STEERING COMMITTEE
SRDC GGP-062 Mid Year Report
Field Report No 1 from ANS P/L August 2012
Project Title: Improved Methods of Compost Generation
Executive Summary:
Our original project proposal spanned five years. On advice from SRDC our original project was divided into stages so that the Steering Committee could review results from stage one and offer guidance to any further research.
At our first meeting the 80 meter row of bagasse had been planted with legume sorghum and grain seed which was just germinating. In the first weeks of June 2012 this row was divided into two havles, turned and again planted with seeds and selected plants in an attempt to grow nutritional content. One half, of the row, to be composted over 20 weeks, the other half of the row managed until mid-2013.
In late November 2011 a new trial plot, of sugar cane bagasse 10M by 10M and nearly 1M in height, was impregnated with 8 cu m of aged wood chip.
Unexpected Result:
Eight weeks later following significant rainfall mycelium fruited on the wood chip.
Photo 1: Mycelium fruited on wood chip
Accidentally, we had provided the correct environment, a bagasse/wood-chip base with dappled sunlight through neighbouring plants growing in the base feedstocks, for mushroom development.
A fourth trial, a mountain of 5 meters with feedstocks including wood-chip, cane billets, grass from headlands, mill mud and ash and old compost to bulk up pile, lock in pockets of oxygen and to minimize turning, was constructed on Walker’s farm.
Photo 2: Construction of static pile at Walker’s farm
Living Energies:
Conventional composting techniques use waste products of farm, urban and industrial practices. Many authors write of nutrient losses during turning and some authors write of mineral remobilization before leaf drop, ranging from 4 to 70% for some minerals in specific plants, 30 to 50% N, P, K and B in sugar cane leaf blade.
Plants are collectors of minerals from soil, water, atmosphere, sunlight and the cosmos. These minerals are stored throughout the plant and some are traded with soil biota in an active rhizosphere. Thus the Ecology Action Group in the USA ensure that their compost pile begins with 45% immature plants (green foliage), to maximize the nutritional content of the mature compost.
By growing selected nutrient rich plants in our piles we are hoping to accumulate greater quantities of minerals in the matured compost because we are harnessing living energies rather than just the percentage of mineral left in already mineral remobilized organic dead matter.
General:
As suggested by Pam Pittaway, use of temperate and cold climate plants recommended by northern hemisphere compost specialists, may need to be substituted with tropical plants. Growth of most cold climate plants was very limited in the understory of more vigorous tropical plants. Other more nutritional plants had to be grown off site e.g. tomatoes, because of the varietal competition from vigorous plants and vines. Trial and error over many years may be required.
Photo 3: 4.5M Sorghum March 2012
Hybrid forage sorghum up to 4.5M tall and as thick as sugar cane was chipped and used to supplement wood-chip in the 10M X 10M garden patch
Photo 4: Garden Patch January 2012
Photo 5:A mother fungal pile. Just built
A mother fungal pile has recently been established using a combination of bagasse, wood-chip and wood-ash to grow the mycelium for impregnating future piles. Grass and shrubbery need to be established to provide the appropriate dappled light environment.
Small amounts of liquid calcium, liquid kelp and molasses were distributed through the compost turner water, partly to provide bacterial food.
Separate small applications of giberelic acid, stinging nettle ferment solution biodynamic preparation 500 and sonic bloom treatment (select music played to open the leaf stomata) to absorb the spray treatments were trialed for the experience.
Trials were very limited and no assessment was made of any effect nor any benefit noticeable.
The above is a brief summary of our group’s activity since September 2011. Following is more detail on reasons for the above actions.
Next Meeting:
We plan our second meeting for mid December 2012 at Wests Football Club at Walkerston, Mackay. Some compost analysis may not have been received by then. Kindly advise our secretary if you will be available mid December or whether some time in early 2013 would suit you best.
Background:
During March 8 2012 a static pile 3 Meters tall and 10 meters at the base was constructed at Walker’s farm. Consisting of previously used feed stocks (bagasse, grass from headlands, mill mud and ash and old compost) with wood chip and cane billets to bulk up the pile and trap oxygen for aerobes working on the pile. This minimized turning and consequential mineral losses and reduced production cost. The undecomposed portion of the bulking materials will be screened out before an analysis sample is taken. The pile is turned with an excavator approximately every 6 weeks.
Photo 6: Excavator turning static pile at Walker’s
The temperature of a pile managed as above is cooler by about 5 to 10 degrees C depending on moisture content and feed stock mix. Consequently it takes a little longer for the pile to mature, perhaps 16 to 24 weeks.
Although feed stocks are all DEAD wastes, as in our earlier composts, with this methodology we expect an improvement in organic carbon and nitrogen content with a small increase in some micro nutrients.
Proposed Design No 2:
Proposed design No 2 was to be a standard windrow design with a drilled 6” PVC aerator pipe placed lengthways through the base of the compost row. Expecting this drilled pipe would constantly replace consumed O2 within the row, we thought this could eliminate the need to turn. An unknown factor was what would happen to CO2 production in the row as the row shrank.
Literature researched suggests that living matter experiments will give higher nutritional values than dead matter experiments.
Consequently the perforated aerator pipe static pile design, which was designed for dead waste products, has been deferred to Stage 2, to concentrate the development of compost nutritional content as a matter of prior urgency.
Photo 7: Assorted legumes grown on 80M row
The replacement is:- An 80M row of bagasse with 10% old compost, on which was grown over the wet season, forage sorghum and assorted inoculated legumes to supply the nitrogen required to compost.
NOTE: No off-farm nitrogen inputs. This growing row was rotary-hoed and shaped with a tractor bucket before broadcast planting with about a dozen varieties of plant seeds including grain, vegetable, flower and legume seeds. This row was turned on 1 July 2012 with the Aeromaster 120 turner moving at 2M per minute and using the largest 120 spray nozzles. Included in the water supply were low concentrations of liquid calcium, molasses and liquid kelp all of which would support micro-organisms in the compost. Four 9 liter buckets of mineral fertilizer were hand broadcast before turning.
The western half of the row is expected to be turned every 6 to 8 weeks and mature in November. The eastern half is receiving additional plantings of known highly nutritional plants including, kenaf, pigeon pea, tomato, radish, lettuce, loofah, drumstick tree, sweet potato, corn leucaena and rosella and fed foliar fertilizers until after the 2013 wet season.
The plan is to incorporate wood chip in the western half at the next turn and after turning impregnate that portion with mycelium from the fungi mother pile.
If all goes according to plan then an analysis of that portion would be available by mid December.
Appropriate Plants For Composting in the Tropics:
Our original composting training and experience was based on traditional composting and biodynamic formulaes practiced in Central European Countries like Austria or even North America. Many of their recommended feed stock plants, e.g. comfrey (Russia), yarrow stinging nettle, chamomile, horsetail are not easily grown under our intense tropical light rays. We need to find our tropical equivalents.
In late 2011 into 2012 ANS P/L trialed plants selected from our feed stock selection guidelines and USA/European plant recommendations. With this experience our plant selection changed to include tropical crops. Whilst some plants flourished amongst tall plants like forage sorghum (4.5M), sunflower, kenaf and pigeon pea and others faded away in the understory. European herbs lost the battle in the strong tropical summer heat in December. Good nodulation developed on many legumes species but only inoculated legume seed produced the required pink nodule centres. Sweet corn failed in the bagasse medium. Tomato and eggplant, both high nutritional plants had to be grown off-site away from the tall plants. Some weeds being cultivated, because of their capacity to accumulate and store minerals, (e.g. devil’s fig), failed in December when soils became water logged.
As time goes by other potential compost feed stock plants come into view, but too late for the current Stage one. They include forage corn, hymenachne, stinging nettle, and lettuce which have 25 minerals.
Several small compost rows or piles have been established to trial the ideas expressed above. They include:
- A raised bed (75cm) of bagasse, old compost and wood chip growing feed stocks so that the entire plant can be harvested green. Includes roots and nodules where nutrition my be stored over winter, e.g. comfrey
- Wood chip used to aerate the pile and encourage beneficial mycelium growth
- Green manure grown in the compost pile over wet season as the main source of nitrogen
- Mixed species of plants (at least 12 plants to feed a greater diversity of soil biota resulting in healthier plants).
- Adding wood chip to improve air penetration and store oxygen so turns can be reduced
- Associative N2 fixation by growing legumes and sorghum/corn together
- Use of plant growth hormone (giberelic acid)
- Incorporation of fresh weeds
- Foliar fertilization
- Feeding micro-organisms (calcium, molasses)
- Compost feed stock selection based on a plants mineral diversity and concentration when green
- Development of a mycelium mother pile to impregnate a fungal component into pile
- Windrows to be covered to stop rain leaching minerals from row, - Living Energies by Callum Coats and Viktor Schauberger.
Comment:
“The Environment draws out the plant’s potential. Poor soil will grow poor crops. Residue’s from those crops produce poor quality compost,” from Genetics and the Manipulation of Life by Craig Holdrege
Use of synthetic fertilizers in the Sugar Industry was accepted as standard practice following the Second World War. Since then we have seen two peak oil scares, 1974 and 2007 -08, during which fertilizers prices surged upwards. CSIRO forecasts further peak oil and peak phosphate scares by around 2050 will maintain high fertilizer prices.
GGP062 seeks to prove that farmers can generate sufficient nutrient replacement on-farm with only a small percentage of supplements purchased off-farm.
Compost improves soil structure and rebuilds organic carbon which holds organic nutrients and prevents leaching of nutrient into surrounding water.
Update:
On the 1 August, 8 weeks after the bagasse plot was separated into 2 rows and turned these rows were combined into one row. Colour is black (see photo 25) and smell is earthy. Seeds of twenty-five species of plants, grain legume vegetables, vines and flowers were broadcast thickly, watered and covered with a compost cover which preserves moisture right to the surface. We have found quick germination eventuates with this cover treatment.
Nodulation on the innoculated legume seed will be observable from 10 to 21 days from germination with 20 to 30 nodules as big as pin heads being formed within 4 to 5 weeks. Nodulation may be poor in acid soils, in particular where there are low concentrations of calcium. With liquid calcium added to our water-cart when turning, strong nodulation has been observed.
Associative N2 Fixation:
Sugar cane is the crop plant species with the highest potential of associative N2 fixation – (10 cultivars of sugar cane, between 60% and 80% of nitrogen in the plants derived from bacterial rhizosphere associations. Estimates of the potential of N2 fixation in sugar cane cropping systems are in the range of more than 200 kg/ha – Boddey et al. 1991), - Mineral Nutrition of Higher Plants by Horst Marschner, pages 223 – 228.
John Ross
Author
Phone 07 49 541 289
Photo 8 : Shows where the compost is Photo 9 : Garden Plot in early stages
Photo 10 : Mushrooms following rain Photo 11 :Loofah leaves
Photo12 : Sub surface applicator (GGP044) Photo 13:Aeromaster PT 120 Compost Turner (GGP034)
Photo 14: Preparing green feed stocks Photo 15: Mixing green feed stocks
Photo 16: Incorporating wood chip Photo 17: Turning compost row
Photo 18: Should have earthy odour Photo 19: Mixing all feed stocks
Photo 20: Texture of mixed feed stocks at Photo 21: Preparing to chip forage sorghum
Day one
Photo 22: SRDC funded wood chipper Photo 23: Harvesting tomato plants for feed
stock, tomato plants contain 25 minerals
Photo 24: Chipping forage sorghum to Photo 25: Partly completed compost
Bulk up feed stocks