Extreme Composting

Is the material ground to any specific consistency before or during the process ?
I'm going to have some difficulty believing that five days at 155 degrees, roughly, is going to disintegrate all bones of a deer-sized carcass.....without grinding.......not to say it's impossible, but I'm skeptical without seeing for myself.

Ehrenfried Pfeiffer had some pretty cool stuff going on in the fifties-ish, on a municipal scale, (several, across the country, in fact) but his operations called for grinding the material twice, inoculating with a spray containing 60-some strains of bacteria (if I correctly recall) and then turning several times to make a stable compost in days.

I'd be happy (er) just being able to consistently build piles with a perfect C/N balance, let alone grinding, inoculating and regular turning.
A few days just isn't enough time to get well acquainted with a compost pile, to where you feel like you're friends by the time you spread it.

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“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

Thanks, I still have about five weeks before most of the garden goes in. I have never grown potatoes and thw woman at the feed mill said they should go in now so they will be put in this weekend.

The straw portion of your mix would go great between the rows of your taters, after they germinate.

The manure portion would go great, tilled in under your sweet corn ptch.

The blend would go great in a pile the steam from which you could enjoy for several weeks, each cool morning, over a cup of coffee, while you sit on the veranda and contemplate the structure of your day.

Taters don't appreciate raw manure, nor uncomposted carcasses..........

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

I pulled out 3 buckets of my pile yesterday and it was black and wet. (We've had a good amount of rain lately) I mixed it with light fluffy compost and the clay I dug out of the new bed for rhubarb. Mixed it about equally with the bottom layer of natural soil maddocked up loosely and forked it all up. Planted 3 rhubarb plants and now hoping for super growth.

Nothing is ground ahead of time. It's like a slow-cooker. You put in a solid chunk of the toughest beef and cook it for 10-12 hours and suddenly it falls apart. Rabbits, squirrels, opossums, groundhogs, pigeons, sparrows, etc. totally vanish in a single heat cycle in my tumbler and that's only turning once a day. Industrial tumblers turn with much more frequency and the material is exposed to constant aeration. Such systems have been common in Europe for over 75 years.

Martin

Deer ? Leg bones ? Five days ?


Do you know....was it Ehrenfried Pfeiffer who pioneered the European industrial grade composting ?

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

Pfeiffer came much later and learned from the Europeans. The Danes, for example, were working on such a system already in 1933 which could produce 150 tons per day.

In 1974, I saw a train in the Netherlands comprised entirely of a string of black hopper cars similar to a coal train here. Each car had huge white letters on the sides, COMPOST.

Martin

Very cool, but it isn't compost in 5 days. That website has a 5 day process followed by an 8 week process. That I find quite believable. I would love to see the world move towards that type of technology.

But before I used that compost on pastures, I would want to see some testing and analysis done. Anything less than 3/4" in the waste stream can end up in the compost. That could include hazardous liquids, metal and plastic bits that cattle might ingest, and who knows what else.

For decades Palm beach COunty, FL has had a waste to electric system http://www.swa-wteproject.com/about/ When my DW was a teacher there, we would take kids to tour the facilities. Another impressive use of "waste", and it does a great job of eliminating hazmats.

That's why I mentioned that it was still active when it comes out. It's finished by the more passive system of piles or windrows. Larger European operations which use the tumbler system do it in one operation with screening being the final step before leaving as finished compost.

Martin

FORERUNNER - I have a composting question. And, I don't mean to put anyone off, but......can the paper/cloth/cotton parts of fem. hygiene products be composted, in something like where you put offal/roadkill??? Or could there be too many chemicals? Thanks....

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Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Composting would be the best way to recycle the nutrients lost, and to render those chemicals more neutral than any other process available to us that I am aware of.
The inorganic portions could always be picked out later.

Bringing in material from municipal yard waste dumps and sale barns, we spend a little time picking trash every time we weed the garden, spread compost or go for a walk around the wheat fields.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

blood is a good source of N and greatly aids in making compost. Blood meal is dried blood from a slaughterhouse and is a fairly fast acting high N fertilizer. So from that perspective, yes.

As to the possibility of passing a human disease to one of your critters or another human? I haven't read any science to back up my opinion, but if there are pathogens in your blood, they probably need blood to live. Put the pathogens in an inhospitable hot compost pile and let the microbes chew and crunch on the pathogens and I don't see how the pathogens could survive. But you might want to make sure pigs, who I'm told are more likely to get human diseases, stay out of the pile for several months.

As to the possibility of prescription drugs remaining in the compost and causing some damage? As I recall, the book Humanure gave that an OK. There is such a minute amount of the drug and it gets spread over a big pile which gets spread over a big area of garden and all the microbes get to do their thing. Even if the drugs don't break down, they get spread out over such a large area that they are of no consequence.

As to the possibility that there are uncompostable plastic pieces in the lady products? I don't know enough about the things to know if the cotton portions are really cotton or some sort of synthetic material. Google might know or you might need to consult the manufacturer.

Would I open up my compost pile to everyone in the neighborhood to come and dump used tampons? No. But I would not worry a minute about a basically healthy family member doing so - as long as i resolved the plastic question. I'm happy to get humanure added to my compost piles and that is going to have most of the same issues of blood.

My neighbor is scared about persistent pesticides. I am going and you buy your food where?

So does anyone know much about these persistent pesticides? Why would they not be like other chemical toxins?

I think his site is a scare you site. They give this high pollutant scare and refuse to name any of them.

Are you sure he isn't going on about persistent herbicides? Or parasiticides?

Can I put mixed bedding from my piles around my apple trees instead of 10-10-10? The pile is 1 month old on my property and I'm not sure how long it was sitting at the sale barn. What do you think? My apple trees are 2 and 3 years old. Our soil is pretty heavy clay.

I'd go for it, RG....just keep the material pulled back a few inches from the trunk, so's to allow for air flow and to lessen the chance of bugs taking up comfortable residence where they can damage the trunk.

Don't lay it in so deep that it will heat, but enough to cover.
The rains will take the nutrients down where you want 'em, soon enough.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

Thanks Forerunner. I'll get that done this weekend amongst all the other gardening we'll have going on. I was hoping for a more organic solution to fertilizing my trees. Will that also work for blueberries, blackberries and strawberries?

Strawberries, especially....... blackberries too.

I have no experience with blueberries, so don't know their preferences.....

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

My wife has invented a new composting method I think is very clever, "Counter Top Composting".
She just lets the food rot on the counter unless I take it out!

You might should consider just go ahead and build a pallet bin for her in the corner of the kitchen......and don't forget to commune frequently with the pile.

Maybe she'll take the hint.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III