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  • From: Bob Waldrop <bob@bobwaldrop.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Making great compost
  • Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 18:33:10 -0600

This charcoal thread was very interesting. Toby's comments --
Because Elaine says that most compost is garbage, so if we are going to hold the biochar folks to the high standard of carefully controlled temperature and oxygen levels of pyrolysis in technical equipment, I don't think its right to talk about compost as something that just makes itself. To quote Elaine, from what Lawrence posted on Nov 2:
a sign on a pile of organic matter
that says "compost", does not in fact make it compost.
If the material is 70% cocoa color, rich earthy, old-growth forest
smell, wide diameter, colored filamentous fungi present, good numbers of
flagellates and amoebae (aerobic protozoa) and beneficial
nematodes present, then it can be called compost.

were food for thought for me. I generally do the long and slow compost methods, I rarely turn my compost and it usually sits around for a year or a little less and it smells like what I imagine a "rich earthy, old-growth forest" would smell like, and it is dark brown in color. I'm also doing more composting in place. But now I want to get it tested, lol, and I wonder "who does that kind of testing?" This is something more I think than taking it in to the county extension office and asking for a soil test on it.

AND. . .

what are some "good compost best practices?" Toby said something about the compost had to get hot to get the right mix of micro flora/fauna, but then somebody else replied that he thought getting compost hot burns out the micro flora. Does a forest floor ever actually get "hot" the way we think of a compost pile?

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City
http://www.ipermie.net Permaculture your urban lifestyle & protect yourself
from the four horsemen of the modern apocalypse: peak oil, climate instability,
economic irrationality, and political criminality






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