permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Jim wrote:

> Hi-
> Worms are great things, no doubt about it. No worms, no soil.
>
> But does organic waste in a compost pile create just as much greenhouse 
> gases as when it decomposes in a landfill?

Other than emissions of measurable quantities of carbon dioxide, same as you would get from cutting weeds and leaving 
them on the ground to rot or turning soil while burying biomass, compost, garbage or manure I you sould not get any 
methane at all. Processing food wastes or manure or  mix of the two can be done without generating methane in a properly 
shaped pile as long as it is kept aerated, has adequate carbonaceous materials mixed with it
in a 60% (weeds, grasses, wood chips, bark or sawdust) to 40% raw nitrogenous materials (manure/garbage) and has a high 
enough moisture content to keep the beneficial bacterial and fungi alive or out of dormancy. You can get a feel for this 
kind of thing when considering how to sheet compost garbage and manure in situ on fields and garden space. You can not 
allow these materials to go anaerobic or become putrescent. This is easily done by spreading the materials thin enough 
to allow adequate aeration and drainage during rainfall. Worms, dung beetles, bacteria, fungi and many other organisms
will make short work of the garbage and you will end up with a layer of 
sweet-smelling compost on the ground's surface.
The best way to make compost is to mix garbage and manure directly with rock dusts and a quantity of finished compost of 
aged biomass (sawdust or hay for example). Make this a 50% (starter compost/weeds plus garbage/manure) 50% rock dust 
mixture. It will work off amazingly fast with little or no odor as long as it is kept turned with no portion of the pile 
allowed to go anaerobic. Maybe create a shallow layer of hay then put the 50-50 mix on top of it. As soon as the 
nitrogenout materials in the pile have a sweet smell then the entire pile should be moved to the garden and applied as 
surface dressing and lightly forked (spade fork or digging fork) in without actually turning the soil. You will have a 
fresh, high tilth, highly fertile, weed-free layer of soil to directly plant crops in.

LL

> (I'm assuming this is not a landfill with a methane  burning  turbine)
>
> I can see the landfill diversion value of this program, and the soil 
> regeneration/nutrition part, but greenhouse gases?