Building Microbe-Rich Living Compost Part 2

so we have here an imaginary ten buckets that are in the proportions that are on your handout and that are in the slideshow and we have a lot of manure so this is going to be hot that's 25% manure and I'll be good and so all we need to do is just start pouring stuff in here we've got this beautiful pig fence cage here oh there's more oh great food waste is 30 to 1 carbon to nitrogen ratio so it goes in with the green stuff when you're figuring out what your proportions are and this is all by guessing by gosh it's not not you know we're not weighing these things precisely or anything so I think we want to put some brown stuff down first somebody want to pour a bucket of that in let's put two buckets down there is that it's hopefully if I can make a comment they're critical if you don't want to hurt your back when you're turning the pile is they keep these guys a little bit smaller than some of these they're like this it's a lot easier because then you can always fork that much you got a bunch of longer pieces at Matt's and then you're trying to lift something they'll torque your battery faster okay so we could have a scoop here and put a little bit of manure on there but let's put some green stuff in something like that yeah yeah wait what were those thoughts I pulled a lot of like woody growth from last year out of my garden and it was just sitting in a pile for a while and I thought it's perfectly right so it's like it's a Jerusalem artichoke from last year like the woody growth and some old like echinacea and lemon balm stems and oregano so they're not branches of trees they're not they're just like woody stems and herbs and flowers yeah you probably could have sprayed on high protein which is high nitrogen okay so something to know if you're trying to figure out how much things will heat up and stuff you can take any of this stuff and senda and take a sample and send it to the NCBA lab and they will test it for you and you do a waste analysis and they'll tell you what the carbon nitrogen ratio is and that'll tell you you know i'm suspecting that the manure is a little bit higher nitrogen where we get our left are spent grain they actually are recycling the beer through it to get as much protein out of that beer as possible because protein causes cloudy and some beer so it's got a lot of protein in it it's actually if the animal feed because that there's too much protein and now my cry fails I haven't tried because we have both you know but I I think you could probably do it you have you have your own secret weapon any time you need more nitrogen and that's your own urine yeah but if if stored now I mean I I'm finding it everywhere they're all kind of agreeing if it's stored for a month at 68 degrees the pH changes in the path engines that are in it if there even are any which that probably aren't camped survive okay I would assume so I wouldn't get so high that you suppress life but I assume that if it gets up to 75 or something just pH changes the pathogens that could be in there which are only Salmonella and some tropical diseases and actually composting in particular maybe we're off something tight about that stuff so if you want to be sure but it's a great source of nitrogen if your strike you can't get manure and you don't think your grain is hot enough your own peel do a great job you know in fact if I'm soaking my carbon and I'm doing a home pile I don't do any of that here because of the Kuti factor if I'm soaking my hot a pile I'll soak my stalks in urine and then well I used to anyways now I don't know if I will because I want the plenty to grow before I don't think the carbon to go away very fast so I was at doing some testing people were bringing in samples and at a farmers market and one guy came in and I saw the biggest piece of fungus I'd ever seen it was like seven or eight microns across and it was huge it was 200 microns long and I rhapsodize de bout this for a while and he was very happy and he went away and and then he came back and he said I guess I should tell you that I pee on the compost pile another one with regards to the testing if you're trying to figure out what exactly a combination IQ is it's pretty confusing how much carbon is in these stocks I mean I've been wanting to have more carbon to make it a store composting to try and let the fun G happen and we tested all of our tomato pepper sunflower cucumber vine stocks and I would assume it would be someplace that around 70 or 80 at least it was all below 60 lots of it was in the 40s which is not real different from paying which is not carbon at all hay is basically nice stocks have been dead and dried they weren't used until summer and they were tested in mid spring so I just think that you know these thoughts might be higher because they're woodier you know and they're pretty dry so I'm actually watering them here all right how long is this going to be here no no okay just pretend it's being sprayed with a light spray of water because this stuff is awfully dry it's not going to break down what happened to the kitchen scraps is that the kitchen scripts actually you know if we're not gonna do anything they'll just show those and not dump them in that's not dumb not dumb but because perfect that's gonna bring rats around like crazy that's food with the waste of flour they had moths in it and that so that'll really help with the heat up because that's really fine it's high-protein you know yeah so we all have food waste every single day and most of us probably started initially composting because we wanted to use our food waste but if we're doing the process that we've been taught today that's not a daily use of our food waste high praise to the worm box we use get eeehm and you just so bad warm rice bran and stuff like that where do I get a warm box well you can buy all kinds of expensive plastic ones but I recommend you get one somebody to make you one out of rot-resistant would ideally locust okay I can show you the ones we have you know yeah and there's two of us and we eat a lot of vegetables they've eat a lot of vegetables you have a lot of waste it's high water waste it breaks down pretty fast but you have a lot of ways and we for years got away with a one foot by four foot square bin and once I realized we could have a little more capacity and after some times we backed up never for very long we went with a one foot by six by four and that was that's all it takes for us the downside is if you don't have a heated garage garage that doesn't freeze or something they're gonna stop in the wood in the wintertime you know and we would just basically store stuff till summer I mean I had a composting bin system where I made compost in probably late February and it heated up and it warmed my seedlings so I didn't have a problem storing food waste because I used it all when I made that compost most people though you're gonna problem is if you store it all through the winter you need another box when it warms up just to take care of what you're stored so you might need two boxes you can buy you can buy red wigglers or any number of other so-called hybrid worms but if you go to any pile of carven manure pile pile of weeds or something like that and you look you pull the stuff away you'll find the right worms in there you cannot collect the ones that are in the garden they're night crawlers they're not pile worms you want the power and they wriggle a lot they move a lot yeah yeah that's what you want and you don't need very many they're hermaphrodites and they reproduce really quickly coffee grounds coffee grounds are great in a warm box ok excellent it kind of adds to the esta Betty but not in the compost well they're fine a compost bin - I just think my value Mille watts you know I use them as a mulch and I use them you know a thing that's not widely known as if you mess with them it tends to keep slugs away caffeine is toxic to slugs I've started using it because I have such I'm sowing I wouldn't but I've always had a problem with Sal bugs Roly Polys eating my flowers and I've been since I moved I've been putting coffee grounds around my pansies or things that are getting eaten overnight it's not slugs but the slugs - hmm and it it does it does whatever it does it protects them they don't like it supposedly they're insane of a coffee jar sprayed on a slug will kill it yeah so it doesn't take much at all and so I just I would probably not a coffee grounds ever get to a thermo-pile for us we got i also multiple blueberries with them you know they got lots of other uses yeah they're definitely weed free pathogen free I mean yeah grow mushrooms on ER there's just lots of other uses but you can use I mean there's nothing wrong I put them in there in fact if you do it right if you get the right heat up you know all that stuff about what you can put in a pile really lots of fat and like high salt stuff or stuff that's been like you know had a lot of dish dish soap on stuff there's so many of that that's really all I try and keep out that will smother worms and some other life you know though actually interesting the jane jimmy Elizondo who was doing our operation in florida he purposely put fish on his pal because he wanted the fact is he had learned that it caused higher fun G and he got pretty high fun G in that pile there's a pile that I I never would have made the pile that way was like way big and didn't have enough aeration and stuff but you got it and so I've been trying to get my hands on free fat to try it and see any supermarkets icing it doesn't yeah they're always saying just collect and you're not ready to make a compost pile if you leave that brush just sit over in a semi compost pile and then take some of that to make your pile so now do you mean woody brush or wedding brush okay woody brush what I learned and Jane can correct me she thinks differently what I learned I learned from the look ease the Wookiees taught a controlled microbial composting class which is used to be like the the acid test for reliable cotton was incredibly consistent it was totally bacteria really bacteria because they turned it all the time you know they basically said any would with any woody stuff that was less than a year old you could composted it would go away so even if it was like a lot of woody brush if it was the stuff that had grown that year I'd probably work fine otherwise it probably would take a long time to break down but when I say that my thinking of compost has been changing I just put tons of woodchips and their compost pile I never used to do that you know I used to always think people would out I used to always be about turning the compost into the soil we're no tilling out we don't turn anything in the soil because when I did that carbon nitrogen test through the waste analysis and I didn't have any really high carbon material even though I'd saved every bit of stalky stuff I could get I went with woodchips cuz I wanted something to last there long enough to give it the structure and keep it running so that the funds II couldn't get a chance to grow because if otherwise if it all breaks down then that's what stopped me I mean an 8-week pile will be they're just broken down you can turn it and put it back on there but it's not gonna run nearly as long because there's no more structure and that's a critical thing people miss when they're making compost is you're using this stocking stuff not just to get the carbon nitrogen ratio but to get the structure and that's why I wonder about using paper to me it's like you're using up some of your structure you know the structure you need but something it gives no structure if you get lots of humic acid you'll have micro structure that's what you need so you Carrie what kind of taste and I wouldn't use only paper it would be mad and I mean who's Picard newspaper I wish I'd wonder about you there's a nose it's pretty much reliably shavings yeah they're not you're not ideal sawdust is not ideal you know the best stuff is the stuff that's ground up by the huge operations where they have the tub grinders because that gives it a lot of surface area and more more purchase for a bacteria and stuff but the truth is now that we're not turning it in you can just spread that composted wood chips on top I'm gonna take all of its time in the world I mean did you catch the Gabe Ron talk where he was talking about his secret to 8% organic matter in the soil which he puts wood chips out advocating put two feet of wood chips on your garden and plant in their forest there's some very successful Market Garden in California that's doing that so that's the fun thing about all this all the rules change we're just still we're learning all the time lastly learning 10-15 years ago were you worried about funky yeah I'd been felony Lane since 82 I picked up iron 97 and I didn't really get the high hat I didn't get that I wasn't getting the funds in my college look if they're if they're not broken down all you need to volatilize them if they have oils in them like cedar and pine and they need to be soaked before you I would I would have soaked the well we were soaking but I would soak wood chips for two days or so before I make put them in there you know I have a wood chip pile that's about eight years old now and it's ready and that's a complete craps you because I have I've got other wood chip piles the rain will crack wood chips somebody gave me some bags of must have been hardwood the stuff you get from power companies that I which is completely to round up and stuff that's pretty gold is that most that is younger stuff because they're trimming you know and they're doing in the summer so you've got a lot of green stuff in there and so that's pretty great for her if you're gonna do wood and composting Martin Webster was regularly getting it all to break down it's totally about the life that's around your pile it's not the same ever I've had some piles that have been there for five six years other piles gone in a year and a half it's just like what fun gr they're what gets in there what was in the mix you know there's no real saying how that's gonna work Brown matters that we collect from our garden every day or so and put in a pile what about the things like pulling up bolting plans both in greens or whatever and so you have a lot of that at one time but you're not ready to make your compost pile well my advice to home gardeners is to have a worm box or two if they need it make one big pile in the fall when you're cleaning up save your food for a while beforehand but obviously you can't save all but they'll take some pressure off your worm box you know maybe then check out with your local coffee shops get coffee grounds make a big pot I teach that pile because that's what people want a bigger pile is definitely better as far as thermal mass and how long it's gonna run but you can make that work if you want to have it you know if you're a home gardener and you want to contain thing you can make that and then right when you're ready to turn it you can go ahead and make another one or take that apart and all you need is one more to make the floor and flip it you know so you would just keep all that green stuff in a pile almost like get a big pile of stuff and then just take it as you need well ideally I wouldn't put a big pile because it'll be gone well you'll make a mini compost plan yeah so I would like you know I was trying to save it I probably scatter it out let it dry some you know because otherwise if you pile it up it's gonna you know you'll have it you'll have an instant compost pile that won't be very balanced to be very back here and I recommend that you let a few of those balding plants actually go to flower so there's like you know there there's always a lot of different ways to make compost you know and actually this what I'm showing here is was developed just because people want to have a pile that was more suits them but if you don't make a pile that's immediately hot and immediately rapidly degrading that food and you're putting food out in a pile like this rats guaranteed bears - there's a scarier rats a creepier rats are more persistent yeah that's that's quite possible if you made a really hot pile I think the odds are good that it would degrade so quickly at the Bears unless you are unlucky and they caught it the first night you know yeah and the food scraps break down in like 24 hours the end the manure there will be no odors in a pile that's hot in 24 hours it was revelatory to me when I took that composting class with the Wookiees because they were using parchment and I've ever smoked Watchmen or it's what was inside the gut of the car when it was killed anaerobic as it can get it was like incredible stink and they put that pile together the lip keys lu BKE i'm not sure that i think that they're the bear they're definitely a piece to learn from yeah but i think that their system is pretty bacterial yeah they've always put clay in but they tend to put the clay in a little later and they don't put very much in and actually well we did a test on compost tea to suppress late blight years ago we got the tea from guy named Johnny Fox one of the earliest compost tea makers and he filed the lippy methods this compost looks like like red dirt and we made tea and although there's disagreements on how applications it was because a trial where we allowed the controls to not be treated at all so we had massive amounts of late flight even with that massive amounts of late flight the control went down in two days it took like three weeks to kill so that was education and it was quite education so I'm not sure that the clay doesn't have its place but I haven't figured for me compost tea is like this ongoing mystery we actually two times about three years ago totally controlled late flight with counselors to you completely accidentally and it was compost tea that have been made and then because there was so much to do it was like sitting aerated in the tank but still quite old it started to smell funny to Marshall so he gave it fish emulsion and molasses and then he sprayed so John Nielsen series there was a bacterial bloom and then he sprayed we sprayed so tomatoes that weren't even purposely being grown there they're being grown for a bio strike that's they weren't really was too late in the season was September and we don't think about late blight but I walked by the next day and it was obvious once you've killed late boy you know what that looks like I was like Jeremy do we have a plan easily yep pretty bad every bit of it was Jane it's like I'm doing the exact same thing the next week and because compost tea changes and people changing all that he didn't get a hundred percent but he got like 95 percent kill but that was the last time that we had tomatoes to try it on and by the next year my compost is different our methods were different yeah but it's it's out there it can be we can get there but we and I think the PAP is gonna be like using microscopes and seeing what the life is in there and tracking it all the way along but that's as mayor as experienced a lot of work I mean it's pretty hard to get that to do it maybe a home gardener could do it you know on a regular basis and track a small amount of tea and a few plants or something like that for our scale we're still learning how to get there you know we don't take one small thing yeah one small thing yeah but see we can take a look at our Brewer it's a hot it's an eighty five gallon brewer here the harder it is yeah big was anaerobic it's useless it has no life in it but I might have a big pile of it that would could make a contribution so next year when I make the this pile I'll sprinkle some in and and get it used up and get it yes so much it doesn't really fit in anywhere except that I need to get rid of it it could add some you know let's see oh he's just completely confusing me because there was this kind of famous cough lost up and boom you might have heard of him Jay was his first name and he was composting anaerobically and he had a cypresses yeah and he I mean he was at war with Gina you know and finally Dino water but they took a long time for them to win to win he did it for years and years he was first letting the soldier Christ populate him completely and then once they really took it him really hard he would bury him but when he took it out and he would pile it up and then it would go aerobic was theory when dick McDonald used that stuff for compost tea and used it but he used it on brassicas but he said that the impact was incredible I mean so much so that somebody who got his master's degree monitoring brassicas you know Brassica pest but he still had another plant and so he pulled up looking at the plants I thought they were like two weeks older he had to count leaves to see how old they were because they were growing that fast I think there are other forces here also if you're close to your plants and you get an inspiration pay attention can you believe it oh yeah there's way more to it and there's yeah and we're just learning stuff all the time I mean when we what we thought about compost 20 years ago is very different than what we think now and I expect it to evolve and keep changing 90 minute presentation can't cover all that yes absolutely no I don't think so no the sunshine will take care of if it's in the Sun but I think even more ideally would be an emulsion and let the light recolonize yeah frying it you know unless it's you know if it was that hot the pathogens will finally be dead too so I mean I've ever seen I remember one time my intern was helping me it was dark and I had made a compost pile and there was a passions and I said stay away from it and it was dark we shouldn't have been working but we were trying to get stuff done and he didn't stay away from it and where he put that down plants were all fried the next day you know they were just like all that kind of great weaves are graying they were just like wait it's it's very acidic and you don't know what's in there is the problem so you need to compost it if you're gonna use it again these but the Sun will destroy it any time something goes wrong because you've got a situation that isn't tenable then it doesn't matter who did it it's the person in charge that's to do it it's that fault you know me I didn't I I'm telling I'm sorry not to blame the person but to make the point that it sure will thrive stuff you know I mean if I wasn't fried and working in the dark I probably smelled and said well what what have you got there but I wasn't really paying attention I was trying to get get done get the compost top dressed on cover with with mulch and that's something done lots of things but we just learned this is a little off topic I guess but we just learned not to use straw if you're growing aliens because straw or even the grosgrain cover crops before aliens particularly garlic because there's a mite the wheat curl might that is on the straw and normally in our climate it's totally controlled by heavy cold rains in the winter but last fall last summer we didn't have those rains and our garlic is the weirdest garlic it may look pretty good to you guys but it's nothing like what we normally have okay all right well so let's do we'll show you how this would work it's it very important to have a pallet that actually has a solid bottom so that there's that airspace underneath and then the next thing you do is you put Stocki material on top of the panel and you pick your pallet with the smallest holes for your floor so that stuff doesn't fall through and clog the holes and then you put a bunch of stocky material on the bottom and then if you have enough stocking material in the pile our process offs density which is the fancy word for you know getting the right amount of stocking material in there and you can tell if you got it right if you take like a probe and it's easy if you're in the business of composting is you tend to have these big expensive thermometers and so they're perfect and if you have to force that in there you don't have enough bulky stuff you have the raw bulk density it's not gonna breathe well but if you can easily sign up another way I tell is if when you're turning it if it's easy to turn then you have the right bulk density if it's heavy and hard to turn then you don't have the right bulk density and that took me years to learn I have a mind mentor and that was John Nielsen and he would come and check my pallet that the momma goes oh no and then one day with ya and he just lit up in that plow later on when he was finished he was like this is aggregating this is good stuff Pat you know a family got it so you have to have the right boat density for this system to work and that's the system that you know that's why it works that small and you have to make sure that we high your stuff then you don't cover the hole on the bottom the holes around the bottom because it has to be able to draw the cool into area through that you know the chimney effect pulled the air up and if it's too dense it can't do it so you have to have enough bulky material if you've got that and this one this is working fine with the wood chips and what I would say that is you don't want to incorporate this compost without sifting the woodchips back out but if you sift them back out it's perfectly fine and those wood chips will be wonderful for the next compost pile they'll be pre-inoculated and you know someday they'll actually go away they'll take a while so what what can you do if you've got a lot of black walnut around and the wood chips I've got a lot of flat balls well if you compost it hard I think you'll break that stuff down I'd sure try it though if I composted how I would then test it on something like a tomato too sensitive and make sure and I would think that those those toxins would break down in a good compost pile I'd be scared I'd make a pass oak is fine oak is perfectly fine you know yeah it's easy on the leaves if you using oak leaves I'm not a big fan of leaves for the same reasons paper because it's there's no structure in it you know I think leaves are wonderful in their own pile and my theory is make that pile under a willow or an alder because they have both mycorrhizae and then they you know those roots are gonna grow up there to get the nutrients and spores are gonna happen and you might well I can't guarantee it but you might well have you know leaf mold that has the spores and like rising in them a warning about leaves talk to yours don't take leaves from people if you don't know what they put in it because some people when they're cleaning up they're not just putting their leaves in there putting their mugwort and their nutsedge and all that other stuff that you don't want to get so you don't just take leaves from anywhere unless you're ready to deal with a lot of problems so leaves which are in the woods you know from last fall they're haffley already kind of composted yeah what's about those they're great they're great they have already funky zoo bunch of you in there for sure and okay yeah that's good so but Jane's right don't go robbing the woods I mean a little bit here and there is okay but you don't want you know get carried away you know you want those woods to stay healthy should you ever want to make a lot of compost on the same system that's working there can be done with drainage pipes the kind that are used for septic systems and you want to have the holes facing up and set it down you want to make sure once again that the compost doesn't cover those holes and you usually put something kind of in between them so they don't move when you're putting it putting the stuff on your on your pipes but you can make a huge pile and get the same kind of aeration and it can run for a really really long at over 130 so it's actually passively area tewindrow system it's the way to do large-scale actively aerated well passively I rate it but actually with you know the same impact as if it was actively aerated you know and so that's do you understand what I mean yeah you know I mean this is this is aerated here actively with a fan you know and that's pricey and you probably want to build one for a home thing but if you decide in this fall you have a big garden and it's gonna be much more than either this can contain certainly more than that then you might go with those pipes and they work really well also I note if you if you can I always try to encourage people to buy together I wish to have seasoned wood carry a roll of it but that back cover for compost is ideal it's a spun yeah it's a spun bound fabric it's called top text that particular piece is probably what I got I got probably in 2003 it is like thick it's spun by um fabric yeah you know in there there are lesser versions of it but for what they charge which is only like maybe 25% less than this much better deal to get this because the lesser versions don't hold up at all like yeah so and that comes from a company called a true so which is the company that sells stuff that is following the look ease he went out and stayed with them and came back and a true say is Austrian because they're Austrian and USA so that's where you can get it no okay so let's look at this pile here for a minute we made it two weeks ago and we wanted to get it turned and we couldn't really get to it for various reasons so it's at not turned at all for about 12 days and we're still running plenty hot because of all the structure that's in it you know there's just lots of stuff in there that's got structure you know lots of stocks the wood chips you know loads of structure and indeed manure and the manure we get right is the best manure in the world to get but this is from tap root theory and suppose they're going to change them to do them at the moment they bed their cows with with stocks and so there's loads of this in there this is very slow to break down and gives those passageways again it does break down the end yet something that thing the view shape thing right there that I'm looking at John Nielsen I came here set up this compost bin system said get the wood out and in an attempt to get the wood out they made that incredibly small thing and that's to fine it's way too slow yeah well yeah even for paddy makes the way we're making a compost right now and that level of sifting it's too hot it's too high in salt you know that's why we're doing this fungal thing over at the other place but that with a with a bigger mesh on a truck is very fast you know no no you're doing like that you want the big stuff to roll up I sitting in the back of the truck and you want the big stuff to roll off and the little stuff to go in and then the big stuff just goes back in your pile you know so it works really well are you use it as what we call nutria mulch you know did you have this pile this thing for those 12-day was in a field over at Grandview at our other farm you know on pipes like I described you know covered with the top text but not covered for quite a while because it was a lot of what's in this this stuff that came from a barn and it was very very dry we literally stood there while we were loading it and watered it all the time and then while Rocco was making the pile originally I watered it you know we were there for hours and I was doing nothing but water and I came back next day and it was just waste enough but I knew with the son of the wind it would dry out but also we're having thundershowers so was a better gamble to leave it open it it had a decent waster now it's getting a little dry this the smaller of the pile there are easier is pretty to dry out and so I can't get any water out of this it's not it's not very far from being moist enough but it's going to need to be watered you know before it will really compost right now and and so because it's been moved and it's starting to dry out I reached in there and it's probably about 110 but in the field the other day like last night actually it was easily you know I've been doing this line if I can just and we got a thermometer we could check it but I reach dinner and it was like that's at least 130 you know so even at that size you know because it was the right ratio and it was piled up a little better it wasn't spread out so much it would still keep it at eat and that was I think Monday was it Monday that you guys separated this out I was at Friday Friday yeah so it's at that long and still was hot you know we would have died though because it's drying out you know but the key piece I think the key piece really to me for getting good compost is to get that right bulk density you know if you don't have the right bulk density it's not going to breathe what I'm struggling with now is how to ensure that that bulk density is gonna be the kind of materials that will be there long enough for it to go fungal you know and that I'm still learning about that I'm not sure I've never used woodchips in a pile ever you know I learned early on not to use wood and so Wichitans so now I'm trying it and we'll see and this pile is being made for pasture it's only gonna be spread on top of a pasture you know so because it's going on top of the soil so somebody's worried about that you're not going to lose much nitrogen at all if your woods on top right I mean of course there's gonna be a little bit of activity right there at the interface but it's just not enough surface area if you incorporate it then then fun ji'er just like I'll take all the nitrogen thank you you know and then it could be a problem though I mean there's an easy solution for a home gardener which once again is urine yeah I literally had a neighbor who had put much too much woody manure on her garden and couldn't understand why it wasn't working and I went up to it and looked at and said that's all this wood and she oh my god I ruined my gardener said no just save your yard and put it on there call me back at the end of the summer said we had incredible production you know and it's ten to one dilution you know but it totally you know will solved that kind of woody problem with you yeah it's very important yeah yeah yeah well I was for compost you don't need to do that you know so that's the stuff but I'm talking about using it for for counteracting too much wood then you want ten to one dilution though I mean there's a book called liquid gold and she speculates that if your activity is good enough you probably don't even need to do that if there's enough light for your soil so I imagine it would be hard on the length as well it's pretty high salt at that stage you know anyway oh it's insane I mean we cannot afford to waste it anymore the the thing about Peak Oil is that that's not the peak we need to worry about we worry about peak phosphorus you know phosphorus is way more critical to us than oil I mean we can we can live without oil but we can't grow food without phosphorus and we are wasting it like crazy so that's you know we got to get there I mean really we got to start treating all human waste like fertilizer which is how its totally intended to be that's how the world was designed and it's not waste at all anyway this system here was designed to handle horse manure and we sometimes use common or top two but it's it's got a compressor and it's set up on a timer to come on and run air and it keeps the plows if we could get them out of those those piles in the center would be very hot indeed I was managing it for a while and my big struggle was to try and keep up with turning it so it wouldn't go to 180 which is scary you can have piles catch fire it can be it's basically mostly manure and the manure with the corn stock betting and then the garden waste from here you know that's it and then we get Brewers waste and we get humus from the bold rock and as much as we can use for animals we use whatever we can't use goes in here so some of that goes in every week too and so the result of all that is that it's way back there there's not nearly enough stocking material in there it would be it would be wait pardon humus is the waste from apple from a from making apple cider yeah but it's a great resource for us for feed I mean I would never compost something that I could use for feet but for a home grower if you can get access to it and that's what you need you know I really don't think though that nitrogen should be a problem oh there's so many sources of nitrogen you know it to me it's harder to come up with enough stocky material that gives you the right the right density than it is to come up with nitrogen I mean just coffee grounds you name it there's so many sources of nitrogen you know it's a lot of high nitrogen waste and so for me it's getting enough that you can slide a probe in there easily and have it be fluffy and go to turn it and not get worn out the point about recalcitrant carbon is you can see a little bit of stocks here there were huge amounts of stocks that we put in this pile I mean we put a lot of stocks in here in there two weeks and they're gone you know and I would say well it's to me it's not what I want I want them to last longer they kind of get getting that stuff in in so that it's all breaking down at the same time is what you're really aiming for you know but it's not all that easy to do sometimes you get surprised sometimes when we first got here the compost was being like 18 you know the carbon carbon x-rays it was 18 and that's really too high for available nutrients for vegetables and so we said try to get it down to about 12 well now he's at nine and it's just like it's a point of pride to him and what we can't convince him is mine's not so good you know we don't really want nine there's a balance there you know 11 or 12 is pretty fine but 9 is just going to end up being real high salt and you have to turn it a ton to get it there you know and so it's just a matter of you know somebody adjusting what their their identity and what they're doing you know - what's changed and he's actually hearing that he was resistant he was thinking you're telling me he's making bad compost right I told Kendra to tell him that when I took my compost to look Peas and show to him they said well you could recon post that or you could landfill it and at that time I can make compost get hot I could make it cook really well you know my plants do really well with it but it wasn't balanced it didn't you know I'm sure it was just totally bacterial and even then they were like well no you know I think what they would say is I think the way they got there was they out at that clay in and slowed it down that way and yeah exactly yeah that's why they're doing it anyway they wanted it to be super fine clay you know it wasn't like you wouldn't got clumpy clay and threw your pile that wouldn't work at all it's like the trick of you're trying to do that is to make a windrow clay in the fall and plan try out it and then because it's a windrow it's gonna freeze and thaw a lot and that's gonna help break it up and then the springtime pull that right up and shake it over your pile and then even get the fine clay you know they're trying to get clay in you know but even then I would probably let the initial heat happen before I put the clay in because it's really gonna mess with your bulk density but then as it's coming down once it gets once it starts to drop below 130 you're not about bulk density anymore anyways it's just curing out and that's when I would probably turn it one more time shaking that clay in and then let it cure with the clay and I think you would get that complex you know and someday I'm gonna try that too there's a long list of things to try with compost so any questions about this part it definitely works I mean that power will run hot for a while like I said hard to keep him from hitting 180 you know but you want to see the compost tea brewer my intern once again into her story right brought a Brandywine tomato and use you to bring brand-new item a Russell Bergen disease because they can get sick really easily you know so she brought a brand new wine tomato and it had a late blight early blight on it it was a for some reason 2003 was like the best year for early blight you know are the worst year I mean I guess I would say just it was terrible it wasn't real heavy rains but there were lots of light misty rains and gray all the time and so she actually left and right after she left oh my soul and Asia were covered with early plate and I freaked and I had oxidate and took oxidation sprayed oxidate and then I put the compost tea on and it just went away oh my god he just went away never heard about it going away before and everybody went away it's there anyway it totally was controlled and it was controlled through the summer and midway through the summer I don't think I should be able to do this but I'm ray pulled the oxidate I'm sitting on under fifty five dollars worth of stuff and it's no longer considered organic and so I was mad about eventually I found something but I didn't use it I stopped using it because I told my customers I follow NOP and so I just kept using the T which I got regularly every week from John and sprayed every week weekly weekly I sprayed it weekly every Wednesday night you know so before I was even harder because in the morning before I went to market I had to spray oxidate on everything you know the theory was you wipe it clean and then put this like the awana on a clay I don't think you needed to wipe it clean really because when I stopped the control still happened and so of course I'm thinking all over the lake like the only blood pressure isn't much come September I had the only tomatoes in market I literally had wines I've never had lines before I'm glad I've never seen lines at anybody else's family but I had wines cuz I had lots of heirloom tomatoes and I had stacks and stacks of hmm and so I just was selling like crazy and people were buying like my seconds you know purse all said stuff you know I mean just like cut my coat my coal farmers were sending people in me which they never want to do but I had the only tomatoes why I can only believe it's because they all had the same problem with the early blight it was everywhere you know and come September 15th which is my birthday I'm so I remember really well that oftentimes in CeeLo people nowadays it's much less as we get warmer but back in the 90s and this was the early 2000s many a birthday was spent covering things rushing around digging things up and saving things from a frost you know pretty exhausting for a farm you know so I remember that really well and I think I'm a weatherman like most farmers you know and I know that when a big front comes through that time of year and there's a big rain and then it's pretty to be clear the day after the frost is really likely and so my birthday's coming up there's a big front coming through it's like I'm not spraying anymore I'm done yeah I just said that a giant when we're I'm done you know I didn't spray I was wrong you know there wasn't any frost I'm a warm front came in by the end of the week all my plants are definitely really played lately like early bite early play this is really blank there's an early blight you know we control the late blight you know twice with a tea that we used and then we did a test with this tiny Fox tea and good efficacy but the complete control for a whole season was with early blight which is not nearly as bad a beast as late blight you know it's a problem but it's not as bad but that tea completely controlled it you know what about using compost e preventively on just everything across the garden we just we spray it on time on a weekly basis well right now it's not happening weekly and I'm seeing problems I wouldn't see otherwise so you think weekly is fine like no week on is fine we did all the time oh I'm hurt we finally have a five gallon bucket it's easy to make every 24 hours another five gallons yeah it becomes part of the routine it's really and you know if you think you need a feed then a lobby we don't get this you know I say okay so then you can do a full your feet with the compost tea it's gonna be way more effective right and you want to make sure and do it in the morning or in the evening when the stomata are open right and then people will say well it's not I'm not noticing any difference I'm saying so and the formulas I give have a little bit of fish in the tea and so I say well did you did you tank mix fish with your tea and I go no it's in my compost tea it's like all that dishes gone the microbes ate it there's no fish left then you're not said giving a nutrients out with that tea unless you're in tank missing it right when you spray so what were you thank picking mulching we are just - okay yeah even when I get where my favorite sources Browns but just big cuz you can get a good price but they actually sell pretty small units they're making it out of trout you know they don't add the seaweed in so we only buy maxi crop and add that into you know but it's local and not you know I'm not too happy about how how we fish the ocean so I don't I'd rather use trout food you know that you know they actually I think they're making their own feet - I know that some of them are now making their own feet so that might possibly not even using fish in the feet which would be great you know but you don't need to do that necessarily it's only if you feel like you need a feed you know but if you do it you get incredible productivity I mean just amazing amazingly productive if you're doing that you know and my whole thing is if you're spraying next yeah tank mix and indeed we control vine borer by spraying soap and BT twice a week well always one of those phrases with the compost tea so we wait to spray the squash last you know and then we put our BT and soap in there and and like I do it's spray the bottom leaves but if you're spraying the feed to then you get the whole plant and the benefit of that is the soap is also getting the baby squash bugs so you get really used squats to make lots of squash and you don't get vine boards so they go for a long time till the downy mildew get some of them and you're done well I wouldn't so the compost tea doesn't work on down it Donnie melted well it's you know my experience with team you could tell me anything to is it we don't have standard enough tea I mean sometimes it does but it's just a crapshoot and the worst the worst funds you to deal with aren't funds either the water molds and they're mean they're tough they're very adaptive they're incredibly violent and downy mildew is one of those you know we have had impact with compost tea on set sometimes but in a bad downy mildew a year basically we just got our butts kicked you know I mean just now when you grow resistant plants is the best thing you know use genetics yeah but we use the tea we have a whole spray with you we use T we use regalia we use a double nickel both of which are raising the phenol levels or some other level of resistance on the leaves you know and then we also use things like sarin win when we get to the heavy fun G time we use serenade in rotation with Sonata we used to use oxidate till Michael Phillips talked about studies showing that the destruction of diversity was actually causing more to be disease problems you know I don't know I probably would only use an oxidative if I thought well they plant your gun if I don't use it you know but it's it's about a mix I mean we usually manage to get to harvest to me is through the season we tend not to lose in the lake play not I mean not new you're not counting the ones in the green yes sitter yeah no not kind of but we don't grow heirlooms outside right we just don't you know it's just not worth it we grow the NC State you know resistant varieties and they give us good perform if we spray two and a compost he has a piece of that spring thing you know it's a significant piece and it's got I mean two years ago our pathologist I love her she's great she just shares information incredibly but she's got no faith in organic and we had the cerium on our Tomatoes in the greenhouse and I said I tried tracking Burma and compost and she said it won't work and it stopped that disease cold I mean I literally left the last effective plant in to see if it was going to you know move out again and that plant never recovered it didn't make any more tomatoes really but the plant stayed there all year and there was no more infection what'd she say I actually never I just sent her an email but she didn't really respond you know but I mean and she's not the enemy at all she just wasn't ever trained to one even know they can only give research-based recommendations you know she's actually incredibly cooperative and tries to give me all the information she can but she has no faith that what I'm doing is gonna work you know but I don't need fate I have to because I can't use what he has that yeah yeah well everybody only have faith I still have to do it because it's the only option yeah yeah sometimes I do things I don't think gonna work but it's my best practice and I've got no choice because otherwise try it I'm given I'm Lou I'm just giving up and walking away you know and indeed there was a year that I gave up and walked away in 2003 exhaling people remember was an incredibly wet year exercise writing for the for the Express and they actually quoted me it was something like mold being that's not forgot it was but just talking about how I had been and what was happening here you know two tomatoes and stuff um and I walked away it was been like you know every time I tried to spray serenader compost tea it started raining mmm you know I mean what do you do I mean if you can't get your stuff to stay on so I just didn't go out to my farm for ten days I just couldn't stand to look at it it was just so wet it rained everything narrator almost all day every day Cee Lo and lo and behold when I went out to look at it my committee plants were all still alive because I'd used sarin a all the fruit was blighted but the plants were alive and there was time for the Charis Sun girls to come back in actually got some dose didn't taste like much cuz it was how they foolish left but yeah and indeed I thought your choice greenhouse about now Burnsville is like a major Center for serenade sales because everybody got this serenade works I've since learned that serenade too is you know you need to mix everything up you know it's under bacteria right you mix that maybe with your copters I'm sorry what that's also bacteria yeah it's a Susa bacillus subtilis yeah yeah well you'd be comfortable mixing that in with your composting spray in it well actually I won't say who said it cuz I think they actually have it like patented so you're not supposed to but maybe not you if we're gonna do that you brihat you brew it with glycerin for your flavour for your food glycerin feeds bacillus subtilis yeah so yes you can breathe you can Bruce the I'm standing we haven't tried we're not there yeah I mean that's I learned at a conference a key conference that I went to that when they found out I was coming they had me speak but yeah I actually learned more than I share yeah except for the fact that I've had these moments of efficacy I think you know I think that you know we will get there we will eventually learn how to use tea but I think it's only gonna be with microscopes yeah and learning to to make compost that is exactly what we need you know and actually every time you put it out looking at so you know what was in it and then you see how it worked it would that we had seen what the tea the marshal sprayed that first time had in it yeah I mean then we could have tried to get back there cuz they're totally where it was a hundred percent kill composting yeah that's yeah years ago I joked at a gathering of CFSA people that there was gonna be a statue to me in Burnsville next to hide away birds it was gonna be he stopped he cured compost tea and he cured link bite with compost tea and yeah also was in the same thing said my statute is gonna be up there to I think both of us I never expect to see our statues at this point I don't think we're gonna figure it out in our lifetimes but I think it can be done and I think it's the right path you know and I think some day that garden centers will be making tea that really works you know they'll be they'll get that people want you know somebody will do it and get results and people only buy there and then people it'll be a high-paying position this is my world you know and then they won't have the poisons for sale like they do for police state troopers and they're not that you can come and get free coffee but the garden center people can come to the workshop free or something I mean we we always do it I mean we literally mean that we don't we actually say always that you don't ever not come to California I know that and like I encourage anybody that's sharing information to come and not pay target them yeah yeah I mean extension agents anybody that's teaching you know if you're teaching and there's a moment of hesitation about paying don't pay you know and you know if you're teaching in a way that's got a similar attitude then don't pay period because you're probably gonna raise money anyway anyway any questions about the compost tea their various recipes but I'm not gonna try and give you one right now but you can look up dr. Elena I mean she said I think she still has versions of the compost tea manual online and there's lots of different recipes in there you know we've kind of tweaked ours over time so if you're not if you're not there with your compost is there anywhere you would buy I use a maggot I used to say McEnroe but now McEnroe's all over the place so I don't know that would say there's this stuff you can buy from peaceful high farm called Alaska you miss and so it's basically ancient stuff but it's got it really good microbial mix you know and what else nothing at fifth season I don't mean you'd look at de dump your stuff what's it like I haven't looked at I am fighting him to come tonight like oh I was so in love least god I just got I was just gonna ask you about it up big he uses a fair amount of what it is stuff and I understand why for bulking but I've got no idea what his accomplice is like I know that I have looked at stuff not hit my heart it's if you're not specifically trying to get fungal content at work I'll treat my compost from my farm with a product that has these Mike microbes in it and let it you know so on Monday I'll mix it up cover it and stick it in the cellar and by Thursday I'll throw all together in the brewer and spray Friday I say so your inoculating to ensure you microbes yes and the compost is just a good one for yes yeah yeah that battle work too I mean you can do that you know we get decent compost tea but it's not fungal you know we're not making fungal compost yeah this is actually beautifully fungal on Thursday as you can see this force of germinated dentist isn't fuzzy and it's cost-effective it is worth fort is a as a company out west all right so right they bought it for me why I get there if they're provide which has two kinds of bacteria than a fungal source as well and then um revive which is the fungal food bacterial food and liquid above that some humic acid so how much to make how many gallons oh I have a 55-gallon Brewer and about seven or eight pounds of compost and then you know a couple ounces of here a couple ounces there these products mixed up and stop them in the verb rapidly how much does it cost you to do that is the southern part or to do um hey I see a box this big of that provide is $30 and it takes a couple ounces per brew so so you probably get half of some around the box yeah that's totally that that's we look into that one is earth or or earth port yeah yeah actually fo RT if you would send the name to Pat let me wave farms will put the resource up on you know but the details minions thank you sure anyway I think that's probably about it unless there's questions you

Channel: Living Web Farms

Views: 82,072

Rating: 4.8628764 out of 5

Keywords: jane weaver, pat battle, microbes in soil, compost, rich compost, building soil, soil diversity, soil principles, home-scale composting, make compost, successful compost, living web farms, nutrient density, soil quality, ecology, food for life, living food

Id: aP0cWnHb_L0

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018