Mature Compost, Better Quality - Gardening Beyond Basics 67

Welcome to Gardening Beyond Basics. I'm your host Diego, D-I-E-G-O, bringing you podcast

since 2013. If you're new here, welcome. Gardening Beyond Basics is a deep dive into the

topics that you thought were simple when it comes to gardening. From vegetable varieties

to soil to pests to seeds, we'll talk to knowledge experts to go way beyond the basics

and dive deep into the nitty-gritty about subjects that you thought were simple, but in reality

are much more complex than you can even imagine. In every episode, we'll dive deep into

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Basics. Lately, I've been doing a lot of reasoning and kind of fallen into this school of cold composting,

where you are trying to employ the biological activity of fungi over bacteria. So that you leave

the pile more passive, you're not turning as much, you're not concerned with temperature, and if we

remove the regulatory aspect out of it, like for some people that doesn't matter on a garden scale,

is there some validity to that that if I maintain a pile with less turning, I'm enacting fungi

more in the decomposition process and potentially preserving more carbon in the soil because there's

less aerobic activity, which would then send carbon up into the atmosphere as a byproduct of that

aerobic activity? You are correct in that. It's not just cold composting though. It's been a while

I need to get it going again, but I ran an experiment on aerated static piles. Are you familiar with

that? ASP? Right. A forced air system. So you've got pipes laid on the ground that you, I don't know if

you can see my fingers, but you would put material on the pipes like this and stack it up and then

you're forcing air up through that. And through my experiment with that, I had great results getting

fungi going in the pile because I'm not turning it. Yes, the whole deal with fungi and my whole

mission since I started making compost and doing what I'm doing is to get more fungal compost

and get more fungi into the soil through our conventional agriculture practices.

Using a tractor or having heavy machinery on the soil, it causes compaction or especially

tillage. A lot of people think that every spring they need to go out and take their tiller out and

rip up the soil. So when I was talking before about that saprophytic fungi and seeing saprophytic

fungi in the forest, when you notice that it looks like strings on a stick or on leaves and that's

what's visible to our naked eye, but most of these things that I'm talking about aren't visible to

our naked eye. So there's lots of things in the soil that we're not seeing and there's tons of

thread just miles normally in a healthy, especially in a forest system in a healthy soil. There's

miles of fungi underfoot that if you were to come through with a tiller or in this, what you're

talking about compost if we're getting this saprophytic fungi and using mycelium going throughout the

pile, if you come through and turn that, you're ripping up all those threads and setting the stage back

a lot earlier to where there's more bacteria that are going to thrive and that fungi needs more time

to get going again. So it's provide the oxygen with don't break up that network? Exactly, yeah.

Yep. And with so cold composting, most people in their backyard are going to throw

they mow their lawn and maybe they collect some of the grass clippings that are going to throw

those in a pile and then in the fall or in the end of summer they might have a garden and they're

throwing some of those scraps on there and then the fall they're throwing leaves in there and

sticks and things like that. And if you're not turning that, it's most likely going to go through

an anaerobic process because it doesn't have air in there. But if you leave it long enough, aerobic

microorganisms are going to take over and you will have good compost in the end and hopefully

have good fungi in there too because you haven't turned it. But it's a matter of letting it age

and mature like a year or a year and a half and most people are wanting compost a lot quicker

than that and not wanting to have to wait around. Yeah, the more I read on this, I think that's

the trade-off. People are rushing it and I think they're giving up a lot of the value in that

compost. Like it's as though we say it's better to have it on the soil now at a five than it is to

wait for it for another 12 months and put it on the soil where maybe the effect on the soil is

I'm making this up a 50 versus a five because those organisms have diversified. They've matureed.

There's more of them. You're just adding better quality, more concentrated stuff to the soil

versus adding something that's good, but it's just quick. Right, yes, I totally agree.

And in that sense, to me, if you were purchasing, if someone were to know to look at the biology

of a compost and like maybe got a sample, like they have a local municipal compost and they

got a little sample and were able to look at it with a microscope and say it was a five like

you talked about. They're going to have to pay, they're going to have to spend more to pay for

twice as much compost or whatever to get it down to get this same effects as if you were to let

a compost age a little bit longer and then use less and have better biology on your soil.

I noticed on your Instagram page that you had started a Johnson Sue reactor. So David Johnson

had found out through his research that one ton of compost applied on an acre of land

will get results. He's got fungal dominant compost. He's applying that at one ton per acre which

it's really hard to fathom one ton per acre. That's probably two to three cubic yards of compost.

So that's you're probably not even going to be able to see that as you apply that down at that

rate, but he got effects. He through his research, according to his research, he got effects where he

had an effect on the biology in the soil then and was able to get more fungal going in the soil

with just one ton of compost, whereas most people are putting down 10 tons of compost at least,

I would think, which is still pretty minimal. Isn't it all going to this fungal dominated

compost anyway? So if we take that fungal dominated compost pile and it takes 18 months and we

just let it sit there, then we apply that. It's just broken down as it's going to get it. It's

base nutrients at that point, where if we take more raw compost after let's say 45 days of

turning, we add that to the soil. It's going in this compost, but it's still going in the soil now

going to evolve and break down more by fungal dominated organisms into those base nutrients.

So at the end of the day, after 18 months, you're still getting the same thing,

but one happened in the soil, one happened in the pile. So if it's someone who's worked then

even not even necessarily cultivating by conventional means, but someone who's still been

tilling and are organic, they may have been suppressing that fungi for so long or breaking it up

that they don't really have much fungi in the soil. And if you

if you take a compost that's half aged or whatever, you're most likely not going to have that same

amount of fungi, the fungi hasn't been able to grow onto the surfaces more to take over to have

that same amount of fungi. I'm trying to think of an analogy to this, but I can't think of one.

Well, it makes sense. You're better culturally get all out in one place where it's hyper-concentrated

in the perfect environment, building up to soil population by introducing that,

then assuming that there's enough biology in the soil that can take care of the more raw

ingredients you're putting into it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So if you already have decent biology in the soil,

it wouldn't be as big of a deal because we really need to be feeding the soil. That's the whole

kind of what we were getting at in the beginning of our conversation. It's not about feeding the

plant. It's about feeding the soil, giving the soil what it needs. And then the soil is going to

have interactions with the plant to for the plant to manage its own nutrient needs and feed itself.

So yeah, with that, putting compost down on something that already has good biology in the soil,

is just helping to add more organic matter to it that's going to be foods for microorganisms that will

help to to give nutrients to the plant. So yeah, if you do have good biology in the soil, it wouldn't

be as big of a deal to use more of a mulch compost that doesn't have as great of microorganisms,

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