- 1 week ago
Food for soil microbes.
Each size of bin makes good quality yet different composts, from the same materials added. I use these excellent composts when just six months old, or even four months sometimes.
All the time it changes in quality, and is good to use after a year or more. Just there is less of it, from decomposition continuing.
From the analysis organised by Martyn Richards of Agriton.
"The relatively low fungi-to-bacteria ratios are not caused by a lack of fungi. Fungal biomass in all three samples is within the laboratory’s desired range. The ratios are lower because the bacterial populations are especially high.
Large Bay – matured for 19 months has the strongest fungal result:
Fungi: 667.90 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,687.46 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.40
Amoebae: 254,750/ml
Fungal-feeding nematodes: 42/ml
This is the only sample classified by the laboratory at the “brassica” stage rather than the earlier “weed” stage.
That description is based on the fungi-to-bacteria ratio. It does not mean the compost contains weeds, encourages weeds or is only suitable for brassicas. It is the laboratory’s shorthand for the biological balance and its position within a model of ecological succession.
It's also visually the darkest, finest and most soil-like sample. The physical appearance and microscopy both reflect the longer maturation period. The time left relatively undisturbed has allowed a larger fungal population to establish.
Younger three-bay compost, six months old, is more bacteria-dominated:
Fungi: 304.17 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,595.75 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.19
Amoebae: 475,533/ml
Bacterial-feeding nematodes: 125/ml
Fungal-feeding nematodes: 42/ml
This is active compost that has not had the same maturation time. It contains good fungal biomass, but its greater bacterial dominance and more recognisable woody material show that it is at a different point in the process.
This fits the management of the three-bay system. Turning mixes and aerates the material and produces more even compost, while fungal strands then need time to re-establish during the undisturbed finishing period.
Six month old compost matured in the Dalek, has the largest overall microbial population:
Fungi: 403.20 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,962.59 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.21
Amoebae: 1,222,800/ml
Flagellates: 33,967/ml
Bacterial-feeding nematodes: 417/ml
Predatory nematodes: 83/ml
Although bacteria dominate the ratio, the dalek sample has the widest spread of feeding groups observed in the three samples. The presence of bacterial-feeding and predatory nematodes shows that there is more than a population of decomposers: organisms are feeding on one another and moving nutrients through several levels of the food web.
The Dalek has therefore produced biologically active and diverse compost. Its coarser appearance and lower F:B ratio also demonstrate that compost age cannot be judged using one number.
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with h
Each size of bin makes good quality yet different composts, from the same materials added. I use these excellent composts when just six months old, or even four months sometimes.
All the time it changes in quality, and is good to use after a year or more. Just there is less of it, from decomposition continuing.
From the analysis organised by Martyn Richards of Agriton.
"The relatively low fungi-to-bacteria ratios are not caused by a lack of fungi. Fungal biomass in all three samples is within the laboratory’s desired range. The ratios are lower because the bacterial populations are especially high.
Large Bay – matured for 19 months has the strongest fungal result:
Fungi: 667.90 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,687.46 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.40
Amoebae: 254,750/ml
Fungal-feeding nematodes: 42/ml
This is the only sample classified by the laboratory at the “brassica” stage rather than the earlier “weed” stage.
That description is based on the fungi-to-bacteria ratio. It does not mean the compost contains weeds, encourages weeds or is only suitable for brassicas. It is the laboratory’s shorthand for the biological balance and its position within a model of ecological succession.
It's also visually the darkest, finest and most soil-like sample. The physical appearance and microscopy both reflect the longer maturation period. The time left relatively undisturbed has allowed a larger fungal population to establish.
Younger three-bay compost, six months old, is more bacteria-dominated:
Fungi: 304.17 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,595.75 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.19
Amoebae: 475,533/ml
Bacterial-feeding nematodes: 125/ml
Fungal-feeding nematodes: 42/ml
This is active compost that has not had the same maturation time. It contains good fungal biomass, but its greater bacterial dominance and more recognisable woody material show that it is at a different point in the process.
This fits the management of the three-bay system. Turning mixes and aerates the material and produces more even compost, while fungal strands then need time to re-establish during the undisturbed finishing period.
Six month old compost matured in the Dalek, has the largest overall microbial population:
Fungi: 403.20 µg/ml
Bacteria: 1,962.59 µg/ml
F:B ratio: 0.21
Amoebae: 1,222,800/ml
Flagellates: 33,967/ml
Bacterial-feeding nematodes: 417/ml
Predatory nematodes: 83/ml
Although bacteria dominate the ratio, the dalek sample has the widest spread of feeding groups observed in the three samples. The presence of bacterial-feeding and predatory nematodes shows that there is more than a population of decomposers: organisms are feeding on one another and moving nutrients through several levels of the food web.
The Dalek has therefore produced biologically active and diverse compost. Its coarser appearance and lower F:B ratio also demonstrate that compost age cannot be judged using one number.
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with h
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Making compost in different size heaps, you can do it all. You can have big ones like this,
00:05or you can have quite small ones like we'll see towards the end of the video. Do keep watching
00:08because you'll see the differences and how it's all possible when you get a few basic things right.
00:15Compost for me is important because any kind of gardening is valuable. It improves soil biology
00:20particularly, so it's worth the effort of doing it. Once you get a system set up, it doesn't take
00:27very long actually, and the results really more than pay for any time and effort put into it.
00:33So here we have a system of quite large bays because this is a reasonably large half acre,
00:382,000 square meter market garden. We get a lot of waste, produce, leaves, stems, stalks come off
00:45the garden beds all the time. At the moment, we don't have any grass mowers because it's so dry
00:51as August, mid-August of a very dry summer. But nonetheless, that's only six days
00:57of composting. It's all come from the garden, and I'm going to use this tool just to get in there
01:04and show you results. This heat, because it's so young, has not really got going yet,
01:10and you can see it's pretty much all still green. But there's quite a bit of stalky stuff in there,
01:15like sweet corn stalks, that kind of thing. Because I cut up the sweet corn stems,
01:21all the sort of woody, stalky stuff, brown material we call it, are cut into short lengths.
01:27That's really important because that helps it to pack down. And that heat might take another five or
01:33six weeks to fill before we then move on to the next. So what I'm looking to do is have
01:37just one
01:38heap at a time. I'm not filling loads at the same time, except that I've got three different systems,
01:44partly for teaching purposes and to find out more myself. When we finish a heap, like here,
01:50so there's black plastic on top. And again, I'll just go down a bit to pull out some material so
01:58you can see what's going on there. So this is what was last, I did probably about 10 days ago,
02:03two weeks. Maybe you can see steam coming off it. The temperature is close to 70 degrees actually,
02:10centigrade 150 Fahrenheit. It's a bit high actually. And I think that's one reason,
02:16because there's a lot of volume here that contributes to heat. Like you'll see shortly,
02:22the heat in the Daleks or conical plastic bins doesn't really happen so much because there's not
02:28enough volume there. It's simply a question of that. Also, because we're adding a reasonable amount
02:32of fresh green material, including weeds, kitchen scraps, a lot of stuff that you've been told you can't
02:38compost, you actually can. A lot of bindweed went in there, for example, thistles, goodness knows what
02:43else. It's all valuable for composting and disappears even if you don't get it hot. I know
02:48from experience making winter heaps, which don't get hot, the weeds still disappear. It's only weed
02:52seeds that need heat to be killed. And then this heap, which we finished, the dates are all up here.
03:01We finished on the 7th of August. It was started on 29th of June. So just under six weeks to
03:07fill up to
03:08about there. And then it's already sinking. So this is one feature of composting. You are losing
03:14organic matter, you could say, through the heat, converting material into decomposed matter. And some
03:19carbon is escaping CO2 and steam, a bit of moisture. It's called thermophilic, as opposed to, say, Bokashi,
03:26which I'll look at in another video. There's a different way of decomposing material. So this heat was
03:32filled entirely in June. That was four weeks. And it sunk quite a bit. And that's waiting to be turned.
03:38So that's another aspect of making compost. Do you need to turn a heap or not? Well, you don't have
03:44to.
03:45What I find, though, is that one turn makes a huge difference. So the heap that was here,
03:52and that was made between the 6th of April and the 1st of June. So it was about eight weeks
03:59in spring.
04:00We turned it on the 5th of August. So that's a week ago from here to here. What does turning
04:07mean?
04:08Movie, basically. Mixing it up, adding moisture if it's dry, shaking it out if it's soggy,
04:14so you can balance things out, get a nice, much more even result. And this is the result of what's
04:22happened in about three and a half months. And it's some nice compost. It's looking good already.
04:31So there you have it.
04:34If I just get some in my hand, it's still feeling warm. It's around 50 degrees.
04:39And you can see bits of wood in there. That's fine. Short pieces always.
04:44So that's contributing to the fungal mass of the compost, because fungi break down the wood,
04:48and bacteria break down the green in broadly simple terms. And I've just had this compost,
04:54but a slightly older one than this, analysed for bacteria, fungi, nematodes, all sorts of things.
05:00And the results have been good. They're all successful, but just different. And I'll put
05:05the results of that analysis in the video description. It's quite a long checkout.
05:10But if you want to know more about bacteria and fungi, it's good information. It just gives you more
05:17idea on the process. And I want now to show you a slightly smaller version run in a similar way.
05:25It's the three pallet system to compare and contrast with these bays here.
05:41This is a smaller scale of composting, which is very worthwhile if you have still quite a large
05:48area of ground providing a lot of material, because even three pallets like this, of which
05:54we're only ever filling one at a time, take quite a lot of material to fill. Don't underestimate how
06:01much raw material you need to make a decent amount of compost, which is why it's actually good to be
06:06a
06:06scrounger. And just get hold of other people's waste, because there's a lot of it around.
06:12You know, so many people have organic matter that they can't use or don't want to use from coffee
06:17grounds to grass clippings, to weeds, spent hops from breweries, you know, you name it, the list goes
06:22on. So that's a possibility, a way of getting hold of and doing a service to other people,
06:27actually removing their waste, saving it from landfill, whatever. Here, we don't have that problem so much,
06:32but I'll still accept other people's waste if they give it to me. And so this is all garden waste
06:37again,
06:37and smaller bays. So these are just over one meter square made by four pallets, and that's only a third
06:46of the volume. Those are nearly three cubic meters, three square meters, the big bays. So even though
06:52they don't look that much bigger, it's three times different. And that means that the middle of these
06:57heaps don't get quite so hot, but they do actually get up to often 60 degrees if we keep adding
07:02stuff
07:02regularly. That's not the case at the moment, because we haven't got so much green material
07:07because of the drought, still got some. And the temperature there is reading not much more than
07:1240 degrees, which is still the temperature of a hot bath. This tool, by the way, it's called a compost
07:18aerator. And you can buy it in all the usual places online, might cost around 30 pounds, 40 dollars,
07:26or something like that. And yeah, it's not coming out much. It's basically, it's making nice compost.
07:35This heap is about five weeks old since we started it. And usually I fill these bays within two months.
07:44I might get a bit more this time. Yeah, there we go. So yeah, five weeks. That's looking all right.
07:51These, these I find, oddly, although they don't get quite so hot as those bays,
07:57they make what feels to me like a nicer compost. The compost analysis we had done was quite different,
08:04still good, just different. So smaller bays is feasible and possible. And these cost nothing.
08:12So just four pallets that you can get hold of for free. And all we have on each corner is
08:17two wires.
08:19And so to access the compost, you just undo two wires. And then that front pallet will swing open
08:24like a door and you've got access to the material in there. And we do that when we want to
08:29turn it.
08:30So we've got the same mix of green and brown. And I normally keep a piece of corrugated iron
08:37against the rain on those two heaps, because normally we have a lot of rain here and that makes
08:44the compost too soggy when it's maturing or finished. At the moment, it's the other way around. And
08:50I'm actually watering. So this is a good way to water a compost using a fine rose,
08:57not so much as the jet from a hose pipe. So this spreads out the water and just enables it
09:06to gently
09:08soak in, seep into all the materials in there. It doesn't need a lot, but again, because of the
09:14weather and there's no cover, the other bays do have a cover on which is both to keep rain out
09:19and
09:19actually keeps the sun off to some extent. And I'm watering all of the compost is pretty much the same.
09:24This doesn't get any more dry from having a roof over than that one. So we finished filling this bay
09:32within about two months, at which point we'll leave it to sit here for maybe another two months,
09:37six weeks, I would say minimum, before it's in a good shape to turn. Like this one here,
09:43finished five weeks ago, getting close to being at a stage for turning. While they're maturing,
09:51I like to keep them covered with either cardboard or polythene, any packaging or material release that
09:57you might have. So this is compost finished five weeks ago, and the actual what I'm pulling out is
10:06probably about two months old. And yeah, it's looking pretty nice. In fact, it's so good I can
10:13quite easily shake it off there. But what I'm seeing here is a good moisture level, and that's
10:20encouraging me. It wasn't quite so dry when we made this heat. And another clue actually is smell.
10:28Oh yeah, actually, that really does smell nice. It's kind of earthy. It's not pungent in any way.
10:34This is turning into beautiful compost, and it hasn't been turned yet. It's going to be turned
10:40into here. So we only fill each end bay in turn. In other words, when that one finishes in maybe
10:48a month,
10:50by that time, this one will be empty because its contents will have been turned into there.
10:55And that means we can then fill the other end. So we only fill the end heaps, alternating two to
11:02three months at a time. And this middle bay has, at the moment, it has the contents made in there
11:10through the winter and spring, roughly between December and April. And so this one, the heap started
11:18in May and was finished in June. That one started in July. So December to April, let's say, between the
11:25middle of those two dates is February or March. It's the compost you're seeing here now. So I'll just
11:32scoop it out with my hand. It's beautiful finished compost. And if we count from March, April to now, it's
11:40roughly six months. This is compost that's ready to use, but it's not hurting from sitting there
11:47because at this time of year, August, we're not really spreading it partly. I don't want it to just
11:51dry out, but we don't need it at the moment. It's more for spreading on the surface of beds in
11:57the
11:57autumn, early winter. And I will actually just go in here a bit because the results of this one were
12:04actually not quite as impressive as I thought they might be. They were good. Don't get me wrong.
12:11Yeah. Oh, yeah. Look at that. And what we're not seeing here is many worms. And the reason for that
12:18is because they've done their work. What this is and why it's so nice, that's worm compost. So this
12:26was full of worms. It's actually dry. It's not dry, but it's drying out a bit now. And worms like
12:32it
12:32really moist. So, oh, there is a worm. Having said that, if you want lots of worms, you know,
12:38you just got to make sure it's moist without being too wet. So that's where it can get a bit
12:42more
12:43challenging. But when compost is this nice, I'm looking to use it for potting mix because I'm
12:50finding this kind of compost gives great results. So let's have a look now and we can contrast
12:55the first two batches with what's going on in the conical bins over here.
13:12So, Minty has joined the video and that reminds me to mention actually that I do quite often find her
13:18poos in my bed. And I'm happy to scoot them out and put them on the compost heap. That is
13:25my take
13:25on it. And yeah, I know officially I'm not going to do that, but they all break down. So these
13:32are
13:34beautiful. I find them beautiful. Sorry, they're not actually beautiful of themselves, but they make
13:39beautiful compost and they're really practical for smaller spaces. And in fact, I mentioned all this and
13:46explain it in my compost book. It has all of these details and more if you really want to dive
13:50into
13:51this fascinating subject. So here is compost made last winter between December and April. Oh no,
14:01sorry. That's that heap. This is the current heap. So this is made between May, which is now two and
14:11a
14:11half months ago and August. And it's looking all right. And it's actually nice and moist, which I did
14:23this while teaching a course about a week ago and it was quite dry. So that's where it's useful to
14:28do
14:28this kind of checking as well as turning. I've been watering it a couple of times. You've got to have
14:34it moist if you want breakdown to happen. It's like a pile of wood chips. It'll stay there forever if
14:39the
14:39chips are dry. And if you water them, they'll decompose. So you can use a tool like this to turn
14:46your heat
14:47and you don't need to do it frequently. I'm doing just one turn and that's enough. But maybe this is
14:53not quite the same as a thorough turn. Maybe do it twice. But try a few things. Yeah, that's the
14:59best way
14:59to find out. These bins are not expensive. And this one's about five years old now, 330 litres.
15:07That's about a third of a ton in weight if it was full of finished compost, but they never are
15:12because
15:13it keeps sinking. And I keep the lid on to keep the moisture in, keep the rain out. And we
15:18add exactly
15:19the same materials to this bin as to the big bays. Same proportion, roughly two thirds to three quarter
15:26green materials, which includes weeds, kitchen scraps, all fresh leaves, horse poo if you had it,
15:33coffee grounds. That's all green in composting terms. And then brown materials is mostly
15:38derivatives of wood. So wood shavings, wood chips, sawdust, paper, cardboard, preferably scrumpled up
15:44or in smaller pieces if it's cardboard. And then in contrast here, we have
15:53what Adam turned from there into here in May. So what I'm fishing out here is last year's compost is
16:02very open and soft and looking really nice. You can still distinguish some of the
16:09undecomposed ingredients, bits of wood, the odd leaf, but not a lot. If you spread a compost like this on
16:16the ground, the rain will tend to wash through it and take the more decomposed material down into the
16:21soil, leaving what looks like a sort of wood chip surface on the bed. And that's misleading because
16:28it's just the woody content remains on top. There is a bit of, I would call it, half decomposed wood
16:34in this, which is not a problem as long as there's not too much. That's why I say quarter to
16:39a third
16:40of woody materials and mostly green material to help the wood decompose. And then you've got a
16:49reasonable carbon-nitrogen balance. You've got fungi as well as bacteria. That's something we're
16:55really looking for. And actually the compost in these, it doesn't get hot, hot, 40 maximum,
17:00often 30 degrees centigrade, 80s to 90s Fahrenheit. And that's not enough to kill weed seeds. So I
17:11put them more in hotter bays, or if you don't have that, send them for recycling, for example.
17:16But the analysis of this compost came out as one of the best of all three that we've seen.
17:22So it shows how you can be successful. You can make great compost, whatever size of apparatus
17:27you have. The main thing is just to keep adding stuff. You put some bindweed roots in and everyone
17:33worries, well, they're not going to decompose. But if you keep adding stuff on top of them,
17:36they will decompose. They're not magical. They don't have superhuman powers. You know,
17:41they're detached from the main root. They're going to decompose as long as they've got
17:44stuff piling on top of them over the coming two weeks or so. They can't possibly grow in that
17:50situation. And a bin like this is fully enclosed. So there's no light coming in at the edge. And I
17:55forgot to mention that actually on the pallet bays where I'm lining the inside with cardboard.
18:00And that really works because you don't actually want air flowing into a heap. You want to keep the
18:07moisture and warmth in there. And the cardboard is an insulating material which holds warmth closer
18:13to the edge. So you get a more even result. You know, I'm finding those pallet bays make fantastic
18:18compost and so do these. Well, they all do. So do have a try if you haven't tried it before,
18:23because composting, making compost is really fun.
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