As a new gardener I found UA-cam both a blessing and a curse. Do this! Don't do that! You are a blessing because you cut through the noise, make gardening simple and give me the gardening joy I had expected it to be.
Great info. I have a big pile of whatever I find in the garden. Heck you can even put hair from haircuts into the pile. Chuck it in the pile. I only dig into it and bury kitchen scraps into the compost pile from small bin I have in the kitchen. I don’t turn it, the worms/fat grubs in the pile do all the work. I have a small drip sprayer above the pile that waters my pile every few days. If I dig into the pile with my hand, I get a lot of earthworms/grubs/earthworm cocoons with every handful. I get some fat seedlings that grow in there too which I plant up elsewhere. Free plants every year. I just strain the compost with a metal screen I need to use it. The only hard part is getting enough bioactive mass in the beginning to start it. After that you just chuck organic matter into it.
I compost everything. One inch spread in august and peas and oats planted as a cover. They die each winter. I plant transplants in these beds. they do great. Thanks much for this video Dr. Pavlis.
Thank you thank you thank you. People are all concerned about what they have to do to “begin” composting. I tell people “start a pile” and if you think about it, water it if it’s dry. If you don’t water it, no big deal.. if you give it ideal situations t will compost faster. What’s wrong with slow compost? Just start… if you don’t mind a messy look, leave the stuff there.
So sensible and helpful, thank you! None of my experience contradicts anything I've heard here. If I were to add one lesson learned, it would be that composting is much slower and produces much less product than we expect at the outset.
Thanks- good video. I used to periodically turn my largish compost pile until I realized the pile tends to be inhabited by creatures I value in the garden- garter snake family in summer and toads hibernating in winter so now I more or less leave it alone and just scrape off top third or so into new pile when I judge bottom is ready.
Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham mentions evidence for most animals preferring cooked food, since it's easier to digest and takes less energy to extract nutrients. Still not a reason not to compost it, but thought you'd be interested. Great book.
This is the first time I have heard to keep paper out of the compost pile. Also it never occurred to me paper had no nutritive value. I shred my non-glossy junk mail and use it as a brown. It shreds very fine. When ( I at least thought) my compost is finished, there are no paper shreds, tea bags or anything else. I can’t tell the difference between my compost and my clay soil. It does have tons of pill bug families though. This is confusing.
I have a large, three bin composting setup. Each bin is 5x5x5. One bin is for "finished" compost that cures over time. One bin is actively composting, my hot pile. The last bin gets filled over the year with rough material, which will get layered with grass clippings and leaves I mow up with a towed lawn vacuum. I compost everything; the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, table scraps, weeds, grass and leaves, etc. I have a One year cycle for each bin and rotate the material through the bins. I screen the almost finished compost with the fines going in the curing bin and the larger stuff going back into the new, active bin.
I have tried vitually every one of these myths, and each and every time, PROVEN how right you are, Mr. Pavlis. I have also read your book on conposting and highly recommend it! I am still reading "Olant Science" and then onto the "Science of Microbes.""
When the city started to collect organic waste separately I got a new bin, a little bucket for the kitchen an roll of bags of this "bio-plastic" for free. Of course they never got anything from me, but I gladly use(d) the stuff for my own purposes. Karma is a bitch: I was picking pieces of these damn bags out of my own compost for three years...
The reason to not attract rats to a compost pile is to not feed them or provide a nesting box. Rats are a health concern in urban centres and are impacting businesses as their populations increase, which has happened since some poisons have been banned to protect wildlife. Building a rat proof bin or not attracting them to your bin is the responsible thing to do.
FWIW I run citrus , onions & garlic through the mincer before composting and that causes them to break down substantially faster as there is a much higher ratio of surface area to volume . People forget that bacteria are tiny and to a bacteria a full thickness citrus peel is like you sitting at a 100' long banquet table laden with food & being told to eat the lot . You can do it but it might take a few years .
3 years ago, a racoon got runover in front of my house. It stood there for 2-3 days. The town never picked it up. So I dragged it to my compost pile and buried it in the compost. Within 3 weeks, it was completely gone. When I went to turn the pile, I was expecting some parts to still be there. It was completely gone, bone and all. No sign, no trace of it. I thought maybe some animal dug it up. Nope. The pile looked undisturbed.
A bird fell on my yard last year. I dug it in the compost and it disappeared in 3 days as well. Some might say that they're afraid of pathogens and such from such animals, but after composting in the pile for a year I doubt there's anything there anymore.
These critters you all are talking about are actually decomposing. In this day and age everything is named composting but it’s actually not the same thing. When we die we decompose. When we compost, we control through heat a specific compound
From my own experience I’ve discovered “compostable” plastic doesn’t decompose, even in a hot pile! However one of my kids cotton tee shirts decomposed down to nothing except the label in a semi hot compost pile in about 3 months!!!
I also compost clothes but I find these days even 100 percent cotton is stitched with polyester,so I cut out the seams. Wool, silk, linen, fur, all just fine. Happy gardening!
I find flipping a cold compost pile on a regular basis will kill weed seeds or simply drop them into the dirt below. Seeds will germinate and then get smothered on a flip. I do give blackberry vines the sun drying experience. They just take a long time to dry out if just inside of a pile.
I knew an old women who pre-washed literally everything in the kitchen in a separate sink, which drained in a bucket. She not only saved soap and hot water, because the dishes were already almost clean: All the nutrients went to the compost. But was hard, to identify it as a compost, because the top layer was only worms. I never have seen a comparable amount of worms in any other compost. And I have seen a lot.
I have heard many of the same myths but I always just threw my grass clippings and fall leaves in a pile and then bury kitchen vegetable waste deep into it and it disappears fairly quickly. I have always left my spring veggie roots in the soil after harvest but I did it to see if the crop would regrow and usually it does. I use arugula, radish and basil as in between ground crops but did it for the extra yield and as trap plants for bugs so I guess I have been following your lead quite by accident but I will keep more things growing now that I know the effect. Frost will kill everything but I try to keep onions and garlic in the soil all year. Now, in spring, should I not remove weeds? I always do.
In the winter is it recommended to turn as oftern as you can, or just let the pile "cook". It seems turning will dissipate the heat. What do you think sir?
Good info, thanks. Btw, the voiceover audio on this video was quite strange...I am listening on a Samsung Galaxy phone. It's fine when you are talking, but the voiceovers were difficult to listen, I had to turn off audio...sharing in case there are some technical issues that you can resolve
Another is that buying compost at the garden center reduces Air CO2. Commercial fertilizer requires less fossil fuel in the long run. Just use what rate is required. One problem a Gardener has is the commercial is 10 to 100 times higher priced as compared to what a farmer pays. He is buying by the semi load. Another is a farmer is usually just using what is needed where a gardener is using the shotgun application approach.
If you chop and drop or chop and compost, which loses more in gas. How do you apply compost to the soil and at what stage to minimise losses from gas and not turn anaerobic in winter. Is it better to apply to the suface and grow large rooted plants in it, to get the material into the soil, or just mix it it, when harvesting root vegetables
Hi sir! I was wondering if you have any videos about indoor growing in tents? I have a 4x8 tent and would love to use it to grow in grow bags or bacs! Thank you! Great content!
These days the ink is soy based, probably not organic, probably genetically modified. It never goes into the my compost, but occasionally, rarely I use it as fire starter and the ashes go in. But hey we can’t get away from every little thing. I eat organic vegetables, but lots of folk don’t and they compost scraps, this is never talked about. Happy peaceful gardening!
You seem to have confused decomposition with composting. By your definition of composting, the word decomposing has become redundant. The popular gardening culture has hijacked the word "compost" and rendered it almost meaningless. Composting is a controlled decomposition process usually intendended to reduce pathogens and weeds while minimizing nutrient loss (sometimes including energy losses from the substrate). Most of what is now described as composting results in high losses of nitrogen, sulphur, available energy and the more mobile cations. It is easy to compost when what you mean by compost is to pile up organic matter and let it rot. It is a little bit harder if your goal is to reduce pathogens and weeds, to burn off some of the readily available carbon without losing the benefits of producing a high energy amendment, and without losing too much of the nitrogen contained in the raw material. I guess real composters need a new term like "controlled decomposition" as they have lost their original somewhat technical term. Not too surprising in an age where "literally" now means figuratively and so on.
What is Bio Complete Compost pioneered by Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web School? Can it be made at home? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
It's a very specific recipe and method, and the relevant microscopy skills are required to acertain the mkcrobiological biomass, this idiot has no learned understanding of the soil food web
Oh wow. I do put my onions and cutrusbut not milk or dairy.i have used some paper when i first started but not weeds.i give weeds to my chickens and meat and dairy goes to chickens or dogs
Some of the myths arose from vermicomposting. Worms don´t like some stuff…sooooooo….I gave away my vermicomposter and moved the worms into compost heaps. Now everybody is much happier.
@@anncoombs6787 cool, slow composting works fine. I solarise small amounts of compost as needed to sterilize seed mix. The worms are very happy. Hot composting is for people in a hurry.
As a new gardener I found UA-cam both a blessing and a curse. Do this! Don't do that! You are a blessing because you cut through the noise, make gardening simple and give me the gardening joy I had expected it to be.
Exactly, I hear this stuff all the time it drives me nuts. Nature has been doing it all forever.
Great info. I have a big pile of whatever I find in the garden. Heck you can even put hair from haircuts into the pile. Chuck it in the pile. I only dig into it and bury kitchen scraps into the compost pile from small bin I have in the kitchen. I don’t turn it, the worms/fat grubs in the pile do all the work. I have a small drip sprayer above the pile that waters my pile every few days. If I dig into the pile with my hand, I get a lot of earthworms/grubs/earthworm cocoons with every handful. I get some fat seedlings that grow in there too which I plant up elsewhere. Free plants every year. I just strain the compost with a metal screen I need to use it. The only hard part is getting enough bioactive mass in the beginning to start it. After that you just chuck organic matter into it.
I compost everything. One inch spread in august and peas and oats planted as a cover. They die each winter. I plant transplants in these beds. they do great. Thanks much for this video Dr. Pavlis.
Thank you thank you thank you. People are all concerned about what they have to do to “begin” composting. I tell people “start a pile” and if you think about it, water it if it’s dry. If you don’t water it, no big deal.. if you give it ideal situations t will compost faster. What’s wrong with slow compost? Just start… if you don’t mind a messy look, leave the stuff there.
So sensible and helpful, thank you! None of my experience contradicts anything I've heard here. If I were to add one lesson learned, it would be that composting is much slower and produces much less product than we expect at the outset.
I have watched sooo many composting videos on UA-cam but yours wins the prize for clarity and has greatly alleviated my compost anxiety 😁
I love when seeds come up in my bin...free plants! I dig them up and replant in my greenhouse
Exactly= Nature knows exactly how to on its own
Thanks- good video. I used to periodically turn my largish compost pile until I realized the pile tends to be inhabited by creatures I value in the garden- garter snake family in summer and toads hibernating in winter so now I more or less leave it alone and just scrape off top third or so into new pile when I judge bottom is ready.
Thank you for this wonderful video about composting myths. I compost my way. It may not be what others dictate, but I still get excellent compost.
Basically i keep doing what ihave been doing. THANK YOU!!!!❤
Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham mentions evidence for most animals preferring cooked food, since it's easier to digest and takes less energy to extract nutrients.
Still not a reason not to compost it, but thought you'd be interested. Great book.
This is the first time I have heard to keep paper out of the compost pile. Also it never occurred to me paper had no nutritive value. I shred my non-glossy junk mail and use it as a brown. It shreds very fine. When ( I at least thought) my compost is finished, there are no paper shreds, tea bags or anything else. I can’t tell the difference between my compost and my clay soil. It does have tons of pill bug families though. This is confusing.
I have a large, three bin composting setup. Each bin is 5x5x5. One bin is for "finished" compost that cures over time. One bin is actively composting, my hot pile. The last bin gets filled over the year with rough material, which will get layered with grass clippings and leaves I mow up with a towed lawn vacuum. I compost everything; the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, table scraps, weeds, grass and leaves, etc. I have a One year cycle for each bin and rotate the material through the bins. I screen the almost finished compost with the fines going in the curing bin and the larger stuff going back into the new, active bin.
I have tried vitually every one of these myths, and each and every time, PROVEN how right you are, Mr. Pavlis. I have also read your book on conposting and highly recommend it! I am still reading "Olant Science" and then onto the "Science of Microbes.""
When the city started to collect organic waste separately I got a new bin, a little bucket for the kitchen an roll of bags of this "bio-plastic" for free.
Of course they never got anything from me, but I gladly use(d) the stuff for my own purposes.
Karma is a bitch: I was picking pieces of these damn bags out of my own compost for three years...
Paper and cardboard are perfect for vermicompost. It soaks up the juices and prevents smells.
thank you
Perfect info
Excellent information. Thanks so much.
The reason to not attract rats to a compost pile is to not feed them or provide a nesting box. Rats are a health concern in urban centres and are impacting businesses as their populations increase, which has happened since some poisons have been banned to protect wildlife. Building a rat proof bin or not attracting them to your bin is the responsible thing to do.
i use grass clippings in soil mix for many years to plant seeds it works very good for me and i dont buy soil mixes
FWIW I run citrus , onions & garlic through the mincer before composting and that causes them to break down substantially faster as there is a much higher ratio of surface area to volume .
People forget that bacteria are tiny and to a bacteria a full thickness citrus peel is like you sitting at a 100' long banquet table laden with food & being told to eat the lot .
You can do it but it might take a few years .
Great video, such common sense wisdom.
3 years ago, a racoon got runover in front of my house. It stood there for 2-3 days. The town never picked it up. So I dragged it to my compost pile and buried it in the compost. Within 3 weeks, it was completely gone. When I went to turn the pile, I was expecting some parts to still be there. It was completely gone, bone and all. No sign, no trace of it. I thought maybe some animal dug it up. Nope. The pile looked undisturbed.
A bird fell on my yard last year. I dug it in the compost and it disappeared in 3 days as well. Some might say that they're afraid of pathogens and such from such animals, but after composting in the pile for a year I doubt there's anything there anymore.
That's gross lol
A guy I watch buried a dead kangaroo under his banana tree. Helped the tree tremendously. Why waste. Some people are even treated this way by choice!
Bones dont compost within a year. It takes many many years. I regulary compost aninals. If the bones are missing some animal took rhe carcass.
These critters you all are talking about are actually decomposing. In this day and age everything is named composting but it’s actually not the same thing. When we die we decompose. When we compost, we control through heat a specific compound
Excellent!
From my own experience I’ve discovered “compostable” plastic doesn’t decompose, even in a hot pile!
However one of my kids cotton tee shirts decomposed down to nothing except the label in a semi hot compost pile in about 3 months!!!
I also compost clothes but I find these days even 100 percent cotton is stitched with polyester,so I cut out the seams. Wool, silk, linen, fur, all just fine. Happy gardening!
You said "3 x 3 x 3 x 3"
Fourth dimension composting must be awesome
I find flipping a cold compost pile on a regular basis will kill weed seeds or simply drop them into the dirt below. Seeds will germinate and then get smothered on a flip.
I do give blackberry vines the sun drying experience. They just take a long time to dry out if just inside of a pile.
I knew an old women who pre-washed literally everything in the kitchen in a separate sink, which drained in a bucket.
She not only saved soap and hot water, because the dishes were already almost clean: All the nutrients went to the compost.
But was hard, to identify it as a compost, because the top layer was only worms.
I never have seen a comparable amount of worms in any other compost. And I have seen a lot.
I compost everything in 4ft cube bays- if it was once alive and it rots chuck it on and eventually when it goes cold the worms move in and do the rest
Wonderful
I have heard many of the same myths but I always just threw my grass clippings and fall leaves in a pile and then bury kitchen vegetable waste deep into it and it disappears fairly quickly. I have always left my spring veggie roots in the soil after harvest but I did it to see if the crop would regrow and usually it does. I use arugula, radish and basil as in between ground crops but did it for the extra yield and as trap plants for bugs so I guess I have been following your lead quite by accident but I will keep more things growing now that I know the effect. Frost will kill everything but I try to keep onions and garlic in the soil all year. Now, in spring, should I not remove weeds? I always do.
In the winter is it recommended to turn as oftern as you can, or just let the pile "cook". It seems turning will dissipate the heat. What do you think sir?
Good info, thanks. Btw, the voiceover audio on this video was quite strange...I am listening on a Samsung Galaxy phone. It's fine when you are talking, but the voiceovers were difficult to listen, I had to turn off audio...sharing in case there are some technical issues that you can resolve
Thank you for this! I love me some FACTS 👍
10:16 my teas are all made from things i forage, so I throw all the dregs into the pile
Another is that buying compost at the garden center reduces Air CO2. Commercial fertilizer requires less fossil fuel in the long run. Just use what rate is required. One problem a Gardener has is the commercial is 10 to 100 times higher priced as compared to what a farmer pays. He is buying by the semi load. Another is a farmer is usually just using what is needed where a gardener is using the shotgun application approach.
Amen
If you chop and drop or chop and compost, which loses more in gas. How do you apply compost to the soil and at what stage to minimise losses from gas and not turn anaerobic in winter. Is it better to apply to the suface and grow large rooted plants in it, to get the material into the soil, or just mix it it, when harvesting root vegetables
Use question marks if you expect answers !!!
Hi sir! I was wondering if you have any videos about indoor growing in tents? I have a 4x8 tent and would love to use it to grow in grow bags or bacs! Thank you! Great content!
Thanks!!!
7:52 Paper is used by earthworms to breed, but avoid newspapers bc of ink. (edit: science says it's safe to use newspaper)
These days the ink is soy based, probably not organic, probably genetically modified. It never goes into the my compost, but occasionally, rarely I use it as fire starter and the ashes go in. But hey we can’t get away from every little thing. I eat organic vegetables, but lots of folk don’t and they compost scraps, this is never talked about. Happy peaceful gardening!
What do think about worm castings?
You seem to have confused decomposition with composting. By your definition of composting, the word decomposing has become redundant. The popular gardening culture has hijacked the word "compost" and rendered it almost meaningless. Composting is a controlled decomposition process usually intendended to reduce pathogens and weeds while minimizing nutrient loss (sometimes including energy losses from the substrate). Most of what is now described as composting results in high losses of nitrogen, sulphur, available energy and the more mobile cations. It is easy to compost when what you mean by compost is to pile up organic matter and let it rot. It is a little bit harder if your goal is to reduce pathogens and weeds, to burn off some of the readily available carbon without losing the benefits of producing a high energy amendment, and without losing too much of the nitrogen contained in the raw material. I guess real composters need a new term like "controlled decomposition" as they have lost their original somewhat technical term. Not too surprising in an age where "literally" now means figuratively and so on.
What about oak leaves? I hear they dont deconpose as fast
Good content but a good tip is to listen to it at 1.5 playback speed
Can you compost weeds?
I thought the problem with cooked food was the salt? Especially since I live in a salty area as it is?
What does anyone think about composting non organic food scraps, those chemicals must build up in your gardens?
Gardening might have more myths than any other subject.
What is Bio Complete Compost pioneered by Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web School? Can it be made at home? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
It's a very specific recipe and method, and the relevant microscopy skills are required to acertain the mkcrobiological biomass, this idiot has no learned understanding of the soil food web
New to gardening?
Watch this video- save lots of money.
Will adding sugar brings ants to your garden?
Oh wow. I do put my onions and cutrusbut not milk or dairy.i have used some paper when i first started but not weeds.i give weeds to my chickens and meat and dairy goes to chickens or dogs
You can compost anything that is organic
Some of the myths arose from vermicomposting. Worms don´t like some stuff…sooooooo….I gave away my vermicomposter and moved the worms into compost heaps. Now everybody is much happier.
Real composting heaps get too hot for worms. They can't be that happy.
@@anncoombs6787 cool, slow composting works fine. I solarise small amounts of compost as needed to sterilize seed mix. The worms are very happy. Hot composting is for people in a hurry.
Compostable plastic is such a scam. I tried composting it and burying it in soil as an experiment. Plastic was still there after a year.
YT messing with me? Audio drop at ua-cam.com/video/crVYJPbvJ5c/v-deo.html
Aloe Vera plants in a Pot will be 10 times healthier if you put woodchips in the bottom of the Pot, no nitrogen robbing taking place.
I get So tired of hearing woodchips Rob Nitrogen, Woodchips will grow food all by themselves with a little bit of Water.
You like earthworms castings?
For some reason the sound cuts off and on after a couple minutes.
wtf moldy bread can be harmful to dogs?
sounds like nonsense.
My Dog always ate chicken bones faster than I could eat the meat off.
Serial killers 😂 and their compost piles 💀
Will adding sugar brings ants to your garden?