RSS FeedHugo Weaving Lives in My Backyard
by Joe Weaver - April 13th, 2010.Filed under: Microbiology at home. Tagged as: compost, fun.
I finished some much needed yardwork over the weekend. My compost bin is now topped off with the copious spoils of a battle with overgrown straw and overambitious blackberry vines. That’s enough mass to get the compost into the thermophilic stage; I’m looking forward to seeing it steam in the mornings.
What’s really cool is that the heat is the waste energy from microbes metabolizing my kitchen and lawn scraps. Hot compost is essentially the same as a warm toilet seat (or, less icky, a cat resting on your lap). A bug’s tiny size, and therefore tiny energy output, compared with how hot compost can get (around 60 C) gives some idea of just how many guys are living in that 1/2 cubic meter. There are billions of bugs in a handful of compost and about a hundred handfuls of compost in my bin. It’s like I’ve created an environment which generates heat using a population that is equivalent in number, albeit not in heat generation, to 50 Earth’s worth of humans. Matrix, eat your heart out.
April 14th, 2010 at 20:25
…but what do you do with all the bugs? And how do you know when the bugs are ready to do what you want to do with them in your garden? And can you have too much compost?
April 15th, 2010 at 14:13
I’ve always had less compost than I wanted, but you can mix too much in. I play loose with the ratio, but it’s about 1:1 compost to soil with some vermiculite thrown in.
When I refer to bugs, I really mean things like bacteria and fungi, so I don’t have to do anything with them. They, do, however let me know about the ‘health’ of the pile by the odor they give off. If it smells like ammonia or rotten eggs, something has gone wrong. It should have a clean, earthy scent.