permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

Elaine Ingham's lab that used to be at soilfoodweb.com does analysis of 
microbial content of compost samples. They aren't cheap. I think these folks
http://earthfort.com/lab-services.html
are an offshoot of her lab. They're in the same town, at any rate.

Elaine also has written that the benefits of hot composting are these: it 
kills weed and other seeds that can remain for years in a mouldering (slow) 
pile. The thermophiles are a stage in the successionary process that prepares 
conditions for the later-stage microbes that are the true inhabitants of 
mature compost, the ones that release nutrients--as opposed the the early 
stage microbes that mostly chew stuff into small pieces but don't release 
much in the way of nutrients. The microbes that get killed in a hot pile are 
early succession critters that don't release nutrients from the pile at any 
great rate. They are chewers rather than chemists, busting up pieces so that 
the later-stage microbes have lots of edge to colonize.

Those later stage microbes will show up in a slow pile when the raw materials 
have broken down completely, but that can take years--the same pace as 
natural soil development, as opposed to the accelerated succession in a hot 
pile. So a cold pile will not develop the appropriate mix of microbes to 
release nutrients anywhere near as fast as a hot pile. Various sources say 
12-18 months. By then the pile has sat out in the rain and sun and may have 
leached out and off-gassed lots of nutrients.

Cold piles also tend to accumulate flies and maggots, something I don't see 
in hot piles. And rats and such will get into cold piles, but the goodies 
they like to eat are quickly broken down in a hot pile. And pathogens and 
cysts aren't killed at all in a cold pile. They are paradises for fungal 
diseases.

That said, I still do cold composting with much of my organic debris because 
I have other things to do besides baby-sit compost piles.

A table of cold vs hot pile benefits is at
http://hotbincomposting.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/hotbin-hot-and-cold-table-one-page1.jpg

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Nov 14, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Bob Waldrop wrote:

> 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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