Hot Compost - Update

I decided the best way to show you about my hot composting was to post some pictures. This batch is around 2-3 weeks old. The last addition of grass was one week ago.

It has a great earthy smell to it, no harsh or amonia smell at all. It is hot, but now so hot that it now kills composting worms. There were several worms just under the burlap bags when I opened the bin. I keep burlap bags on top to hold in extra heat during winter. In the winter we get into the low 30s (not cold by midwest or northern areas, I know I used to live up north).

If the pictures look blurry, it is not the cameras fault. There is lot of steam rising up. I dug a whole in the center to get more steam. It worked, but the the camera didn't pick it up as well as in the first shot.

I will wait maybe one more week and then distribute this around. When I do, I will start a photo journal of my compost heap from start to finish.

Composting worm disaster - killer possums

You know that you have been composting for a while when you can tell wild stories about compost. ... and here I go.

I was in the middle of separating composting worms from the vermicompost they created. In the middle of the day I got distracted and never finished the task. In the evening I saw the bin I was using resting quietly on the deck. It was down far enough that there was a high concentration of worms in the compost. I knew it was warm enough and not going to rain, so I left them outside overnight.

The next morning when I awoke I saw a large mess on the deck. Compost was strewn everywhere. Worms where lying all over the deck. Some alive and some dead.

The first round of head scratching lead nowhere. What animal would dig through compost and make such a large mess. We have raccoons, but that didn't seem right for some reason. As I continued to ponder this, I recalled how I also had been noticing spots in the garden that had been dug up. These were normally in areas of high concentrations of compost. So I put the two together and figured whatever was digging in the garden was the same animal that had probably killed a few thousand composting worms.

The garden problem was easy to fix. I put a 1 inch mesh over the areas of the garden where I put fresh compost. The reg wriggle worms that I keep in the garden would be attracted to the compost, and the animal that was digging in my garden would be discouraged by the netting. This worked. I also use this same trick to keep cat from using my garden like a litter box. Every time I dig out the harvested vegetable from the garden, it seems to be an invitation to use the garden as a quick relief spot.

Luckily for me, I got the answer to the mystery that was starting to bug me a few nights later. Our cat (same cat as mentioned above) started meowing in front of the glass door that leads to the vegetable garden. I turned on the light and caught the possum in the act. It wasn't digging, but it was poking around the garden and seemed like it was looking for something.

The solution was also simple. I have a sprinkler that is triggered by movement. When it is turned on, if you walk in front of it you get an 8 second blast of water. This is more than enough to scare away even the most tame creatures from our neighborhood. This sprinkler was set up for a week pointing at the gardening to protect it. That along with the bare areas in the garden being covered with netting discouraged the possums from poking around my garden.

Composting oil spill with mushrooms and hair

There has been a lot written in the last few weeks about cleaning up the oil spill in San Francisco using human hair mats and oyster mushrooms. Many have poked fun at it or tried to make it in a big political statement.

As a vegetable gardener and avid composter, I see things through biodegrading glasses.

To keep perspective, this was only allowed as an experiment and may not even work on a large scale. It took a $10,000 donation in mushrooms and the hairmats came from a single small supplier. It also requires a lot of space to carry this out. So to do this on a large scale would require a huge commitment and have to be planned and staged ahead of time.

But it is from experiments like this that allow use to change. Talking about new creative ideas to handle oil spills and to deal with waste is all fine, but actually testing and deploying the ideas takes courage and it is from actions that we can learn.

The end result of this isn't going to be anything that I can put in my vegetable garden. Paul Stamets was quoted to say the soil created was only good for landscaping, so there must still be some toxic residual waste when done. I wonder what would happen if it was vermicomposted afterwards.

So keep experiments like this in perspective, learn from it, and be happy that we are always looking for new and better ways to clean up our planet and know efforts like this are looking for new solutions to old problems. Right now we have a lot of old problems that need new and better solutions.

Composting worms in vegetable garden

If you have read about vermicomposting, then you have read that composting worms can not survive in the garden.

Having composted with red wigglers for several years and seen them in the garden, I would like to dispel this myth and give you some of my insights in to composting worms in the garden.

I started like most vermi-composters and read the literature about separating worms from compost because they wouldn't survive in the garden and it would be a death sentence to the worms. So I would meticulously sort the worms out by exposing the compost to direct sun, have the worm go deeper in the pile, scrap off the top level and repeat until I was down to a ball of compost worms in the bottom. I would also look for the worm casing that would have the baby worms and separate as many of those as I could as well. But I knew that no matter how good of job I did, I would never get them all.

Months later I checked the garden and much to my surprise there were tons of composting worms just below the surface. Was everything I had read wrong? How did they survive?

To answer those questions and to know if you can expect to have composting worms survive in your garden, I will tell you a bit about how my vegetable garden operates.

First, I hot compost a mixture of grass, animal hay bedding, coffee hulls and kitchen scraps for 4-6 weeks. Once the pile has cooled down I move the compost into worm composting bins, and let the red wigglers work it over for 2 months. When I put it into my garden there may still be some hay still breaking down that the worms can continue to work on.

Second, when my compost gets ahead of what the worms can work on, I put some of the hot compost directly into the garden. This is done when trying to build up an area between plantings. The worms love this and often migrate to this area.

Third, for slow growing plants or when I am trying to cool down the hot compost pile (not add more greens, I use the weekly grass clippings as mulch. You need to keep grass clippings mulch 6 inches to a foot away from vegetables until it cools down (give it a week or so) otherwise you can burn vegetables with the heat generated from the grass.

So if you are working lots of organic materials into your garden all the time, then you don't need to be so picky about removing all of the composting worms before you place this rich fertilizer into your garden. I still sort out worms, but I don't worry about the worm casing and I don't get caught up into breaking every lump of compost down to make sure there isn't a worm hiding in it. I let them enjoy doing some extra work in the garden.

Remember that because of the enzymes that worms release and the way they break down organic materials, that even with lower nitrogen percentages, worm compost is considered a better fertilizer because it is closer to what plants can use, and what they do use in nature. Which makes for a happier healthier garden.

Composting bedding hay and vericomposting

One of the best things for composting is hay. It adds a great carbon or brown ingredient that most compost piles need.
But before you go out and put tons of hay used for animal bedding, here is one thing to consider: If you are using hay that has been used by a farm animal as bedding, then the hay will have animal waste in it (normally a GREAT thing for composting).

BUT if the animal (sheep/cow/horse) has recently been de-wormed, THEN you could be doing lots of harm to your garden. The de-wormer has a vermicide in it that can also kill garden worms. Even worse is if you compost like I do where I first hot compost scraps, then I put them into a vermicomposting bin to finish the composting and make nitrogen that is even more accessible to plants. If I use hay that contains waste from animals that have been dewormed, then I might kill all my red wigglers and create more harm than good.

So make sure you know the source of any bedding hay that you add to your compost pile. Lucky for me, the person that I get it from doesn't believe in deworming her sheep, so I get a great carbon source without any risk to my worms. In the end I have great compost for my vegetable garden. And yes, I do track my composting with Plangarden software. I take composting very seriously since I started many years ago with clay soil and only in the past few years have built up a good loose rich soil for my vegetables.

Compost Recipe - Good smelling compost

Although I am composting all the time, it is interesting that every pile is unique and has its own flavor. This summer, for example, I decided to go without adding as much straw as I normally do. Each week I would get grass and other primarily green ingredients with coffee hulls added as the primary carbon. I wanted to test if I could keep this pile in somewhat control from stinking up the neighborhood. While I never added water and turned just enough to keep it hot, it still ended up being a sludge of goo that my worms (that do the final composting for me) didn't seem to appreciate as much.

This time I trimmed back the lavender that was dead, trimmed the pineapple guava and other browns. This is a little bulky and will allow air into the pile. As always I got a load of grass from the neighborhood gardener. This time it had more dead grass and leaves in it.

Now it's second week the compost pile is starting to cook. I may get some sheep bedding straw to keep it from overheating.

Ever wonder what a good recipe for compost is. Imagine smelling lavender cooking in your back yard. Now that is good compost.

Composting for Electricity

If you like composting, this is a new twist on the whole concept
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19743/?nlid=686

Bruce Logan from Pen State has for years been working on getting hydrogen with the help of bacteria.
Here is the problem: you can use electricity to get hydrogen from water, BUT it takes more energy to get the hydrogen than the energy produced from the hydrogen. A simple law of nature that you can't get something for nothing.

The solution that Penn State has worked on: Use bacteria to help produce hydrogen. Here is the basic recipe.

• Common Bacteria that produce hydrogen as a waste product
• Compost/Waste for them to munch on
• A small bit of electric voltage
• Vinegar - in the article they call for acetic acid.

What makes this exciting is the fact that the engergy produced is 288% better than the engery put into it. Think of it this way. You put in 1 Volt and get 2.88 Volts back. No this is not magic, it is simply bacteria doing their job and just helping them along.

Which is why this, unlike other ideas that people are working on, is getting a patent so the company that funded the project can get money back from this research project.

Now garden composters will be competing against electric companies for waste material.

As for me I welcome the competition.

Hot Composting - too hot?

Sure I wrote the software that allows vegetable gardeners to layout and plan their garden. But I also enjoy composting to help put my own fertilier in the garden. This journey is to discuss with other Compost Crazy people the secret recipes for great compost and how to avoid and recover from composting mishaps.

One thing you always read is that "Compost Happens." But if you are into hot composting, you can have things go wrong and need to recover.

First, what is "Hot Composting" it is when you go with lots of green waste. This generates a huge amount of heat when put in a large pile, say in one of those 3x3x3 foot or 1x1x1 meter compost bins.

The most common source of material for the greens is grass clippings. I get a collection from myself and neighbors that don't use chemicals, fertilizers or herbicides.

What can go wrong? Simple put too much grass in and you know it is wrong when a few days later you open your compost bin and turn it. First a huge batch of steam will come right at you. Followed by a strong odor of ammonia. This can be very strong and repulsive to say the least. The other problem is the grass clumps up into gross green gobs. If you experience that, then you are too hot, or have too much green. The smell of ammonia is the valuable nitrogen you want in your garden going up your nose (and maybe your neighbors that want to enjoy a barbecue without thinking they are in a New York subway).

How do you prevent this?
The best way to prevent this is to find a supply of hay. For me it are friends with goats and I get the bedding from them. Shredded newspapper or dry leaves are other items that can help keep you from your compost from getting too hot. I find it is best to have the straw on the bottom. When I add the grass, I shake it down into the hay and then turn to get it mixed right. I also found a small coffee roaster near me and I get the dried hulls of the coffee bean and I add that. BTW, the coffee can clump together too, so it needs to be mixed well. Getting the right mixture will mean that you will get some ammonia smell for a day or two, but it won't be very strong.

How do you recover from a compost pile over heating?
If you have had a compost pile that got too hot in the past, then you know what I am talking about from above. And the solution is simple. Before you add your big load of greens to the pile, make sure you have a stockpile of browns next to it. Sure you could compost everything at once, but the point here is to find the right mixture to give you that quick compost result that you are looking for. You want the pile to get hot in a controlled way so you don't have to wait 6 months to harvest compost. You want your compost in weeks not months. So have a stack or bag of straw next to your compost as you fine tune your composting technique.