Good luck and enjoy presenting! If you are willing and allowed to, could you share your full slidedeck afterwards? Or at the odd chance of it being recorded, please share the video!
Really cool that you are doing this for your local community =)
Nice pile there! I’m guessing this Composting Day is a (US) national thing? A quick search shows ‘Learn About Composting Day’, is that the one?
Please tell us more. Over here (Netherlands) we do have a ‘national compost day’ in March, where you can go and get compost from the municipality. Great initiative, though the quality of compost is questionable as it’s the end product of whatever the municipality collected in the green bins over the year. And people put in, well, everything. So, it is definitely not a ‘Learn About’ day, while we could use that for sure over here in my experience.
Sounds good to me. I wouldn’t sweat it and just give it more time. You have a somewhat decent balance of greens and browns? Not trying to compost a humongous amount of orange peels?
Just to be sure, your pile is directly on the actual soil? Second, how are the moisture levels? In my pile, I noticed an increase in worms when I things were wetter than they were before. Depending on your setup that might be tricky to control. But moreover, time. In the first months I hardly spotted any worms in my pile. After say two years, there are plenty. Never added them myself, they just found the party.
So, the words I definitely didn’t remember while in bed too late at night: Tremorgenic mycotoxins. Please note that I am in no way an expert in any of this, but as a fellow dog-owner I got very cautious when I read about someone actually losing a dog which ate from a compost pile. I found a source (link below) which highlights a few points, amongst this one that might be important:
"Mold growth, particularly Penicillium mold, and production of mycotoxins in food (walnuts, dairy products, pasta), animal feed, or food waste (compost) can result in tremorgenic toxin production. "
My compost pile definitely contains some of the above, but a pure garden waste based pile might not.
Another point worth highlighting as ‘vomiting’ is mentioned in this thread:
"After ingestion, the onset of clinical signs can occur in a few hours. Toxins ingested in lower concentrations appear to cause fine muscle tremors lasting for hours to days, whereas large tremorgenic toxin ingestions can cause seizures and death. Vomiting can be the first clinical sign and may help limit the severity of the intoxication. "
I suppose the size of the dog and the amount they ate from a pile all come into play here. Again, I am by no means an expert on any of this, just a (overly?) concerned dog owner. Please correct me if I’m wrong on any of this, and enlighten us all. If we promote composting in this community, and there is any danger to any member of your household whatsoever, I feel we should inform people and err on the side of caution.
https://www.msdvetmanual.com/toxicology/mycotoxicoses/tremorgenic-neuromycotoxicosis-in-dogs
Please watch out, there supposedly can be very toxic things in a heap in certain stages of the composting process. I’ll try to find out proper info and sources when it’s not hours after bed time but please watch out.
While I don’t have hands-on experience with such a cold climate, two things popped in my head. First, maybe you are better off with one big pile. More volume means the heap will be able to keep higher temperatures. The snow on the cover might actually be a very good insulator as well. Second, and this might be the number-nerd in me, but I’d actually track the temperature with a compost thermometer. I guess you won’t be turning the pile often, and for sure not in winter when it’s covered in snow, but that way you can keep track of what your pile is doing.
I hope someone has better, actual practical tips for you, but keep us updated on this one!
Good question. I have no clue how much content/traffic we would get on such a topic. We could do c/Trees but maybe c/Arboriculture is more accurate?
Let me have a look at which communities are already there now, maybe something fits.
Please consider making a dedicated post for that (or any other similar) video if you find it, sounds like it deserves its own place and that way more people might find it.
Managed to find a copy of Sprout Lands, and reading the synopsis I see ‘living hedge’ mentioned. In season 2 of Clarkson’s Farm (Jeremy Clarkson trying to run a farm) there’s a match organized where folks make traditional living hedges, something I had never heard of but found fascinating. So thanks for this recommendation, sounds right up my alley.
I had to lookup ‘coppice’ and ‘pollard’, didn’t expect to learn something new within the first five posts on this community. If you know of any nice introduction video on the topic, please post it to the sub.
I’m currently doing a three-bin system for the kitchen scraps and yard waste (with some added horse manure to get things going whenever I fill up a new bin). That one actually gives me some amount of compost I use in said yard again.
Three months ago I also started a wannebe-Johnson-Su like bioreactor, so a cylinder shaped pile of shredded leafs and wood chips. It’s only 80~90cm in diameter and roughly 1m high so nowhere close to the actual Johnson-Su design, but it’s what I could make with the leafs/wood and the materials I had lying around.
Lastly I’ve got a very small vermicomposting setup, a bucket with the bottom cut out and some thick wire going back and forth for the bottom. This is more of a small scale continuous flow setup, which I have not harvested yet. Not too sure whether this thing is gonna work out, to be honest.
Bookmarked, gonna need to find some to time properly check this out, thanks for sharing!