Full circle composting

[Ganoderma]

i thought this would fit in tera preta as it is similar as it is in ground composting and farming...if not move it :hihi:

 

Who here composts? out of those that do, who does more than just worm composting, or kitchen scrap composting?

 

i am thinking larger scale composting that benefits the garden with little work.

 

i have started a small experiment that, if goes ok, i want to incorporate into our property for gardening/farming.

 

basically it is to have the compost in the garden. my goal is this. to have the compost feed the land without me digging and scattering.

 

on my little experiment it is like this. i have a raised garden on a concrete pad. it is bordered with pop bottles and brick to keep the dirt in (mint lines it to prevent soil from washing away in the rain). the highest corner is the compost. the idea being it rains and all the poo and goodies get washed to the concrete pad and run through the garden as the rest is lower. like a gravity feed type thing. this has been going for 1.5 years now and has worked good. i have large vines (nutrient PIGS) growing up my house from this garden. i have had 2 crops of corn, many flowers like roses and other exotics. fruit trees are in there now, starting out. guava, custard apples, golden fruit and some others. other things that i use to start in there (not long term cause a concrete pad is too bad for trees) are betel nut, papaya, coconut etc...anyway it has had a very good drain in nutrients and i have never fertilized it.

 

why am i posting this? i want to talk about composting using a full circle of life. the first problem everyone i talk to is. it will attract pests: ie. snails. well, in fact it has. because when i add to the compost (anything from cut flowers and fruit, to coco nut shells and old moldy reishii mushroom (hard and woody stuff) i always cover it i find it attracts another kind of snail...in my opinion good ones. the big pest species here are African land snails...the BIG ones. most of the "pest" species seem to only like "fresh" or near fresh greens and veggies etc. this is why they are pests i guess. but these "pest" species (i have experiment in captivity with African land snails and food types, and they don't like rotten food) don't like buried rotting crappy food. so the species i find are the ones that chew n algae growing on the wood, or on fungus that grows on many of the things there. these i welcome with open arms. i have had very very minimal damage from any kind of pest, mostly caterpillars.

 

aside from the obvious, worms, i to always have sow bugs (everywhere), ground snails　（esp（especially fungus eating ones), millipedes are awesome and the little wormy maggot things that are in a million shapes and sizes. but i will say that with many of these if there numbers are great i will see things like bottom leaves getting munched...a problem for low growing plants like cabbage and lettuce. i used to have a nice population of frogs here but houses got built around my yard and the cat population is large...no frogs anymore B) so i try to attract other animal predators to try and keep them in check. i like snail eaters, but i also try to keep centipedes and ground spiders around. they are great.

 

as good as animals are they are not what i want the most. because woody things high in cellulose are very hard to break down unless your a termite (i don't want those) i try to get fungus growing strong. i try and dry all my wooden type scraps together (rose stems, hard stems, coconut shells etc etc) and dry them in the sun (i want them to break up in the sun so the mycelium can colonize it easier). i put it all together in a hole i dig next to the compost (try to separate from the rotting fruits and stuff to keep sme of the critters out). i add a bunch of mycelium (called spawn) and lightly cover the top to keep humidity. this works great to break down woody type bits, i mean very good. after its done its magic or is starting to get weak animals usually move, sometimes too early. this helps break down the wood so that other critters can more easily eat it (beetle babies love this). also animals LOVE fungus so its win win. i have found that after 1 year i have completely composted things like corn stalks and cobs to the point can directly use it in the garden and poo fertilizer...before it took me 2-3 years.

 

my favourite fungi to use is Oyster mushroom. i have played with various fungi such as shiitake (not as good), ganoderma (so so), oyster (few species), "button" (the white ones that are in every market in N. America) and some other wild and unmentionable types. i have not played enough to compare just playing now but it seems very very useful to break things down WAY faster! things i look for are strong mycelium growth species (ie doesn't get attacked by molds and crap so easily) outdoors this s much nicer. also speed. then how tasty they are.

 

 

i am curious what others do for all around composting (not just vermiculture). what species and what methods work best for you? has anyone else played with other stuff like fungus, or bacteria or?

 

 

 

also this experimental garden cleaned up ALL (except metal/plastic) garbage from the 3 houses that were built next to us. i used the pop bottles to line it (most of the plastic) and all the concrete, bricks sand type crap (lots of broken tile...like tera preta's pottery i suppose haha). and the wood i started to grow mushrooms from in a very dirty manner.

 

in the next couple years i hope to have at least a 20x30 meter plot to play with this a bit more....time and money.

 

what do you guys do?

[Philip Small]

what do you guys do?

 

Living in a worm-invaded area, I would have to go to some effort to avoid vermicompost: any local soil I add for inoculation adds worm eggs of the voracious variety.

 

I add low-temp charcoal sprinkled with a light ammonium sulfate solution. With my browns-dominated maple leaf compost, the added N heats the pile up nicely. I make actively aerated compost tea and water the compost feed stock leaf pile with part of it. I have been playing with some trichoderm fungal inoculate, and encourage fungal activity in my compost with a mix of slightly-to-non-charred woody bits. It is a small pile, but I think the charred components are adaptable to large scale composting efforts.

[Ganoderma]

would charred wood be very acidic? i'm sure trich. molds dont care...they seem to grow on anything!

[Philip Small]

would charred wood be very acidic? i'm sure trich. molds dont care...they seem to grow on anything!

 

My understanding is that the wood vinegar condensates will be acid, that the char solids will be alkaline, and that the combo tends to alkaline. How acid/alkaline the combo is depends on source material and pyrolysis conditions.

[Turtle]

...Who here composts? out of those that do, who does more than just worm composting, or kitchen scrap composting?

 

i am thinking larger scale composting that benefits the garden with little work.

...what do you guys do?

 

I use open-ended chicken wire 'tubes' about 18" across and 18" high. I have just 2 of them. As they fill I pull the wire tube up to make more room. Every couple of months I turn them upside down and screen the soil out from the bottom half of the pile and spread it in the garden. I water them daily and don't add any bugs or m'crobes. I'm only putting yard weeds and garden trimmings in this year. Works well and is cheap. Set them by the garden as you say and the drippings feed the plants. :naughty: :surprise:

[Ganoderma]

its the ultimate in time release fertilizers!

[Michaelangelica]

 

Landline - 11/05/2008: Fertile Imagination . Australian Broadcasting Corp

[Michaelangelica]

Folke Günther´s blog

[Philip Small]

I've changed my full circle composting approach a bit. Last fall I would add lightly fertilized char as 1-2 cm chunks directly to the compost. Do this when I would top it off with new leaves. But I got to worrying about the worms: the fertilizer salts seemed to set them back, and, although the pile warmed up a little, it was obvious the worms were doing all the real work. So it was just chunks, no fertilizer, after that.

 

Then this winter I got more into crushing and screening, adding finer char when topping off with leaves but also adding fine char into the kitchen scrap container, layering it in like. Really cuts back on the odor issue in the house. But it also assured a constant stream of fine char into the compost pile. And then on my B-day (4/3) I separated out a 1/2 cu meter of finished compost and rebuilt the pile. Within a week the compost pile was hot and steaming. All the worms had retreated. The pile has been melting away since and it hasn't been those voracious red wigglers like it was previous. Been going like this for 6 weeks, and I keep adding leaves.

 

Because I have way more leaves than I do green waste, this amount of heat and steam has never occurred before. (Cold weather made the steam beautifully apparent). I believe it is the fine char directly involved with the green waste. I think the effect can be quite flashy: peaking for a day or two in the powder and then backing off after the fine char tempers. Somehow this experience helps persuade me there is value in having a full range of particle size in the char feed for the compost, from dust to a few at 2 cm. Besides, breathing too much dust isn't healthy, good to have an excuse to back off on the crush.

 

BTW the composter is an open tube, 0.8 meter tall, 1 meter diameter, open bottom. I turn punch and tug at it daily with an aerator and keep it well moistened.

[Ganoderma]

very cool thanks! i have changed mine as well. i now have my compost built into my garden. the compost "bin" is the corner of the garden and it just leakes into the garden. i have to admit, i am a lazy gardener and dont turn or add anything. when tehre is a LOT of green and dead palnts in tehre i throw soil on top, and thats about it.

 

My garden, however, is in itself a compost bin. because i am so lazy i often dont weed very much, just make sure the grasses stay away. when i pull up weeds i jsut throw them back on top of the garden after taking the dirt away from the roots (so they die). when the top of the soil is moist the worms come up and eat at the dead material i leave in teh garden. right now at any given area the entire garden ahs 2+ inches of worm castings over the entire thing! i am surprised at how well it works. i do have snails and such in there as well, but they leave my plants alone for the most part (african land snails....). my garden is home to all sorts of things but i think the main breaker-downers are snails, worms, sow bugs and fungus! but i also have a healthy supply of spiders, centipedes, millipedes and all sorts of other weird creepy things in there, even the odd toad. all this in a 3 (roughly) square meter garden that is built on top of a concrete pad.

 

you may also want to look at the clean recirculating aquaculture thread in the earth science forum, it touches on composting using flies and worms.

 

got any pics of your system? i would love to see it!