how to make compost – Page 9 – Crazy About Compost

When is Your Compost Ready to Use? (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Hf_IcS_5U When is your compost ready to use? Some questions to ask yourself include: How does it look? Can you recognize any of the material? How does it smell? Is the material warm? Here I have a few different samples of compost...vermicompost, tumbler compost, commercial compost, and trench compost. What do you think of these samples? I feel like my tumbler compost and vermicastings could both go even longer before using them, but that they're still OK if I were to use them now. In fact, I'm going to use these samples for my next "Clash of The Composts!" experiment coming soon... stay tuned!

Wilmington Organics Recycling Center (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvcqbvBkyNQ This is the best video showing how a commercial composting facility handles their stuff. Keep in mind this is a $20 million facility complete with 2 ton Goretex tarps and capacity of 500+ tons a day. Wow. I know of a few customers of theirs that are quite happy with their stuff, and I've been a recipient of their finished product and we saw how that did...remember? One thing that I always wonder about...how can they tell if their wood waste contains creosote or CCA, or was formerly used in phytoremedial projects? Would the critters in the pile break down that nasty stuff? Compost is a cheaper disposal route per ton than the landfill for most (within proximity to a facility, of course)... so wouldn't that tempt more unnecessary…

Basic Gardening Tips: When is the Compost Pile Finished?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgM1mJJbOz0 How long does the composting process take? How do you know when it's finished? These are two questions that have so many variables that it's hard to answer succinctly. You can expect 6 weeks as a quicker (and not normal) turnaround time, but more like several months and up to a year, depending on how often the material is turned, how shredded the content is, how balanced the pile is, etc. To know when it's finished is to look at it and not recognize anything in there. I like to run my finished material through a sieve to check and make sure i don't have anything else lurking in there somewhere...it can happen. In the video above, Tia talks about this and shows us what some finished material looks…