bioreactor – Crazy About Compost

Composting Horse Manure in a Bioreactor – One Year Later

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDlaMorCqhM Diego's follow-ups on bioreactor videos are always going to be a treat- he runs great experiments and no-turn composting is my kind of composting. I'm not a big fan of staging a compost pile off the ground- I get the pest concerns and minimizing amibitious roots from stealing nutrients, but I don't worry about the airflow since this is a long term effort of at least a year or more. I'd rather let the pile be in contact with the ground to maximize the incoming soil biology to help work on the contents and deal with the stringy roots later. Not surprisingly, horse manure made great finished compost and was loaded with worms. I'm always happy to see an explosion of worms in my piles- it's a good indicator…

Opening the Johnson-Su Bioreactor – Wood Chip Composting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glcRqH7q414 Yet another excellent video from Diego- I wish I had space to make a massive vertical pile like this, although wood chips sounded like an awful ingredient from the start! There's nothing wrong with wood chips, they're just so darn thick. As expected, the outer is dry and unchanged, and he has some nice stuff developing in the center. This is essentially as expected- more rain would have helped move it along a little faster, although this will take a few years to break down regardless. More importantly- who cares about time? Is your yard going somewhere? Can't wait to see this after year 2- hope he keeps it damp!