Composing Compost 2

To follow up on the last post about composing compost, mostly commercial from Barr-Tech near Sprague, I want to show the ingredients I am adding to the soil mix I am currently potting, planting and adding as mulch.

1. This tub is composted leaf mulch from the yard waste dump of the City of Colville. It is two years old and has a lot of red worms in it along with a complete set of other micro-organisms. I have to screen out rocks, sticks, clumps of leaves and assorted non-biodegradable garbage to mix this in but it gives the mix a good dose of living critters to spread to the rest.
2. This is a small bucket of potash, the stuff left when a fire burns all the way out. It has a good mix of minerals that the fungi can carry to the roots. It amounts to about 10% of the whole.
3. This tub is full of shredded grape prunings, pine needles and other small branches. So it is almost all plant-based carbon. It gives the mix a longer life with things to digest so the initial microbes that break down plant material have a lot to work with.
4. This is a bucket of biochar, that has been discussed in other blog posts. I could inoculate it with manure tea or other microbe-rich liquids, but that will happen naturally when the whole mix gets wet. It holds water and shelters bacteria. Again it is about 10% of the whole.
5. This is Barr-Tech green compost. It has been broken down from mostly landscaping waste and is organically certifiable. Because of the high temperatures that produce it, protozoa, nematodes and other “higher” organisms have not inhabited it yet. But they will quickly spread into it and fill the gap between freshly shredded material and a complete living soil.
6. The last tub (each large tub is about 20% of the mix) is aged cow manure from organically raised beef. It is crumbly and full of night-crawlers. Manure has a lot of nitrogen in it that will promote growth and good green color for photosynthesis. But too much of this good thing could heat up a pile of compost and unbalance the mix.

So that is the basic mix. You could include grass clippings, food waste and a lot of other rotting stuff. If you are building and turning piles of compost, they would be helpful in a mix like this, but not until they have broken down somewhat. Besides, there are some bigger critters that would go for the food waste (skunks, raccoons, rats…) that you really don’t want in your garden.

I tend not to put everything in one pile but to mix it just before it goes in pots or over the ground. That way the mycorrhizal fungi can grow in place and not have their hyphae broken. Just like water starts yeast growing, water starts fungi growing. They are actually closely related. So get out there and make your own mix. Living soil is good for everything in the world.