Compost; A Love Story..

So by now you've probably worked out that I really like compost. I know it's a weird thing to say, it's a bit like admitting that you're a fan of collecting toe nails, but if you've never dug your bare hands down into a pile of thick, dark, well decomposed, sweet smelling compost, well, you simply haven't lived!

Below is a fairly recent pic I took of the 2 compost bins we've been using here on the property for a number of years. We have a solid supply of good quality ingredients to add to the piles but as I've spoken about before in my post about experimenting with the Berkley Method Of Hot Composting, they just weren't making the grade. The stone slabs look beautiful but they don't allow for air to enter via the sides and air is crucial for the decomposing process. If oxygen cannot penetrate the pile then it becomes anaerobic (meaning that the microorganisms responsible for decomposition process can't survive and thus decomposition grinds to a halt) and unless you want to engage in anaerobic composting (which is possible but not desirable given our circumstances) then the stone slabs simply weren't the ideal way to go.

Last year we left the bays filled with a variety of good things for almost 6 months and came to the end of that period only to discover that they had become so compacted that the majority of the ingredients simply failed to decompose at all. Now one incredibly simple way to counteract this is simply to get in there with a pitch fork and turn the pile a couple of times a week so as to allows air to reenter in amongst all the ingredients, however we have the problem of being a rather small and therefore time-poor community; meaning that we have plenty of responsibilities and not much spare time, let alone enough to dedicate to turning a compost pile every other day. So I began to dream of different ways that we could improve our set up that would give us better results without having to invest more time into it on a regular basis and ended up stumbling into an incredibly simple, extremely cheap and super effective method that could be reproduced anywhere by anyone.

The above photo is the area we're dealing with. The existing stone Compost bays are straight a head, there are piles of broken bricks and stone slabs everywhere, and even though it's all but invisable in the picture, much of the ground is actually paved with smaller stone pieces which have become buried under years of dirt and leaves. We spent a couple of hours clearing the space (which required some serious heavy lifting) and then drove four metal poles into the ground, roughly 1.5m wide and 1.8m long, which would act as the front corners of the new Compost bays. 

I chose to use a reasonably thick gauge wire for the frame as this would have the strength to support the weight of everything we would want to throw into it whilst still having plenty of space to allow as much air as possible to penetrate in from the sides. We drilled this into the brick wall at the rear and linked it with strips of wire to the post at the front and at that point had a very simple compost bay setup.

One thing to consider is that I could have chosen to use only 3 posts for the front so that the middle wire would have acted as a central dividing wall for both bays, but getting air into the pile was the main objective and so using 4 post means that there is a 30cm gap between both piles and thus plenty of room for air to have access.

Next up my dear Aussie brother Nelson and I spent a long and hot summer afternoon drilling hundreds of holes in lengths of PVC pipe. I had given lots of thought about how to try and increase air flow to the center of the pile (the most likely place to become starved of oxygen) and had decided that one option would be to run a couple of lengths of pipe from the outside, straight through the center of the pile. This way oxygen can always be moving through those hard to reach places and keep those microorganisms partying. We lined the pipes up and attached them in a roughly even fashion so as to get air flow through the four quarters of the piles, but my advice today would be to scrap having any pipes up high and instead have them all in the lower half of the pile as that's where it will become the most compacted and the natural airflow will be the most restricted.

I had intended to attach another wire section to the front of each bay, but the guy at the store who sold me the wire did the dirty and charged me for 10m but only gave me 8m, so I didn't have enough wire to complete it on that day and figured I would get back into it soon. However, as time got further and further away from me, I found that it hasn't really been necessary to have a front as we haven't had enough going into the piles for them to spill out onto the path in front but instead they've easily grown higher and higher without having any problems.

We initially set up these new Compost Bays in late August 2013, it's now 3 months later and as you can see the new bays are doing pretty darn well. Some of the pipes broke during this time due to a problem which I doubt many of you will experience (ie; Monkeys jumping up and down on them!), but it is worth trying to make sure that the pipes are resting on the compost in the center without significant gaps beneath them so that they're not trying to support the weight of all that is above it as I suspect this would also cause them to break.

 

To the best of my knowledge, not once during these past three months have either of the piles been turned or aerated by any other means than that which we initially designed. Just this week I finished building my final Vegie Plot in the Resurrection Garden and was keen to pump it full of compost so I pulled out the pipes through the sides of the 2nd bay, racked back the top layer of leaves and other recently added ingredients and was blown away with what lay beneath.

Only 3 months after first building these new bays, the rear one gave out 10+ wheelbarrow loads of gorgeous, gregarious, glorious Compost! All of which went straight into our organic Vegetable Gardens and means that the leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, garden waste, etc. etc. etc. which would otherwise go onto the side of the road, the incinerator or the Ganges, is now enriching the earth, helping feed humanity with nutritious and healthy food and investing back into nature. I really couldn't be happier with how it's turned out.

So if you have a compost pile somewhere out back and the thought of turning it every other day doesn't seem to appeal to you, would it be worth revamping your existing Composting system with any of these brainlessly simple ideas? When compared with last year's stretch of 6 months composting with virtually nothing to show for it, well, it's as my sweet Winnie Wild Flower likes to say, "The pudding is in the cake!"