Category: compost

New compost heap 160910 with chicken manure

New heap declared, using about a third of a 20kg bag of pelleted chicken manure dissolved in water to a liquid/slurry, to see if raising the N will help with the fade problem that affected heap 160901

We used only about 3/4 of one wheelie bin of wood chip so mental note to only prepare one next time for the black plastic composting container!

Allocated transmitter AT with fresh batteries today (for monitoring temperature).

all the materials collected with the team
all the materials collected with the team
10kg of pelleted chicken manure dissolved in water, about 7 kg used
10kg of pelleted chicken manure dissolved in water, about 7 kg used

Other materials:

Some sweetcorn and mostly french beans - 4 wheelbarrow loads
Some sweetcorn and mostly french beans – 4 wheelbarrow loads
Nettles and comfrey: 1 wheelbarrow load
Nettles and comfrey: 1 wheelbarrow load
Grass and clover with some nettles: 1 wheelbarrow load
Grass and clover with some nettles: 1 wheelbarrow load
Shredded evergreen leaves from Joanne’s old allotment neighbour, Rob’s, clippings: 1.5 wheelbarrow loads used
Crew: Josh, Glennis, Richard and Joanne chopped beans & sweetcorn laboriously using spades and shears!
Deployment of the chicken crap, which was then lightly mixed in with a garden fork

The whole heap was pressed down and then insulated with two lengths of black plastic above heap, and another length wrapped round fairly loosely to allow airflow. Used mist sprayer to wet all except pre-soaked woodchip and the chicken shit slurry.

Joanne and Glennis by the finished heap
Joanne and Glennis by the finished heap

Composition Data processing for 160910

Material WLB loads density Nitrogen Green Woody Norm N Norm G Norm W notes
Sweetcorn & French beans 4 0.8 0.3 0.7 0.96 2.24 0 estimate
Nettles and Comfrey 1 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.3 0
Grass and clover w some nettles 1 0.8 0.3 0.7 0.24 0.56 0
shredded evergreen leaves 1.5 1 0.2 0.8 0.3 1.2 0
woodchip 2.25 1 1 0 0 2.25 one wheelie bin is three wheelbarrows
Chicken shit 0.25 1 1 0.25 0 0 estimate, was 7kg
totals 2.05 4.3 2.25 checksum
Normalised proportions 24% 50% 26% 100%

Second compost heap turn and move to the small container

Although the temperature profile wasn’t up to scratch this heap has rotted down well, so it was turned into the small container to free up the big container for the next heap. Temperature sensors were reallocated to heap 160910 but box AS retained and long probe inserted, second probe is set to monitor ambient.

The end result of this turn: we moved the heap to our smallest compost bin as it had shrunk down so much.
Before this second turn
We carefully took out the middle to ensure that a part of the heap that had not been fully heated in the centre had its turn.
We wrapped the heap up in mypex woven weed control plastic to insulate it, ensure plenty of space for air flow.

New 50:50 compost heap 160901

New heap instigated, roughly:

  • 50% grass and clover with some nettles and comfrey
  • 50% wood chippings.

Approx 15% N but estimated from the grass clover mix at about 50% grass, roughly equal mix that and green leafy (including relatively high nitrogen comfrey and nettles) and woodchip.

This was seeded with (very small!) soil samples from Staverton Thicks, Rendlesham forest and Captain’s Wood, all old, well established woodlands. We did this in the hope of introducing a wide soil food web to our heap, and subsequently to the soil. When we looked at these soil sample from the woodlands under the microscope they were certainly far richer in soil life than the soil at The Oak Tree at the time!

shredded evergreen shrub leaves

So the heap was made up of :

  • 30% green leafy shredded conifer leaves
  • 30% grass, clover nettles & comfrey
  • 40% woodchip
Shredded conifer foreground and grass and clover background

Good initial progress but this was not sustained. Perhaps this should have been turned on the first Monday, rather than the Tuesday

Compost heap temperature profile: both probes were in the centre of the heap.

Review of what went wrong with this heap…

What happened – did well in reaching temperature, so sufficient N to get there, but no staying power. Possible causes:

  • Exhausting N by turning a day late?
  • Poor mix with insufficient N in the first place due to a lower clover to grass ratio than assumed?
  • possibly there is something too woody in the evergreen leaves?
  • possibly would have benefited from additional insulation to be able to turn earlier to avoid exhausting nitrogen?

Composition Data processing for 160901

Heap ID 160901
container large black plastic
volume (init)
Material WLB loads density Nitrogen Green Woody Norm N Norm G Norm W checksum notes
Grass, clover, nettles, comfrey 1 0.8 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.4 0 1
shredded evergreen leaves 2 1 0 1 0 2 0 1
woodchip 3 1 1 0 0 3 1 one wheelie bin is three wheelbarrows
totals 0.4 2.4 3
Normalised proportions 7% 41% 52% 100%

 

Failed attempt 151024

Failed attempt 151024. Compost heap centre temperature against date/time. The flatline is an artefact of the lost signal being held at last known good value. Despite saying “outside temp” the blue line was a probe in the heap.

No more details.

Joanne’s note Oct 2016: Like our previous failed attempt, we just wanted to keep it in here for completeness (unlike big corporations, we don’t hide results that don’t support our aims!) and to make it clear that it has been hard work refining our compost making art to meet the Ingham spec! In retrospect it will have been getting cooler in October, and we hadn’t started wrapping our heaps in mypex woven black plastic for insulation on our exposed site. Also, we probably hadn’t added enough nitrogen or chopped the material up enough which was the key to our subsequent sucesses.

Failed compost-making attempt 150912

Failed attempt 150912 – Compost heap centre temperature against date/time. Despite saying “outside temp” the blue line was a probe in the heap.

This heap was made using the hardware cloth mesh netting technique. In retrospect September is far too late to have tried out that approach, the autumn winds dried this heap out after a promising start. We need to shelter this sort of construction more than the more enclosed black plastic bin.

dismantled heap on the 26th October showing the construction using hardware cloth

On our site this construction is going to be more a late Spring and Summer sort of thing. The failure mode is drying out, as the chart shows the core got hot enough the first and even the second time, but couldn’t sustain the burn. The large discrepancy between the temperature probes also points to unevenness.

Joanne’s note Oct 2016: Probably too discouraging! Just wanted to keep it in here for completeness, and to make it clear that it has been hard work refining our compost making art to meet the Ingham spec! In retrospect it will have been getting cooler in September, and we hadn’t started wrapping our heaps in mypex woven black plastic for insulation on our exposed site. Also, we probably hadn’t added enough nitrogen or chopped the material up enough which was the key to our subsequent successes.

Lettuce timelapse

We tried growing lettuce seeds in compost 150527 and regular commercial compost. Right from the off you can see that out compost has a much coarser consistency, which is not ideal in seed compost

Our compost is the lower right
Our compost is the lower right

We then tried a timelapse view of some lettuce seeds growing, using a Raspberry Pi to shoot one image a day

Timelapse image
Timelapse image

This isn’t night and day, but I do feel the seeds grown in our compost are slightly less leggy than the commercial compost, but both are perfectly decent growing media.

the seeds grown in our compost are on the lower right
the seeds grown in our compost are on the lower right

Lettuce seeds are terribly small and fine, nothing can be said about the clustering or evenness,

concentrated compost activators are hard to use

The high-nitrogen activator should typically be about 10% of the composting materials. These are typically animal wastes – I have used real chicken crap, pelletised chicken crap, and clover. With the chicken manure each time I have scored a fail, whereas the clover was a success.

pelleted chicken manure
pelleted chicken manure

I suspect the trouble is that it’s hard to mix a concentrated activator properly. For starters it’s not pleasant to do, which discourages it being turned in right. The pelletised stuff is easy to distribute evenly, but even then it seems to lead to localised action.

pellets seem to turn white
pellets seem to turn white

The pellets seem to go white, like dog crap used to go white when left on the footpath in the 1970s. This leads to a fast and furious burn on the composting front, but with no staying power

pelletised chicken crap - leading to a fast ramp up but no staying power
pelletised chicken crap – leading to a fast ramp up but no staying power – the dip was when it was turned

The clover was more evenly spread – somehow I need to find a way of spreading the others more evenly. Or maybe go for the urine, preferably from carnivorous humans (there is more N in protein). In Ben Easey’s Practical Organic Gardening (Faber, 1955) he says dilute this with water 1:20 which should make for a better distribution. So I’m going to steer clear of using crap, because I am a wuss and don’t like dealing with it and it’s too concentrated anyway. Clover or urine will be my activators of choice 😉

Joanne’s note Oct 2016: We subsequently (in later heaps) used pelleted chicken manure mixed with water and stirred into a slurry. It took a lot of water to do this! Poor old Richard has a very sensitive sense of small (tough on a small farm with animals!) so he had to leave the rest of the team to finish up building the heap when we started to add the slurry…