tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3128796970110611282.post7645976859467337048..comments2018-03-13T08:24:50.614-07:00Comments on Keeping the Lantern Lit: Soil : Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.Lantern Carrierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03206039742594944113noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3128796970110611282.post-24959157456845316052012-02-20T16:04:54.180-08:002012-02-20T16:04:54.180-08:00Wow, this is super helpful. Thanks!Wow, this is super helpful. Thanks!MGShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02140920879108426928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3128796970110611282.post-28587705606274692042012-02-20T10:38:17.653-08:002012-02-20T10:38:17.653-08:00Rotation is good, but can also actually hamper the...Rotation is good, but can also actually hamper the growth of bacteria if you keep rotating the center of the pile, where heat starts to develop, out to the edges where the thermophilic bacteria die off. It also sort of "resets" the whole pile to the stage of whatever is newest. For a small-scale operation, I might recommend just letting it stack up, so that you can get good material from the bottom even while the top has fresh scraps on it.<br />This is also really dependent on what kind of material bulks up your pile - something like grass clippings, which tend to form water- and air-impermeable mats, need much more fluffing and turning than piles of kitchen scraps.<br /><br />Frequently, piles need more nitrogen. Urine can be added straight to the pile, no dilution necessary, as a free and easy nitrates source. Fresh green material helps, but is hard to get this time of year. The rapid-cooking, three-weeks-to-done piles you see experts make are almost always layers of fresh-mown grass and/or bird droppings (super nitrogen sources) mixed with food waste and heavy carbon stuff (straw, wood chips, dry leaves.)<br /><br />Time to finish a pile is very much like time to finish a chemical reaction - you can usually set an upper and lower bound, but beyond that, it's entirely dependent on conditions. A pile with sufficient moisture, some nitrogen (which it can get from food scraps), and some carbon, just left to its own devices, can cook for years and still have recognizable chunks of food waste in it. The same pile, shredded to little bits and intermixed with higher-nitrogen stuff (decomposing bacteria can run 50% protein by weight, so they are superheavy nitrogen feeders) may turn into crumbly, moist, black loam in a month.<br /><br />At this point, limited space and opportunities constrain my compost alchemy, so I usually let stuff cook until I'm digging beds, however soon that is, then just trench compost. http://organicgardening.about.com/od/compost/a/trenchcompost.htm<br />When I'm running a larger-scale operation, I plan to get deeper into deliberate careful compost chemistry.<br /><br />Washington State's page on composting has good information:<br />http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/<br /><br />Hope this helps!Lantern Carrierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03206039742594944113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3128796970110611282.post-17710284525825257232012-02-20T10:38:03.353-08:002012-02-20T10:38:03.353-08:00Hello MGS! :-)
I will do a more detailed post on ...Hello MGS! :-)<br /><br />I will do a more detailed post on compost, probably once the weather warms a little bit. Which segues to a few answers: the biochemistry driving compost is really temperature dependent. With a larger, well-established pile, or a pile made with experienced practice, the organic material insulates the whole thing pretty well and the bacterial action warms it from within. Often, however, most piles' decomposition simply slows down a lot once the temperature gets cold, and piles often freeze solid in the winter. Again, you can avoid this partially with practice and experience.<br /><br />A big factor that may be slowing down your pile is particle size. Since composting is just biochemistry writ large, surface area plays an enormous role. What takes months to decompose as-is will break down in a week if you are willing to put the effort and energy into shredding it into confetti. Since I'm very Taoist (or as they say in the literature, "lazy") regarding composting, I usually don't bother except with big, cellulose-heavy stalks and the like, but I accept that this means much slower "cooking" for the pile. Bigger particle size also makes the compost much less insulated, as air and water can convect heat away more freely.<br /><br />How does the pile smell? If it smells rotten (sulfurous, swampy), that generally means too little oxygen. If it smells acrid or ammoniac, that's too much free nitrogen. If it smells dusty, that's usually too dry and/or low nitrogen.<br /><br />What is the moisture level? Ideal compost feels like a squeezed-out sponge; plenty of water available for microorganisms but not saturated. If it's dry, nothing will happen at all; if it's wet, you'll get anaerobic breakdown (which will totally work, it's just slow and stinky.)<br /><br />What kind of wildlife are you getting in the pile? Flies and maggots mean a pile that is too cold and anaerobic. Earthworms mean that the moisture level is okay, but the pile isn't getting very hot, although the earthworms can do most of the heavy lifting themselves so that's okay.Lantern Carrierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03206039742594944113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3128796970110611282.post-32014685623377213702012-02-20T08:39:11.860-08:002012-02-20T08:39:11.860-08:00Excellent article: really interesting and well-wri...Excellent article: really interesting and well-written. :)<br /><br />Thanks for the list of perennial veggies. Hopefully I can find some of these. The sunchokes, perennial kale, and asparagus sound especially appealing.<br /><br />I'd love for you to do a post with more detail about composting. Our lovely landlady gave us a composter. I read up on what I could, but I think I need a "for dummies" version. It's pretty full now (about 75% full) so we've stopped throwing our veggie scraps into it. It kind of kills me to be throwing the veggie scraps in the trash, blegh. For the most part the compost has been a refrigerator for veggie scraps. How do we get the composting to start, and when should I expect it to start generating heat? I did what I could find were the right things to do: added layers of soil (including lots of earth worms!), added layers of dry leaves, as well as the layers of veggies. I rotated it about once a week. It started to look good until the weather got cold, so maybe it's just a fact of life for it to go dormant in the winter? Another question I have about composting: how long does a "batch" take: one year, two years? Or does it depend, and you'll know it's ready when it's ready?<br /><br />Again, I'm really loving the blog. Keep 'em coming!MGShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02140920879108426928noreply@blogger.com