permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

Another perspective. Kudos to Elaine Ingham and everyone else's perspective. 

 
What’s all this talk about perfect, by-the-book, compost
making? I am all for high-quality compost and it is a great zone 1 and 2 
input,
but many permaculture sites and most of nature doesn’t make perfect compost
piles. 
 
My overall goal is to keep increasing carbon storage on site
with as many sizes of organic material as I can get.  I bring in stumps, 
logs, limbs, branches, litter and chipped
woody debris. It all gets digested eventually. I am providing digestion
material for a wide range of organisms, the larger the woody debris range is
-  the large the diversity of
decomposers.  At this point I have
the luxury of bringing in some outside inputs to my semi-arid sites, but I
mostly rely on the bootstrap strategy. My first year garden on a weedy or
grassy site produces a certain amount of garden waste, weed’s bodies, etc to 
do
some effective sheet mulching on perhaps only 5% of the site.  In year two it 
might get up to 10% as
the herbaceous perennials put on weight.  In years 3 thru 10 there is an 
increasing amount of woody biomass
generated. Thinnings and prunings as well as herbaceous material and weeds can
now cover most of the site. In a sense, you could say that the goal is to 
reach
100% soil surface coverage organic matter in as few years as possible.  My 
recent zone 5 sites have been
achieving this by year 5. A subtropical rainforest site might achieve this in
the first 2-3 years. I like to use all sizes of organic matter to make
hugelkulturs using inputs and materials generated on site over time, but they
are only a small part of a site in the early years. 
 
All this biomass that is hitting the ground is composted in
the loose sense of the word. Decomposed is a better word. The amount of 
biomass
in my overall system that I put through a perfect, by-the-book, turned compost
pile is small. Most of it ends up in cold compost piles, rough compost piles,
brush piles, deep mulches, light mulches, woody debris here and there, live
plant matter, etc. 
 
Compost doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. Kinda like
people. We can always use more perfect people as well as more perfect compost
piles, but lets face it, we have to deal all the time with less-than-perfect
people and less-than-perfect compost piles. 
 
Michael Pilarski
 

________________________________
 From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org> 
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Making great compost
 

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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Subject: Re: [permaculture] Making great compost
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Here is the point of hot composting:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38015/title/Ye-Old-Parasites/

'Anastasiou says that these two worms infect human intestines when people 
prepare food with unwashed hands or use human feces to fertilize food crops—
both common practices in 12th- and 13th-century Europe. “Their findings 
showed 
how sanitation in this castle was particularly poor, because the density of 
eggs found was quite impressive,” says Adauto Araújo, a paleoparasitologist 
at 
the Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health in Rio de Janeiro.'

On Thursday, November 14, 2013 07:09:38 PM Michael Pilarski wrote:
> Another perspective. Kudos to Elaine Ingham and everyone else's perspective.
> 
> 
> What’s all this talk about perfect, by-the-book, compost
> making? I am all for high-quality compost and it is a great zone 1 and 2
> input, but many permaculture sites and most of nature doesn’t make perfect
> compost piles.
>  
> My overall goal is to keep increasing carbon storage on site
> with as many sizes of organic material as I can get.  I bring in stumps,
> logs, limbs, branches, litter and chipped woody debris. It all gets
> digested eventually. I am providing digestion material for a wide range of
> organisms, the larger the woody debris range is -  the large the diversity
> of
> decomposers.  At this point I have
> the luxury of bringing in some outside inputs to my semi-arid sites, but I
> mostly rely on the bootstrap strategy. My first year garden on a weedy or
> grassy site produces a certain amount of garden waste, weed’s bodies, etc to
> do some effective sheet mulching on perhaps only 5% of the site.  In year
> two it might get up to 10% as the herbaceous perennials put on weight.  In
> years 3 thru 10 there is an increasing amount of woody biomass generated.
> Thinnings and prunings as well as herbaceous material and weeds can now
> cover most of the site. In a sense, you could say that the goal is to reach
> 100% soil surface coverage organic matter in as few years as possible.  My
> recent zone 5 sites have been achieving this by year 5. A subtropical
> rainforest site might achieve this in the first 2-3 years. I like to use
> all sizes of organic matter to make hugelkulturs using inputs and materials
> generated on site over time, but they are only a small part of a site in
> the early years.
>  
> All this biomass that is hitting the ground is composted in
> the loose sense of the word. Decomposed is a better word. The amount of
> biomass in my overall system that I put through a perfect, by-the-book,
> turned compost pile is small. Most of it ends up in cold compost piles,
> rough compost piles, brush piles, deep mulches, light mulches, woody debris
> here and there, live plant matter, etc.
>  
> Compost doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. Kinda like
> people. We can always use more perfect people as well as more perfect
> compost piles, but lets face it, we have to deal all the time with
> less-than-perfect people and less-than-perfect compost piles.
>  
> Michael Pilarski
>  
> 
> ________________________________
>  From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
> To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2013 5:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [permaculture] Making great compost
> 
> 
> 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-tabl
> e-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
> >