Adventures in Composting

like I said I'm I'm bill Porter I'm the director of Animal Control I've been doing it for about six years now since I've been part of the Laramie Humane Society and there's been a great interest in backyard chickens who here has chickens in their backyard huh so I'm onna I recently converted I got some chickens this year it's been working great we'll see how it goes and what I'm gonna do is just briefly talk about what Fort Collins the laws what what is expected to being a good neighbor to be a responsible pet owner what does that mean for for those who are interested in that I know you didn't really come here to hear about chickens and the laws and that but so I'll be brief I'll just take five or ten minutes of your time and if you have any questions about that just fire them off about two and a half years ago as you know Fort Collins adopted some the chicken ordinance it has been landmark I've gotten calls from across the nation wanting to know how is it going can I get a copy of your ordinance and all kinds of questions the New York Times actually gave me a call and said yeah there are they're excited about it and so you should be proud to be part of Fort Collins very progressive laws and they're modeled around the country there are the other towns in the area also have chicken laws Oh Loveland has had one for a while but it just says chickens are allowed which comes to problems because some people have roosters my neighbor had a rooster so what Fort Collins did is make a few laws it says you know to be a good neighbor to be a responsible pet owner here are some things you should follow like no roosters sure let's start with the laws first so there's a limit to how many chickens you can have and what you can do with them no more insects no roosters not click too close to a property line of your neighbors I think it has to be within like 15 feet of your neighbor and if you like live in a duplex talk to your neighbor hey is it okay if I have chickens and they say yeah make sure you get them writing that kind of thing a big one that we're seeing is a predator proof okay we live in beautiful wild Colorado okay that comes with the foxes and the raccoons and they do get a lot of that also your neighbor's dog we've been seeing a little bit of that of dogs getting jumping fences nothing more fun than chasing the neighbors chicken so try to be cognizant of that make your your your fences secure it is your responsibility to keep out predators predators meaning wildlife if however if the neighbor's dog does get into your chicken coop yeah please do give us a call there's a few other things like make sure they're safe during the daylight lock them up at night some things that I have thought that kind of help with the neighbors because they may not like the chickens I'm a knight like they might like the this the city life you know not not to be bothered by clucking rooster or clucking chickens and such as that give him some eggs so that really helps with neighborhood tensions and you ask for sake hey I need some cartons building filling you with cartons for till the end of days so you can fill up those eggs for them just some other things make sure you clean up after your chickens when it's time to well and a life type of things we there is a humane society to help with that these chickens are to be raised for eggs they aren't supposed to be raised for meat so don't don't raise chickens for me so how does this law affected Fort Collins well Animal Control in Fort Collins alone last year did was it twelve thousand calls twelve thousand one hundred eighty five calls for service thirty of them were for chickens I saw I got more phone calls from the from the press and people wanting to know about the law than that and they just got a say talking to HOAs and all that so it has been a great interest but it hasn't been a problem so it's like less than one percent not a big problem for her calls not an issue for animal control most of them are straights just chickens hop in the fence getting out a few roosters to welfare cases both on founding unfounded dog attack someone thought it was a goose okay so not much going on for for chickens but people are being responsible like to see that that's pretty much all I had covered the laws briefly and how it can benefit you and you wanna do you have any questions about oh you're asking me something that I'm not a special I'm only a recent chicken owner can I get back to you for years about that I've only had my chickens for a couple weeks now so anyone know the answer to that exactly exactly mm-hmm so what do you do yes so when I went to go get my chickens I went back I went to Jack's they were sold out they were sold out again they're sold out again and you can buy chickens you know that are predetermined sex you know they can do that and they're called sex-linked I I'm like I've learned all this all right learned all this and some of them are called straight run chickens well you have a 50-50 chance you can get male or female so what do you do if you get that male you uh that's what we're here for Larimer Humane Society can help you with that pick it up and adopt it out there are people out in the county we do yeah there's people out on the farm that look for roosters don't know why but the older chickens the old chickens you can when they finally do at the few years like the Humane Society's here Myranda like just like a cat or a dog when it's time for end of life times your veterinarian Humane Society can help out with that anything else there is a license thank you for asking that it is part of the law that you do need a chicken license okay it's it's $25 and it's a lifetime license and what that is is if a chicken gets out on let's say let's pick mountain 400 mountain there's a chicken running around 400 melton where does it live you want to see something funny on YouTube go watch I animal control officer bill chasing a chicken on 400 mountain on YouTube I don't want to be on YouTube so what I do is I call up and say hey anybody have a chicken license on mountain yeah over at 525 Mountain there is somebody with a chicken license so I go ding and aning your chickens out yeah they yes yeah you can you can want you you know they can shake green can or coax a chicken back so I have to tell you this yeah I got the same when I heard it was like chicken license so my staff got for me a little stuffed chicken and then you put your license so if you come to my office sometime you can see it it's a tag it basically is a household license it chicken doesn't have to wear tag of course so yes oh yes the city says that's not the way they don't have to go if that's the way the citizens want to go that's it but as now only hens know roosters know geese no oh pygmy goats are property popular so are pot-bellied pigs you know well he's not due out on the Fort Collins mm-hmm so he's in the county all right yep so there aren't allowed livestock and that's a horse and you have to have a half acre but basically no other I've been heard anybody making any movement started but hey it's your city and people sure to turn out for that chicken ordinance I've never seen City Council so packed as a chicken knowingness so County Commissioners do listen so if you have something that you want to change by all means any other questions yes ah yes ask her HOA first some people have gotten chickens then talk to the HOA some of my Joey's are fine with it some HOAs will say we don't want that name it and it's their choice six I it's not my specialty speciality but I don't see a problem with it anybody know I don't I don't that's they they will well I think you make more friends if you just say hey have some extra eggs to your neighbors or bring him to bring him to work that is a lot that is a lot that's a lot of egg salad yes sir so far we're up to 83 all right guys if there's nothing else all right one more that is loud that is allowed you are allowed to have backyard beehives just like the chicken ordinance there's a lot of can't be too close to property line that kind of thing you have to watch it I think it's like that yeah sounds like you've read it yeah yeah and people a lot of times people don't even know they're there all right thank you very much thanks for your time a lot of times people ask what how do you start composting so I like to show examples of why people start composting and often times it's because they have a waste product that they're trying to get rid of so whether you have a horse or cows or a few goats maybe chickens we can put in that slide or some kitchen scraps organic matter is a terrible thing to waste we all know that our landfills are full enough and that we should be trying to divert some of our material so it breaks my heart when I see something really wonderful like horse manure going in a dumpster and going in the landfill so we're going to talk about what we can do with organic matter this presentation we're going to talk about windrows or bin composting that's just one of the methods that people use to compost you can also use passive Windrose and that requires some technology so you don't have to turn the pile and there's more information available on that online I just wanted to give you a heads up that there are many many options for how to accomplish composting and then of course we've all probably heard of composting with worms that's a little bit different than the compost process I'm going to talk about tonight we are going to encourage a hot environment in the compost process that I'll speak about and we don't want worms to be in that hot environment however they can complement this very nicely and there are some fact sheets and and resources here if you're interested in learning more about worm compost so what are the benefits of composting why should you take the time to learn to do this and get involved in the art and science of compost it reduces your material your waste material by at least 30 percent I put this number up and it's pretty conservative oftentimes I see 50 percent so especially if you have something like horse manure or a large volume of material that you're trying to get rid of our process this is really wonderful benefit also if you compost correctly which we're all going to be able to do after tonight you can minimize pathogens and weeds and any odour that may come from that decomposition and insect problems if you're composting correctly you shouldn't really have fly issues and you should just kind of smell like a nice earthy pile in the backyard also a complete composted material has stabilized nitrogen and phosphorous and this is important because if it rains really hard after you apply your compost you want your nitrogen and phosphorus and other micronutrients to stay where you put your material because your plants are going to need it as suzie mentioned my master's research investigated this question and we found that composted material does stay in the soil and the nutrients stays in the soil much more readily than raw manure or raw materials so as a bit of an environmentalist I'm excited about this point to produces a marketable material so someone over here is already thinking about how to sell some things you can always sell compost and we all hear about carbon sequestration these days and when you when you compost material kitchen scraps manure you're sequestering that carbon you're keeping it in a stable useful place and then you put it in your your garden or on your lawn and that is a sink so you're keeping carbon in the environment instead of gassing it up into the atmosphere so this is one of my favorite definitions of compost and it's a bit wordy but I have it broken down into different words and we're going to then define each one of these words to help understand the process so in general composting is a managed biological oxidation process that converts heterogeneous material into a homogeneous material so this if you find this presentation online this resource at the bottom is what wonderful there's an on-farm composting handbook available from Cornell and I'd say 95% of the book is available for free the other 5% you have to buy yeah but what you need is available online and it's a really good resource so managed this is what you do we provide the carbon and the nitrogen to the pile does anybody bake bake breads you know you have to you have to have a recipe of materials to put into that bread before it's going to rise and be something you want to eat at the end of the project compost is kind of the same way you need to think about the carbon and the nitrogen and the ratio that you're adding together it's not quite as tricky as bread you have a little bit more of a fluffy zone but that's a good way to think about it and I'll go into what is carbon the nitrogen in the next slide you need to also provide oxygen to the pile if you think about microorganisms they're just like you and I they need food water and oxygen so if they run out of oxygen they're going to become dormant and stop doing what you're asking them to do which is decompose your material so I've listed five to fifty percent the optimal amount of oxygen that you want in that pile is fifty percent so if you can think about all of your scraps that you're going to put in a pile and there are little bitty poor spaces in between those leaves or chunks of vegetables or manure half of those poor spaces should be full of oxygen that's just a way to think of it in general and the other half of those poor spaces should be full of water the microorganisms need water to to continue to metabolize and also they use this water like I like to think of it of it as little superhighways the water connects the pores to each other and as a micro organism is is chewing up at the carbon and nitrogen and breathing they are releasing waste into the system and once that little poor where they've been eating and reproducing is full of their waste they need a pathway to be able to move out of that area into a fresh spot so they can chew and eat and reproduce some more so if they're little it's their pathway to move around in the pile and do what they need to do so carbon nitrogen oxygen and water that's what you give them I hope you can see this if not you can see it online this is we're looking at the carbon and the nitrogen ratios this is just a general table it's not set in stone somebody's kitchen scraps are going to be a little bit different than my kitchen scraps so the numbers will be different but I said you need 30 volumes or 30 carbons to one nitrogen well you see nothing is is one-to-one here so it doesn't come out that simple in the math but these are some general ideas for example if you have leaves 35 to 1 and then if you add so these are going to be brown leaves anything that's brown is carbon and anything that's green green is nitrogen the way that I like to think about it is if you put a bucket of something on your in your backyard on a hot sunny day and you leave it there for 24 hours if you come back and it's really smelly that was a high nitrogen material if you come back and it's still pretty benign you don't notice it that's mostly carbon so these are some general ideas of carbons and nitrogen ratios and the way you can use this is think about volumes think of five gallon buckets or wheelbarrow loads and if you're going to use one bucket of one material and one bucket of another material add the bigger numbers together divide by two and that's the general carbon to nitrogen ratio so we won't do math because then we'll all glaze over but this is this is a useful resource for you and then what do the microorganisms do this is the biological piece of the definition many species of bacteria and fungi metabolize they're eating they're growing they're reproducing they metabolize the carbon and nitrogen and the oxygen and the water in the process and the number one thing that I'd like all of you to take away from tonight is that composting is farming microorganisms you're not heating a pile you're not breaking down the material you're farming microorganisms so they can do all of that for you so if they're happy you're going to be happy oxidation I kind of touched on this this word just means in the presence of air and the oxygen is used by microorganisms and respiration and it's again in the pore space in between the materials that you've mixed together and oftentimes if you have a whole bunch of kitchen scraps you know they kind of get it kind of gets sludgy right as it decomposes it gets really dense so I like to think about adding bulking material because you want your compost pile to be fluffy because there has to be that space for oxygen and water so it's again it's as much of an art as a science you're asked you have to feel your compost pile you can put on rubber rubber gloves but you have to touch it you have to be excited to touch it and feel it and and squeeze the material you can wash your hands afterwards so this is a pile of leaves it's one of the best things that I've found to use as bulking material many of us have large trees in our yard and it's important to think about the longevity of your compost pile and the fact that the leaves fall in the fall so what I do is when my yard is full of leaves I take lots of trash bags or cans and I fill those up and I set them over to the side and throughout the winter I use that material to add to my kitchen scraps so that I always have a constant supply of carbon some people have access to waste Hey or waste feed there are many other options and we'll kind of ask questions or I'll ask you to let me know what some of your feed stocks are that you're curious about in a few minutes but leaves are great yes well grass clippings are a great discussion point when it's green it's nitrogen once it turns brown it's primarily carbon but a lot of times grass clippings pack down on themselves and get really matted so oftentimes just the outside will turn brown and if you pull it apart there's still a lot of nitrogen in the middle and it's also challenging with that mat that a lot of oxygen can't get between those layers so I've mixed grass clippings in and kind of stir them up and you're in your wheelbarrow they can be either one depending on the color so the dissimilar material that we're going to add can be any of the any of the following kitchen scraps bedding for chickens I composted my chicken bedding and it was wonderful it was brown because it was straw but then there was urine and waste on there and so that was a nitrogen source it was a really great compost material waste hey you know we see the spoiled hay on the side of the road when it's rained spoiled feet or grain leaves grass clippings horse manure does anybody have any questions about something they want to compost yes okay good question generally no meat cheese or bones so pastas fine bread is fine vegetables fruit even avocado peels and and orange rinds are okay they're going to take more than one composting cycle you will have to pull them out and put them back in or be okay with having a avocado rind under your lilac bush did you have something in mind you were questioning right that's a good point so if I sometimes I spread my compost out after it's gone through the process and I'll see a tomato sprout up in my lilac bed and I'm okay with that you know some people might want their compost to not have any seeds and and it depends on how strict you are with what you're going to use it for some folks do sift their compost so that it's all really fine black lovely material other people are okay with having a little on the non decomposed eggshell in their compost so it kind of depends on what you think but a tomato or a fruit an apple tree probably isn't going to make it you know it'll probably die and and become compost of it's all on its own yes I'll get to temperature in just a moment is that okay yes right so our soil typically is a little higher than the neutral we all have close to eight soil seven point five to eight and adding wood ash to your compost does increase the pH so it depends if you're adding one bucket of wood ash per year to five buckets per year I'd say that's probably okay it's not going to greatly change your pH soil has an amazing ability to buffer pH but if you're going to unload your wood stove every other or every third day into the compost pile it's probably too much yeah yes there's the you can use the newspaper our cardboard also there's the city leaf exchange thank you so the city of Fort Collins leaf exchange cardboard and newspaper does work well newspapers sometimes mats down on itself so you have to make sure that you're just watching that no I believe most newspaper the non glossy pages are they're fine to compost yes worms have a wonderful ability to escape if they have if they're not enclosed in a system they might die it's as sad as it sounds they do become organic matter and our you know it's a good thing to add back to the soil however I have a love for worms so they do leave the pile if you're if your system is on the soil they they can get out some people have a question about pine needles pine needles don't really break down in your in one composting cycle however they really don't hurt you you know if you put your compost out with calm with needles in it doesn't really hurt anything except your hands right if you have a lot of pine needles you're adding to your garden just be beware because you need to probably wear gloves coffee grounds coffee grounds are great nitrogen source for your compost pile plus it adds some moisture anything else that you're curious about yes correct so shredded wood scraps they do compost they just take a very long time so I tend to put that off to the side and take it to one of the facilities in town that actually grinds it up and uses it as mulch or take it to a neighbor who has a chipper shredder it just stays in your pile for a really long time you have to think that microorganisms are so tiny and the amount that they can decompose and digest it's just it's slow the lignans and cellulose hold up really well in a compost pile yes it's okay lint pet hair your hair it's fine it will decompose again it might take a little bit longer if there's a whole lot of it but it will decompose it's all organic yes grape stems they do decompose as long as they stay wet so one of the biggest challenges in our environment for composting is it dries out pretty quickly correct so you just have to manage it not in a active way to make sure that the whole pile is staying wet it will decompose yes as long as you don't eat your compost right yes right right so the question was if it dries out is that okay the microorganisms are extremely forgiving they just go dormant until the environment is re-established to what they need to grow their population so you don't have to inoculate your compost pile with microorganisms you don't have to go buy a fancy bottle of something they're blowing by right now you know the microorganisms that are doing all the work on all the dust particles that are in the air they're on your pets they're in on your shoes they're everywhere so compost it wants to happen so it's pretty it's pretty forgiving I'm going to keep moving and then we can keep asking questions was it a burning question okay we got we're gonna do some more about water okay so this is what you want something beautiful and black that smells like the earth in the end so you can do make compost on any scale you can use shovels and wheelbarrows or forklifts it's important to think about choosing your site where do you want your compost pile to be located it's nice to have an area that doesn't have tons of weeds because you're going to be making this lovely compost pile that's heating up and killing your weed seeds and then you don't want bindweed crawling up the top been adding more seeds to it right before you add it to your garden you also want it to be close enough to the feedstock source I use the word feedstock to refer to anything you are adding in so if it's way off in the back 40 you're never going to want to go out there on a cold windy day and take your materials so it's probably going to become dormant and stay that way you should try to locate your compost pile near water because as we've all thought it does dry out quickly and it needs to be convenient to add water to your pile but then again it needs to be a hundred feet from waters of the state so if you have a stream that runs a seasonal stream that runs through your property or an area that just fills with a lot of water when it rains or when the snow melts and then that's leaching down into the groundwater don't put your compost pile in the middle of it it's amazing where some people can rationalize that that's a really good place to put your compost pile until it rains or until the water comes and takes it away and you if you have a sloping property try and control run on and run off you can do that by just putting a hay bale on either side of your compost pile so it slows down any water that's moving through the pile so to build a pile you essentially layer the nitrogen material and the carbon material either like lasagna or you mix it up one of my favorite things to do is put all the material in a wheelbarrow stir it up really good and and add water and then go away for a little bit come back and see if it still feels wet if it still is that 50 percent one of my favorite quick ways to determine the amount of water in the pile and if it's okay or not stick your hand into the middle grab a good handful of the material squeeze it not with a death grip but with a good grip and if between your fingers you see a little bit of water coming up between your knuckles that's about 50 percent more sure if it's pouring out that's too much if you can't get any water to rise between your fingers it's too dry now remember that's optimal you can have a little bit more water or a little bit less water but that's just a good rule of thumb and you're going to manage a batch compost pile different than a continuous pile so in a perfect world you're going to make your compost pile set it aside and leave it to do its process but then we have all this kitchen material backing up right and we don't want that sitting on our back porch so the way I'm going to describe how to manage it is more for the batch system but it's it translates to the continuous pile the way I build mine in the backyard is the lasagna style I just keep adding and adding until its prime it's mostly full and then I do have a second area that I start adding to once this first one is full so some people continue to just add to the first there only pile and they turn it and then over the winter they let it continue to cook and they don't really add as much or they at some point just pull out the bottom finished material and use that in their system or in their garden so it's kind of up to you ideally you make a batch the second perfect way is to have two systems that you can go between and let one of them compost and fill up the other then so these are two really simple systems this is just chicken wire it's really important to have a thermal mask you don't want a pile that's this tall and this big around because when the wind blows through it's going to take all that heat that the microorganisms are creating and it's going to blow it right out of the pile it's nice to have a pile that's about you know three three four feet tall and about at least as big around as your arms so you just have that central heated core I'll show you a picture of our goal in a minute and then this is a really easy system - these are just four pallets that are on pose and the only reason that there is even a need for structure in my mind is just because it allows you to build it up it doesn't spread out too much and you can get palettes for a really small amount of money or free and it's a nice way to keeps my dog out of the compost pile too which is nice however the Fox neighborhood Fox sometimes comes and use it as a Tazz buffet that's okay so this is what we want our compost pile to look like some people who have large amounts of horse manure build wind rows and this could be the end of a wind row that you're looking at or it could be a compost pile you just want the central area to be large enough that when the microorganisms are active the heat is going to stay in a pile if you think about all of us getting up right now and running around in a circle we're going to increase the temperature in this room that's basically what they're doing so you don't have to have your pile in the sunshine either it's it's the heat is coming from the inside three to six feet tall is really nice height and you also have to think about this red core is what is killing weed seeds it's what's killing pathogens it's what's actually allowing the decomposition to happen so it's important when you turn your compost to incorporate this tan portion into the center that's why you have to turn your pile so that everything gets a chance to be decomposed by the microorganisms we like to we need to monitor the windrow so everyone needs to find a compost thermometer you can get them at your local hardware store there's actually one being rallied tonight or raffled tonight John's gonna show us it needs to be bigger than the you know meat thermometer because your pile is going to be bigger so this one is great and what's the temperature range John zero to 200 so we I'll show you in a second graph but you most compost piles get to be up to about 160 degrees 130 is the ideal but oftentimes it goes higher so something that will read at least 130 hundred and 60 is important and again the heat is the biological activity it's an indicator of that biological activity and I have a graph in the next slide that'll show you how you how your observations of the temperatures tell you how to manage your pile and after the the heat starts to decrease that's when you need to do something again if your microorganisms are starting to become less active because they are missing either carbon and nitrogen water or oxygen so they're building building building building their population and then once they start to decrease in their activity they need something else from you and typically that just means you have to turn it and check the water so here is a compost pile keeping the feet of geese warm because it's actively composting after a snowstorm so it can produce substantial heat in the wintertime here's a graphs it shows the relationship of time and temperature during composting so if you'll follow me with a triangle line the top line this square right here is day one of when I built the pile day one the pile was at about 50 degrees that was the ambient temperature outside day two the pile was at 120 degrees day three it was at 140 degrees so it happens pretty quickly and this is showing you that the microorganisms had everything that they need and you see that this 120 degree maximum is sustained for about three days and then it starts to decrease and this goes down to about 10 days so if you're really excited and really wanting your compost to be you want it we want to be as efficient as you can you want to make this compost as quickly as possible you can turn this pile as soon as you start to see a significant decrease because the microorganisms again they're still working but they're the population is decreasing because they're in need of something most often they're in need of oxygen right away and then oftentimes a couple turns down they definitely need water if not right away so then the second line you see with the Diamonds you see that the first temperature spike didn't get quite as high so the population didn't get quite as large but they're still working they're still there's still a spike and then it starts to decrease and you can turn the pile and you can turn the pile way out here to you know if you need to if you're going on vacation if you only do your composting on Saturdays if you skip a week it's ok this pot this line can go all the way down here and as soon as you turn it and give it what it needs it's going to jump right back up and get right back on board with where it would have been if you managed it really efficiently so again it's a forgiving process and so we turned it three times here we keep seeing this peak here we start to see that it's a little it's not rising quite as high this is a good indicator that the initial composting process the thermophilic process which thermophilic means heat-loving microorganisms those microorganisms are almost completed with their job so it's time now for you to continue to turn and manage it but you're not going to see those same rises in the temperature the temperature is probably going to mean be similar to this fourth line and that's when the medium temperature loving organisms are going to populate your pile they're called mesophilic and they have just as important of a job to do but it's not as spectacular on the curve there I'll show you in a minute a slide that shows what they do but these guys are the ones who do the most breaking down they they make the particle sizes smaller they digest a lot of the material so does anyone have any questions about what to do when looking at this curve so the question was in order to keep your temperature high do you keep adding fresh green and brown this is when you get to the question of are you going to do a singular batch which this is a batch and the batches moving towards being finished if you're going to do continuous addition you're just going to see probably the first second and third line first second and third line it's going to keep adding because essentially it's never going to finish until you stop adding material then you'll have this up and down and and end product did I see another hand okay so after you see that last drop in temperature you want to keep monitoring it again the mesophilic microorganisms are doing their job you can keep turning it and when the temperature decreases and check the moisture the moisture doesn't have to be right at 50% they're a little less picky because they're not quite as there's not quite as high of a population and they're not doing quite as much work but you still don't want it to dry out or else this final process isn't happening and I turn it four or five six times to allow those microorganisms to do their thing and then I kind of set it aside and let it cure so if you think about it that's about ten ten to fifteen turnings if you're doing the batch style and then your pile should be should be complete however as soon as I say that someone's going to call and say I've turned it 20 times and it's still heating that might be because you added something really different than my kitchen scraps and leaves so every pile is different and you know we'll have the tools to kind of interpret it yourself so when the temperature curve flattens these microorganisms take over and if you keep the pile moist then they're going to be happy and healthy and doing their job which is essentially they they're biodegrading things but they're also bringing the pH more towards neutral so some some compost piles are very are much more acidic and some compost piles are much more alkaline depending on what you put in it either way these microorganisms help bring the pH closer to neutral 7.0 which is fascinating right it's the same same guys and they're doing this great work that we can't even begin to understand because we don't know what they are we only know some of them and once these are finished these microorganisms are finished with their job then I set my compost aside to cure for a couple of months if you're rushing because you want to put this in your garden you can shorten this but curing your compost allows the final set of microorganisms to come in and they're kind of the the ones that live in your soil they're the native microorganisms they're the the ones that are going to help your plants in your area access the nutrients so when is your compost finished when can you use it after the heating cycle stops after you cure it and you just want it to smell like Earth has anyone smelled that smell the compost smell I love it because there's actually a microorganism that we're smelling it's called act II know my seeds when we think of that earthy compost smell is actually those guys and so they are some of the characters that are curing your compost and helping you recognize that it's finished there's also this really cool Sol Vita test that's available through this laboratory in Maine they're I think six dollars a pop you can order them come in a little tiny case and they measure a couple of things with little color paddles they're really easy to interpret and they tell you if your compost is finished and it's really a lot of fun to just do it one or two times just because then you'll have the hang of it and know that your compost is ready and it's done and it's not going to burn your plants the only way it would burn your plants as if it's not mature and finished so check that out it's a fun it's a fun little lab thing to do so it to assure quality compost don't add meat cheese and bones to your pile they will decompose but it just requires a more controlled climate and often times you see critters coming and taking that material out of your pile also know where your feedstock comes from if you get grass clippings from a friend ask them if they have put a whole bunch of chemicals on their lawn and just do snow if that's okay with you if that it will decompose it will compost but make sure you know what's going into your compost pile if does anybody have horses anybody composting horse manure they use D wormers D wormers keep horses systems worm free and those do break down in the sunlight so if your compost is turned enough then the dewormer is going to be broken into other materials and it's you're not going to have the warmers in your garden so you should have worms in your garden heavy metals some people ask me about this it's not typically a problem unless you're using bio solids which is treated human waste which some people do this and it's a great thing to do but you're probably not doing it in your backyard so you probably don't have heavy metal challenges with your compost and know that your call your compost is mature this again is shows that you have low microbial activity so the temperature is low it means your materials fully composted and you won't have ammonia burn your plants nitrogen in your garden will be won't be immobilized it'll be ready for this plant and you shouldn't have pathogens in your compost if it's fully mature test your compost and your soil every people call me and say how much compost should I put in my garden and I say I don't know how much something how many nutrients are in your soil so it's important and and really useful to test your soil at least once just so you have a baseline and see if if you have a high nitrogen need or a high phosphorous need and then you'll understand what your compost is giving you some people don't test their materials and I rule-of-thumb say about an inch of compost across the top and till it in or work it in it is plenty more is not always better because soil microorganisms need a real porous material and and compost is a great thing but at some point you knew that there needs to be native soil to current local news on compost the city of Fort Collins has purchased two earth tubs and I'll show you pictures in a second Green Mountain technologies is the manufacturer of these tubs and they're in vessel compost systems since September 2010 conservative I think it's a conservative estimate over 7,000 pounds of pre-consumer food waste has been diverted pre-consumer by that I mean food that's coming back to the back of the kitchen from a restaurant after it's in and on a plate in front of someone is not composted this material is what the cook the kitchen diverts when they're cutting the tops of carrots off when they're taking wilted lettuce leaves off when they're peeling potatoes so all of the prep food from Austin's NGOs and cafe our door is being composted right now and it's a beautiful product that they're sending out every day does anybody ever seen Rob Martin who's biking up and down the streets with a cart trailer full of either bagels or compost or brown glass he is the one who is picking up the compost compostable materials from these restaurants and he bikes it to the earth tub which is it's in on Mason and Laporte essentially behind a fence and he takes it there we add it to the earth tubs and then the finished material is being used by the city of Fort Collins Parks Department and they're going to use it in all of the planter pots in Old Town so all those beautiful flowers through the alleys and in Old Town that's going to have consumer food waste in it lovely circle isn't it so these are the two this is a picture of the to earth bins our earth tubs excuse me you can see that they do have electricity that's to run the auger I'll show you a picture of the inside in a moment they also have these handles on the outside this is essentially a giant mixing bowl with an auger that turns and these handles we walk around and Mick and move the auger so it hits all areas of that material and there's a I'm blanking on the name biofilter off to the side so any smell that's coming off the top of this goes through a layered carbon system that's kept wet just so that is kind of scrubbed this if there's no real smell then there's a little leachate tank here for any excess moisture that comes out the bottom you see that tank is really small because it's pretty minimal this is the lovely compostable material it looks nothing like my week old stuff that's under my kitchen counter that goes out on Saturdays this is like a salad bar and you can see there in just Rubbermaid containers so Rob can easily lift them they're not over 50 pounds he has multiple containers this is inside the bin whoops excuse me you can see there's the auger there's a better picture on the next slide lots of coffee grounds this is looks like austin salad stuff and we add leaves we've been using leaves from people's backyards city employees backyard we've also been using some wood shavings I can go into more detail about how this works if you'd like but it's it's fabulous and it's easy so this is the auger you can see it it kind of lifts and turns and grinds at the same time it's on a little bit of an angle and again we walk it around and then we use the electricity to move it in and then we turn it a different direction so we're able to go around the perimeter and then kind of the inside of the bin there's Rob check-ins we check the temperature here we stick a thermometer in to check the core temperature and then this was a day that we were actually going to I believe harvests some of the materials so we were starting to rake things around and move it out he was pulling it out you can see there's some unfinished material the parks department is going to screen this and put anything that is not composted well enough back in and re composted in the next cycle and we tested the material and it's it's really low nutrients but low salts it's essentially going to act like a really good potting soil they're going to add potting soil to it but it's not a high nutrient material which to them is really good because it's not very risky to use also at CSU they have just I bet it's about a month ago have just installed the earth flow which is manufactured by the same folks at Green Mountain Technology and it's a ten times bigger system so the Housing and Dining Services has purchased the system and initiated this process and they're diverting dorm food same thing pre-consumer food waste that is pulped they have a pulp ER and a centrifuge so they're grinding the material and then pulling out a lot of the water i'm not clear exactly what's going on with the water but they're trying to make the transport of this material out to the foothills campus cost less and then they're mixing it with horse manure from Mount manure out by the horse facilities and then they water it but actually I made this slide before I met with them last week the material is such a good balance right now that they're not having to add any water we kind of got everything wet up and now they're not having to add any extra fresh water which is good and then it's turned and processed and then it's going to be utilized on campus for a lot of their landscaping and they're just getting up and running they're not at full capacity right now but they're expected to divert a ton of food waste per day which is pretty amazing and they're thinking someday they'd like to have more than one of these so this is a schematic on how it works the food waste goes it's kind of funny it actually you know we read left to right let's start the other way food waste goes in and then the same auger that you saw in the other system moves that material from the bottom up towards the top and along the system almost like a conveyor belt so it continuously moves the material towards the end where it's going to eventually be harvested and use and the system the owner's manual says 15 to 17 days and it should be finished because it's continuously turned and the material they're adding is kind of at its prime so here are a few pictures sorry if they're a little small this is a gentleman Scott who's been in charge of getting to know the system and and kind of working out all the bugs and the quirks and you see here there's a lifter because these these trash cans full of food are way too heavy for a person to lift that's really nice so Scott will stick around so they put garbage cans of food waste and then that you can see Mount manure back here in the background they have plenty of manure waste to work with so then they they have a front end loader that loads garbage cans full of that material as well so he has a volume estimate that he's working off of you can see here the auger moving and it's it pretty much since the food waste is pulped it looks like a pretty homogeneous material and it's very fragrant it's a different smell than what you smell in old town because it's just different food waste they are putting some fat and meat in here because it's such a managed system it's okay and it's working and here you can just see that this auger system moves back and forth up and down so it's pretty exciting that these two things are right in our backyard any questions about those yeah sure the question is is it a good idea to pulp your material at home before you compost it it will speed up the process and it will create a more homogenous material in the end if there are no large particles John has taught me a good way to decrease the particle sizes of the material that I'm composting you can just put it all in a five-gallon bucket and take a rounded end shovel and just chop it up you know just especially when it's watermelon or acorn squash or something that's really big because the more surface area you make available for those microorganisms to chew on the faster the process is going to happen yeah it does hope no we just don't have to water because the moisture is not going oh na where you definitely have to open up all of the sides and the ends before you can get close to it because all of the ammonia that's release during the composting process is really strong so you have to kind of let it vent off before you get close to it it takes you know moments but it definitely is since it's an in-vessel system it doesn't dry out there's like anything else John come up here in case folks have questions about vermicompost how the question is how do you test your soil there's a soil testing lab on CSU campus and there are other private ones and Brighton in Denver there are also extension publications on CSU's website you can just go to that website and type in how to take a soil sample essentially you just want a sliver of an even sliver down the depth of your plant that you're planting in your garden I tend to tell people try to take a sliver about six to eight inches deep and you can dig a hole and then use a shovel and just go down the side of that hole and it's better to take more than one sample if you have a large garden you can take multiple put those in a bucket stir the bucket up and take a big handful out and send that to the lab so you don't pay to send five pounds of soil yes I tend to I usually put on gloves so that your anything on your hands is not getting into your soil also though it's good to know that a little bit of what might be on your hand might be diluted out by the amount of soil that you're actually testing if you're like me you're you're not able to fertilize perfectly you're kind of going to fertilize the best you can because one extra granule or one extra shovel if something might change be a little off from perfect but scent you can send that soil in a paper bag not a plastic bag because that's going to create a little microcosm where microorganisms can continue to break down whatever's in your soil while it's in transport send it in a paper bag or take it in the paper bag to a soil lab and I just asked for a routine soil sample or a routine soil analysis and there are also great documents online or available through the lab that helps you understand how to interpret those and a lot of the labs will give you a general interpretation for example you need to add X amount of nitrogen yes so he's talking about a a sheet composting system where you're basically building the lasagna layer in your garden and you're just keeping the food scraps from being exposed to the environment by covering it up with soil or a carbon source and then the Mike the same microorganisms are in the soil and they're doing the job in the garden you only have to lift it once what are you doing the winner what are you doing the winner there are fact sheets on sheet composting also we call asagna gardening I don't I've been doing it for years except for I don't use a shovel and go into the soil I put it right on top of the soil put cardboard on top of that for a weed block and then woodchips or a mulch on top of that or a compost on top of that I never have to walk in the mud in the soil and all those critters do it well what we're doing is basically mimicking nature when we do it that way sheet composting works very well so this is the art and science of compost combining you I think there are so many options out there to compost your your waste material so it doesn't go to the landfill waste doesn't even set it's not the right word but you all know what I'm talking about your your resources any other questions yes and at my house I end up putting a lot of landscape you know my weeds you can compost your weeds as long as they haven't gone to seed so that's a lot of plant material I have two batches and I typically fill one up during the summer and then the other when I fill up throughout the winter I did have chickens at the last house that I lived in and we filled up our batch a lot faster because we were using they were eating more of the food scraps but we had lots of of hay and bedding to compost afterwards if you have more garden and less yard you'll fill it up faster mm-hmm it's all you know at Ruth places an average-sized city lot and the thing that I don't encourage a lot of is going off to get stuff more stuff because then you're just putting a bigger carbon footprint on the planet running around getting more stuff do whatever you can about with in place I teamed up with my neighbors and we had a short fence so we could both add to the compost pile and that was a lot of fun because I didn't always want to turn it every Saturday but somebody else was there to help with the work too so to get a finished product you do have to stop adding at some point and and manage what's in there so it can go through that full cycle or if you're never going to do that you should probably get worms because worms will produce they will decompose the material faster and and you will have a finished product dance a lot of people ask me but they you know most people who do worms do them indoors because most people in the world don't have a yard to do it in they live in apartment buildings yeah it's that's a good point because that's going around and wrong but it's a specific type of worm called ice in here foetida or there's a bunch of composting worms they live on top of the soil in nature and they can take temperatures that are go really high up to 90 degrees all the way to 30 freezing and other in other words our soil blowing worms they're very temperature specific so they will go deep in the soil and they follow the temperature of the soil at like 52 degrees that's where they stay and when it rains like it is now you'll start seeing a bunch of worms on the soil those kind of worms aren't good in a compost pile they're good in the soil situation whereas red worms will eat half their own weight every day if you've got a thousand worms which is about a pound and you've got material that's run through a shredder like they're theirs they're shredding it or turn it into pulp think of worm composting worms as this draw with muscles imagine that and all them critters that are in there the bacteria the fungi amoeba the nematodes all those things are turned into a smoothie for the worms they can't they don't have teeth so it has to be broken down and you know you know a decomposition state anyways it's a surface-area thing and just because we build our houses so bad I've been teaching people how to do it outdoors here year-round if we have the space or yard to do it most yards can do it daddy's been doing it under a big pile of leaves for years and just it's insulation they survive in an old refrigerator on its back without the freon you can paint it so it doesn't look like Sanford and Son and yes big worm bin well yeah we're gonna have a contest here I think this year who's got the coolest painted you've got some good ones already do we have some more questions we have a few more minutes yes Jay you create a small pile maybe eight inches deeper or so and then it's got three square foot of surface area and you start with the worms there keep it dark and wet worms like it dark and wet and anywhere is the temperatures between 50 and 70 degrees or 80 degrees because again you're growing bacteria and fungi that are doing the work before the worms get to eat it and then there's you know solar power to heat it in the winter in dark and wet covers you know canvass their old old comforters I use carpet just to keep it dark and wet pretty simple just mimicking nature you never been in the backyard and you had a barrel sitting there for a long time on the grass or the weeds pick it up and it's there's nothing underneath there it's just mimicking that system thank you all so much happy composting you you

Channel: City of Fort Collins

Views: 11,002

Rating: 4.6595745 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: B0QyEj_6oFI

Length: 72min 42sec (4362 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2011