch last night - unlike the previous method, where you just mix all the compost and starter into the water, this one requires you to mix the starter and some fish emulsion directly into the compost, then let it sit for 36-72 hours while (I assume) the microbes multiply. After that, you can put it in the water. The fish emulsion is super stinky, hope that all goes away during the brewing process. It should be ready to put into the water tonight or tomorrow morning.

I've got one of those bins that you can buy cheaply from the council and get a curious enjoyment from thinking "It's full" and then finding that a couple of weeks later there is plenty of room for more weeds/kitchen scraps. I don't think I've ever used any compost though.

If any Londoners want to know about COMPOST, we are doing a COMPOST WORKSHOP at the Streatham Community Garden on the 31st of August. (registration may be required, I shall ask if anyone has any interest in attending) Come and learn everything you ever wanted to know about COMPOST!!!