The Four Types of Compost (and how they're used) | Kentucky Composting Conference

Hey nerds, Farmer Jesse here. Sorry it's dark and 20 degrees outside or I would do this intro outdoors, but I have a little bit of a bonus video for you all this week. In October, I attended the Kentucky Composting Conference and I thought I would share the talk I gave there on how growers use compost and the four types of compost. So that's what today's video is going to be. It's the entire talk and it includes some conversation about forever chemicals and persistent herbicides. Notably, there was another speaker there who you will hear from a couple times from the audience named Jean Bonatal. Jean is the director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute in Soil and Crop Sciences. If you ever see that name Jean Bonatal at a conference, go see Jean speak. She's brilliant. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this talk and be on the lookout for next year's Kentucky Composting Conference. Enjoy. Well, thank you all. Thank you all for having me. It's very cool to hear all of or have all of you here hear all of your stories. When I was your age, I probably had never heard the term compost. Like it just wasn't a thing. So like for the fact that you're even aware of it or interested in it is awesome. The perspective I'm going to bring today is I'm a market gardener. That's what I do professionally and I want to bring that perspective to what we need from compost and what compost means to us as somebody who produces vegetables on an organic farm. A couple things about me. I'm the author of the Living Soil Handbook. I wrote in, it was published in 21 and we, yeah, you can go to the next one. This is my farm. It's called Rough Trap Farmstead. It is, we're certified organic. We've been that way while I've always farmed organically. Certifications like eight years or so, seven, eight years. We haven't always been on this site. We've been on several different sites. We produce mixed vegetables. So anything from lettuce to tomatoes, carrots. We do a lot of cover cropping, which is what you see here. A lot of lettuces, fennels, various things. Go to the next one. I also host a new podcast called Growers Daily. This is a daily podcast during the week that I do. It's about 20 minutes. You can go to the next one and you can find it through the No-Till Growers network. So notillgrowers.com, that's our sort of, everything is based around our idea of no-till. So we do, it's all ecological farming practices that try and reduce the amount of disturbance that we're having on the soil. You can go to the next one. Also for those of you in this room, more specifically, one of the podcasts that we produce at No-Till Growers, which is like my media company, is the composter podcast. That is based around professional composters. We have a professional composter who is interviewing other professional composters. So those are all good resources. And this isn't necessarily the question we're going to answer today. This is the question you've probably been answering all week and that you already know. The next question, you know, this is the thing, this is what it is, right? It's decomposed organic matter, rich in plant nutrients and microbes, 10 to 1 carbon rate to nitrogen ratios, generally what they consider it to be compost. And compost is the product manufactured through the controlled aerobic biological decomposition of biodegradable materials, says the composting council. That's all your basic stuff. But for us, the more important question is what is compost in our context? Like what is it on the ground level? Again, this, where we do mixed vegetables. Again, you can see sweet corn, or sorry, popcorn and sweet potatoes there. A lot of cover cropping here that's already killed down to a mulch. So getting ready to plant that, those sorts of things. Or on larger scale scenarios where you're using like a compost spreader to spread it over a large area. Oh yeah, some of these are little videos. None of them are very helpful. Sometimes I'm like, how do I leave these in here? But there you go, it's a fun video. You can go to the next one. So how is it used on our, in our particular situation? So compost can be used as a mulch. Mulches are intended to retain moisture. They are intended to keep weeds down, right? They also feed the soil. Microbes slowly break them down and release the available nutrients. So compost for us can act as a mulch. It can also act as a growing medium. So we're literally, we have enough compost on the surface that we're planting plants into that compost, and we're growing those plants to senescence, to whatever it is that we're trying to grow. So that could be broccoli, that could be, you know, everything. Anything we want to grow, we can grow it straight in compost for the most part. Compost can be an inoculant. Oh, this one's a video. This one's fun though. I don't know how well you can see that. Maybe the lights are too, but basically compost is a way of getting microbes that may not be there into the soil in a way that also brings habitat, right? Like you could take, you could get a bunch of microbes going in some water and throw them onto something, but unless there's like habitat and food for them, they're not as likely to survive. So food would be like, not just the compost itself, which is slowly decomposing, but it would also be plant roots and other microbes that are in the soil. So you want all of those things. And compost can be a fertilizer, right? Just, it has the requisite amount of nutrients, of nitrogen, of all the things you need to grow a plant. So, and it can be all, all of those all at the same time, right? A good compost, a really good compost can be, have all the microbes that you want, all the, all the beneficial fungi and bacteria, et cetera, that you want. And also have all the nutrients that you want, have the nitrogen and the available forms that you want, et cetera. And then it can also be a mulch at the same time and a growing medium. So go to the next one. Or it can notably be none of the above, right? And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the risks with buying bulk compost and using it this way. So I differentiate compost this way. This one's going to be, Thomas's finger is going to get a little bit of a workout here, so we may need some ice for him later. Compost can mean a lot of things. Not all composts are created equal. That is, or are equal in quality. And not all compost can be used the same way. They, the reason that I say that not all can be, are necessarily of the same quality or created the same way, there are different ways to create compost. So you have, like, maybe you all talked about this yesterday, or maybe you all know about it, but like static aerated systems, where the compost is just in a pile and small amounts of air are injected into the pile, and that is one sort of compost that we can use in a, on a certified organic farm. Jack, that's like a very basic explanation. Or there's like the turned piles, right? There is a big difference between those in quality and how they're made, because maybe the turned pile gets a better opportunity to kill all the pathogens, or it gets a better opportunity to kill all the weed seed. So those are, because all that stuff that's on the outside is getting moved to the inside, and it's kind of, the heat is getting more well distributed than in a static aerated pile, where it may not always. So not, so it's that, but then it's also the feedstocks that people are using. The type of, maybe it's the maneuvers they're using, or if they're using wood chips versus leaves versus paper, you know, waste or something, as their carbon source. Or it's, they're using food scraps versus manures. Those things bring in different microbes, they bring in different nutrients, they decompose in different ways. Go into the next. And so we're going to talk, for me, I often say, I give this presentation a lot to composters and to farmers. Farmers taking the idea of four different types of compost to composters is confusing, because composters have never heard this. This is how we look at compost. You can go to the next one. So like, we're just going to go, you can go through real quickly until it has all four. So there are four different types of compost to us. There are the mulching types, there are the inoculating types, there are the fertilizing types, and the nutritional types. And if you call the composter and you're like, I'd really like an inoculating type, they'd be like, we have compost. You know, they don't differentiate necessarily, but they should. Or they should at least understand how we differentiate them. So these are the four types, and we're going to kind of break these down a little bit more than I already did. Go to the next one. So for mulching compost, you can go. Mulching composts are highly carbonaceous, chunky, not heavily screened compost. They tend to be, they tend to be like compost that are made with wood chips or something like that. They have a decent amount of nitrogen involved, but maybe sometimes they're not fully decomposed, or sometimes they are fully decomposed, but they're not screened out. So you get like chunky compost, which means it's going to stay there for a while, and it's going to slowly break down. Go to the next one. And that heavy, yeah, you can go keep going. And they're made from things like hay, wood chips, straw, leaves. Go to the next one. I think, so this is a little video just to see how chunky it is. You can kind of see that when I'm like, you know, that would be something that you'd put that down pretty thick. That one was made from hay. So it would be pretty hard to spread this one, but that would be, you'd let it dry a little bit, you'd spread it, and it would be chunky. It would be hard to like sew, to like seed something into it with a seeder, right, because it's so chunky. But it would provide a good mulch. You'd put that around your tomatoes or something, and it would slowly feed the tomato plants and feed the soil, while also with holding in moisture and slowly decomposing, adding the microbes, all the things you want. Go to the next one. This, you can kind of see, maybe these lights are a little high, but the, you can see like this would be, like that's a big chunk of wood chip, right. So they're pretty chunky, these mulching composts. And so like versus a mulch, like let's say this is hay, if I want to put hay down, it's very lightly colored. One of the benefits of the mulching compost is the dark color. So in the spring, one of the things I want to do is I want to be to market first, right. Like I don't want to use a lightly colored mulch that's going to cool my soil, because I want to be at market before everybody else. So I need my soil to be warmed up a little bit. I want to be planting in March and February, whereas everybody else, especially people who till their soil, have to be planting, have to wait until it's dry, and then they can till the soil, and then they can start planting in like April and May. Whereas I want to be in as early as I can, but I can't use a lightly colored mulch, because it just, it would keep the soil cool for a really long period of time. That's the kind of, a lightly colored mulch, like a hay or a straw, is something you'd use in the summertime. But that's where the nice mulching compost comes in handy, is because it does warm the soil a little bit. It's a little bit warmer around the plants. So you can, this is a little video. So this one, like this is a heavily composted area. This is actually of a new garden. So these beds were built, like I build these beds, and then I never do anything again to them. I basically just pile all the dirt into the middle, and then I cover them with the compost mulch, and then I never have to work them again. Just depends on the situation, but that's for a different talk. And this would be, like, basically the mulch is down. I drill a hole with a little, like, avant-garde bit on a drill, and then I put our tomato plants in, and then I plant beets or something next to them. I think in this, that's not in this clip, but that's what we did here. And then, yeah, and then that's it. Like, that's all I have to do for that whole thing. So I put a thick layer of mulch down, and then I can plant kind of directly into that. And you can find information about this. It's called the Deep Compost Mulch System, or it's often called the No-Dig System. Charles Dowding is the one that kind of pioneers it, at least if you want some really easy accessibles and a really nice British accent to tell you about it. Charles is great. He does small videos, kind of smaller scale. Go to the next one. And, yeah, sorry. And it's basically, a lot of times you see just heavy layers of compost six to eight inches deep. There's also, like, a lot of times you'll see wood chips in between to mulch the pathways so you don't have to weed them, right? If you leave bare soil, you're going to get weeds. So the wood chips help. They're tough in our climate because the amount of rain we get. So I don't do a lot of wood chips in our pathways because they just wash out, but they do feed the soil. They slowly become kind of a compost on their own, right, as they decompose. You can go to the next one. Yes, but we'll talk about cardboard in a minute because I've stopped, I've moved away from cardboard because of Forever Chemicals, you know, because of the chemicals that they used to make cardboard. We used to use it as, like, we'd put down a bunch of cardboard and then we'd pile that compost over top, which I don't, I may have left a slide in here that shows you that, but basically we'd put down cardboard and then we'd pile the compost over top and then you could do that over grass. Like, it didn't matter what you were, you could just put cardboard and then put compost really thick over top and then in a few months you could plant that and you could grow whatever you wanted. But we've stopped using the cardboard. So instead, we'll do a number of different things, but it may be that we put down, there's specialized mulch papers that you can buy that don't contain those chemicals or which we don't use those either. Instead, we just kill all the grass there and then just pile the compost higher, if we're going to build it that way. Or, also, we've been working, our soil that we're on now is really heavy clay, so you really have to, it really needs some TLC before you start your gardens, otherwise you're kind of like planting into rocks. Like, it's really, or muck. It's either rock or muck. Clay is, it's indecisive. So, the, yeah, advantages of mulching with compost is it holds moisture really well. It feeds the soil slowly, right, as it decomposes. It's warmer than most mulches, like I said, and it contains the beneficial microbes that you want for your, for your both decomposition of organic matter, your fungi for the, for the plants and decomposition, and then also predators for those, for those as well. The disadvantages, it can't be incorporated a lot of the mulching. So, if you want to compost and you want to, like, work it into the soil, you don't want a mulching compost, because a lot of times, all that extra carbon will lock up the nitrogen in your soil and make it harder to grow stuff, and it's not as instant impact sometimes. So, like, if you were to use a fertilizing compost, which we'll talk about in a minute, you get that into your soil, you put a plant in, and you almost instantly see an impact from that, whereas you don't necessarily from this. In some ways, it can actually have slowing effects on your growth, if you plant it too early or if it's too dry. So, with that fertilizing compost, mulch, a thick layer of mulch, and then across the top of that? Absolutely. That's my favorite thing to do, is put down a nice fertilizing compost or nutritional compost, and then use the mulching compost literally as a mulch. That's my ideal. Now, it's kind of expensive, and not everybody has access to good compost. So, yeah, it can be warmer for sensitive crops. Like I said, we grow a lot of lettuce, and we grow a lot of lettuce in the middle of the summer. So, in the middle of the summer, it can be hard on those lettuce plants. Those roots don't love being in hot, dark soil, and it can cause some nutrient imbalances. What I like about the mulching compost is it locks up those nutrient imbalances more. I don't think I left it in here, but there was a 2023 study that talked about, it's like one of the few first deep compost mulching studies that I've seen, that actually discussed how having that extra carbon element in there helps to lock up some of those nutrients and keep them from leaching so badly. So, yeah, that's, you can go to the next one. So, yeah, that's one. Oh, maybe I did put it in here. This is the study. I don't think it, I don't think I have the details in it. Excessive nitrate limits. Basically, the literature review identified a total of 29 studies on the use of compost as mulch in agriculture. None of these studies explicitly addressed deep compost mulching. There are currently no peer-reviewed articles on this method. There's not a lot. If you go to the next slide, though, the summary results from the field measurements showed a strongly increased N surplus, so nitrogen surplus. There's a lot of extra nitrogen taken up by the crops. Nitrogen inputs from deep compost mulch can be significantly reduced by the use of carbonaceous mulches used in conjunction with the compost. So, it helps just to have a carbonaceous mulch or something like that used or having a more high carbon compost to reduce that nutrient leaching because you're putting a lot of nutrients on your soil. And if you're near a waterway or something, that could be, you could be polluting. You could be polluting. So, like for us, you know, as organic and ecological farmers, we don't want these sorts of systems to end up having a negative ecological effect. We do have to think about those things. So, trying to research them, study them, and figure out how to best work them in your system is important. Go to the next one. So, let's move on to inoculating composts. Inoculating composts are ones that are used, you can go to the next, in, you can go, I think there's like two or three. Yeah, there you go. So, they're used in very small quantities. These are primarily used to get those microbes in the soil. They aren't necessarily used like a mulch. So, vermicast is a good one. You would never be able to afford to put vermicast down like I was showing you there. Like it would, you'd go broke. It'd be amazing. You'd probably go really great cost. $700 to $1,200 a yard. And you probably need, so one of my beds, $700 to $1,200 a yard, and one of my beds requires, in the beginning, about two yards of compost. So, if you've got $2,000 for a bed of lettuce, that would be, you know, I don't even make $2,000 on a bed of lettuce. So, yeah, it would be, it would be amazing. But, so yeah, IMO through KNF. So, that sounds like gibberish, but that is indigenous microorganisms through Korean natural farming. That's like an example is where you're doing, you're doing these specific methods like KNF or like JADAM is another one. Those are really interesting ways of gathering indigenous microorganisms. Indigenous microorganisms just being organisms that are accustomed to Kentucky, that are accustomed to your area. So, that's, those are two really good ways of doing it. The Biodynamic Preps, Johnson Sue, Bioreactor stuff, those composts are really, really high nutrient, high microbe, microbial populations, but you can't make them in such bulk that you can use them like a mulch. So, that's kind of why I throw them in there, but they may even be, Johnson Sue in particular, that's something that could fit more into, you know, like a nutritional compost, like a full complete compost. Go to the next one. And, it's less about the nutrients and more about the microbes, although the nutrients are obviously involved. It is really like how do we get all these good microbes into our soil. We do a little bit of spraying of these, like compost teas and compost extracts and that sort of stuff, but my favorite thing to do with this, and I don't think, here go to the next one, see if I have the slide on it. I don't, but this is our potatoes, and basically like for our potatoes, we do a JADAM microorganism solution. So, it's like a good compost and a baked potato, and you smash the baked potato, and you put it with the compost overnight in water, and it develops this really nice, it almost smells like a really, really, I don't know, just like a lightly fermented product in the morning, and then you, what I do is I dip our, I pour it over top of our potatoes when we plant, and we have just absolutely immaculate potatoes every year, just no potato beetles or anything like that, using good compost and that good inoculating compost extract, and yeah, that's one of the ways in which we grow food without having a lot of pest issues. Yeah? I'm sorry, the baked potato, is it microwaved or I haven't tested the microwave, I don't know, you could probably do either. For me, I bake the potato, I smash it up, I put it in one bag, and then I take the compost and I smash that into some water, and I literally just let that sit overnight. You have to put it up on something, because like I found raccoons will come in and like get psyched about the baked potato, but you, yeah, you want to put it up on something so they can get, so they can't get into it, but then you just leave that overnight in like this room temperature. It's usually about 24 to 36 hours before, you'll see it, it'll start to like, it'll look different, it'll get like a viscosity to it. It'll smell almost like a really light beer or something, not that you would know, like yeah, like a really light beer or something. Yeah? Oh, do I do it for other vegetables? Yeah, so the question is, do I use that same micro-organism solution for other vegetables? Yes and no. I do for most vegetables that are kind of longer season, so like let's say I'm doing, putting my tomato transplants out, I love to have that solution around. So what I'll do, or like sweet potatoes, that's another one I'll use it with. And primarily that's just because I know exactly when I'm going to plant that so I can get it ready. A lot of times I'm planting lettuce every day and I just don't, you know, like I don't think about it or I don't have time. I would use it for everything, and one of my favorite things to do is if you have like a tray of transplants or something coming out, I take like a, yeah, I basically just like soak it in that. So I'll just take like a, like a root water, a bottom watering tray, fill that, let it sit, let the plant, like the transplants soak it up, and then take that out to the field. I am lazy and I don't want to do, like I don't want to be out there like spraying stuff. I'd rather just get it on the plant, take it out to the garden. So I do, I'd prefer to do most of that stuff in the greenhouse. So any plant that's behind those, I don't usually put that stuff on leaves, especially if stuff I'm going to eat. Like I wouldn't go out there and spray my lettuce right before I'm going to harvest it, just food safety wise. It's not smart. Yeah? Okay, so the idea of like multiple different types of compost, and so I'm curious, like, what are like, can you, can you tell me some Sure. So yeah, yeah. And in fact, we will have one more to get to, two more to get to, but the difference, so like the benefit of an inoculating compost would be like, let's say you just get a mulching compost. There's no guarantee that you're getting the quality of microbes in that compost that you would want to really have a good diverse population of microbes in your soil. So you want, you want a really high diversity of microbes in your soil. And there's lots of like nuances to this that we could get into that are like really nerdy, but the, the, the generally speaking, like you just want a bunch in the same way that you just diversity is good in all aspects. It's good in a conversation. It's good in society. It's good in all these aspects because it just gives you more strength. This same thing in the soil, you want a diversity of microbes because they're all kinds of specialists. They all do their own little different things. They release certain nutrients or they gather certain nutrients, or they are really good at eating pathogenic microbes or something like that. Like they are good at fending off the bad guys, that sort of stuff. So you want as many of those as possible because your plants, you never know what your plants are going to run into. So it's like having every tool in the toolbox by having a really diverse microbial population. Does that make sense? Yeah. Just one more question. So where did you get that? Like say the compost from a work bin, they tend to have like a really high diversity of microbes. Yeah. And stuff that you don't always get in compost, like some of the ciliates and those sorts of things that are like the swimming one. Like you don't often see that. So I think that one came out of our worm bin. A lot of those are unique to the worm bin because it's, it has these little pockets of, I don't know, some, it's heavy, it's more heavily moist, I guess would be the way to say it. It's like, yeah, it just holds its moisture better than most compost. Most compost actually doesn't hold its moisture very well when it's in that early stage or that mulchy stage. So those composts tend to gather better or a different variety of microbes. So yeah. Yeah. It's about that biodiversity. You can go to the next one. Right. There's the potatoes. Next one. And yeah, this kind of goes back to your question about what we use it on. We use it pretty much everywhere. These are shallots, lettuces, fennels, beets, all sorts of stuff there. And we'll, wherever we can, we'll use it pretty much everywhere. Go to the next one. And like I said, it's not applied like this because you would go broke. Like it just, you could not put, you know, a vermicompost down like that. Go to the next one. You know, instead they're used lightly. And foliar sprays, like I said, we'll, we'll go out and we'll spray. I like spraying things that I'm not going to eat fresh. Like I'll spray our tomato plants, but not when they have tomatoes on them. Or I'll spray our lettuce or I'll, I'll drench our lettuce when it goes out to the field, but I'm not going to spray our lettuce before I cut it because I just don't want to get anybody sick. Like food safety is really paramount. And since I'm not like, I don't have a lab that I can run everything I'm doing through that before it goes out to the field, I want to make sure nobody gets sick. In teas and extracts, I won't have time to go into like what a tea is and what an extract is here, but a tea is usually brewed right with a bubbler. And an extract is usually kind of just like you take compost and you kind of squeeze it into water and that's your extract. And it's often used with other types of compost because it's expensive. So you'd want to mix it in with your other compost. Okay. Or this is really cool. This is vermicompost extract. You can play this as a video. This was in North Dakota and this is just a no-till drill is what they call it. So they're seeding. This is like, I wish this is where all of our wheat came from, but this is their seeding wheat here. And they have this vermicompost extract. It's dripping down onto the seeds as they seed it in March. And that's Minokin farm. But that's really cool. So they don't do any tillage. They just go out with this like drill that just drills in the seeds with that, with that inoculant. So that's a really cool way of using something like this. Yep. Go to the next one. Overuse can result in nutrient excesses. So it's one of those things like you wouldn't want, it's similar to what we're going to talk about here, which would be fertilizing compost. You wouldn't want to use a ton of it anyway, generally speaking, because it doesn't have the carbon to sort of lock up those nutrients. Yeah. Similar to comp to fertilizing compost. So fertilizing compost compost is kind of a generous term here, although it is applicable. You can go to the next one. So these are highly nitrogenous, high quantities of nitrogen. And sorry, I'm going to get a drink of water real quick. Go to the next one. So that would be like, yeah, they're high nitrogen. They're applied lightly and often used with other amendments. So maybe you'd mix in your whatever soil amendments you're going to add, you'd also mix them in at the same time. And it's mostly pelleted or composted poultry or fowl manure is what I'm talking about. So like composted chicken manure. I was talking, Gene, right? I was talking to Gene earlier about a system that they have up in New York where they're basically taking chicken manure, drying it, heating it, and then using that as a or heating it and drying it and then using that as a fertilizer. That's also in this realm of what I'm considering like fertilizing compost. But it could also just be composted chicken manure that's pretty high nitrogen, but is also really rich nutritionally where you're just using it for plant growth. You're not necessarily using it for compost. You're not for mulch. You're not necessarily using it for like long term nutrient, you know, release. You're you're using it for like kind of a quick nitrogen nitrogen burst. Okay. And but it could include other high nitrogen manures as well, just depend maybe rabbit manure or something. Go ahead to the next one. All the above compost must be used strategically or you risk burning up your plant roots. So like the other thing with a high nitrogen compost, something like chicken manure, is you don't want to throw that down and then put your plants right into that because it's just it's too much ammonia. It's going to burn up your plant roots, which you probably heard. Or also there's ways of using it that just don't help you in production. Like there's always everybody will have their gardening story where they over fertilize their tomatoes because they were like a little bit of compost is great. A lot must be better. And you it will. Your tomato plants will love you, but your tomato fruit won't exist. It'll just grow these giant, beautiful, big, bushy tomato plants with no tomatoes on them because it doesn't it isn't stressed enough to think it needs to make progeny. It thinks it's in like it's reached the holy land. So yeah. So and you could also risk attracting aphids, which tend to favor plants that are that are excessively nitrogenous. And it could throw off your soil nutrition in other ways. So go to the next one. The exception is what we consider nutritional composts. And that would be like, you know, extremely well made there. You know, they seek to meet all of the plants needs. Maybe you did a soil test and your soil test came back and said, you're missing this, this, this and this. And so you actually run those those rock minerals, whatever they are, through your compost pile to sort of help make them more available. And then you put that down and that could be ready to grow whatever it is that you're missing in your soil. So go to the next one. Yeah, they're often kind of a combination of all of them, but fully mature. Oh, you can. This is a video. It's not helpful, but I but it is distracting. So that's good. Yeah, that's after coffee with rock dusts or other amendments added. The so yeah, basically, like if you wanted to, like I said, you could put down, I don't know, whatever rock dust, lime or whatever it is that your soil is really needy, run it through your compost pile. And hopefully that makes it a little bit more bioavailable, because one of the things about like we've talked about these rock dust, you'll often hear people recommending them to put them on soil. But the problem is plants can't eat rocks like they need. You know, they need the microbe to release the nutrient that's in that rock mineral before they can even access it. So basically, this is one way to help speed up that process is using your compost pile as that, you know, release mechanism for all those nutrients that are in the rock minerals. Just is that that elegant, hot ass rock dust that you're talking about? Hot ass? It could be any it could be I mean, whatever your soil, it could be there could be calcium, you know, oyster shells, it could be sulfur. Yeah, granite, basalt, any of those. Yeah, yeah, you go to any sort of quarry. It just depends on what your what your soil test actually asked for. So yeah, you can go to the next one. Raised bednecks is a great example of a basic nutritional compost that you can purchase. Because a raised bednecks is intended to have everything you need to grow a plant, right? It would be very expensive to do that on a large scale. But that's the idea, right? Is that you're trying to create a version of the raised bednecks with your compost. Because raised bednecks is what you'd make like if you wanted to have a garden at your school, for instance, you maybe do you have like four by eight beds and you fill those with something and it's usually raised bednecks because it has your nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium ratio already kind of measured out. Yep. Yeah, it would have the aeration element, it would have the compost element, maybe we contain some sort of water holding compact nutrient like or a thing like sometimes peat, but also it could be perlite or something else too. To the aeration element? Well, sand usually when you use sand and potting mixes and stuff, it's usually there for the aeration element of it. Because you don't want it in to keep it from getting too compacted. You want your soil to be able to breathe, you want it to be a healthy percent oxygen. So like you want those big particles in there so that it's not just like clay. Like clay, the thing about clay is it's very, very tiny. Sand is very big, clay is very tiny. And when you have all those tiny particles, they mass together really tight. And that's why clay is such so notoriously hard to grow in because plant roots have a hard time getting through that. So you want kind of a mix. So yeah, you can just until that. Oh, go back, I guess. So risks with purchased compost. Sorry. Would you ask for those nutritional values if you were purchasing? It depends on the composter. I mean, some of the composters that we've that we work with or know, like my friend Jane up at EarthCare Farm, they, you know, think about those things. They already are doing that testing and making sure they're trying to make it so that you can grow basically anything in this potting soil. Right. If you were making it on your own, you'd probably want to, to some extent, figure out like what is the what values are already there and what do you need to reach all the nutritional needs of the plant. Yeah, you could do that. You could really dial it in if you wanted to. Most compost have almost everything you need. It's just if you really, really wanted to dial it in, you'd take your time and do it and then make sure it's fully composted and that sort of stuff. Yeah. Risks with purchased compost. I'm not sure how I'm on that one. All right. So persistent herbicides or other chemicals. So persistent herbicides are ones that do not decompose very well in compost. There's a whole family of them, but the challenge with persistent herbicides is that if it's not, if the compost is not aged, it's not produced very well, like it's a mass produced compost, the risk of that herbicide coming from like hay or horse manure or something makes it into the compost or straw, makes it into the compost. It's kind of worked in there, but it's not fully decomposed before it gets to your garden. A lot of those could be broadleaf herbicides. They could be systemic herbicides that make it into your plants. Go to the next slide. And then you end up with this, like this is a zucchini plant. These are romaine lettuces. They look super curly and gnarled and they don't grow very well. They grow really inconsistently and that's persistent herbicide damage. This is on a friend's farm of mine. They had to move because of the amount of compost that was contaminated. Yeah, so basically that's a huge problem, right? Because if the composter's not taking care to age and properly, you know, manage their feedstocks, then they could be taking in feedstocks that could have these sorts of chemical issues. Yep. So are the composters we're buying from required to disclose their feedstocks and that sort of stuff, right? What they're using? No, not that I'm aware. I don't think they are required to. You can ask them. I think unless you say you have something specific that's in it and you're selling it, then you have to allow the Okay, yeah. So that would probably be something not to ask a composter in that sense, but from the farmer's side, we always ask like, what do you do to mitigate contamination in your feedstocks? So like we have to ask that question because we could end up with a situation like this. So if I'm, especially if I'm using a new composter, but I may just do it for old composters to make sure, because you never know when management changes or something, call them and be like, hey, I want to order compost, but I just need to know, like, are you doing anything to mitigate contamination? Are you aging it? You know, those sorts of things. Because there is a certain amount of time you age it, and if it's well composted, those things will decompose a little better. But it is, you do run the risk of this. Go to the next one. There are other risks too. I mean, poor quality, you can just get, you know, crappy compost that isn't fully decomposed when it arrives, and you know that because it's hot, right? Compost should not arrive hot. If it gets there and it's hot, it's not done. It's not compost. It's just, you know, hot. It's in the process of. And persistent herbicides and other chemicals. You know, sometimes those come from farms and farmers, but sometimes, like, you have a, you know, a well-meaning person who puts a bunch of chemicals on their yard or whatever or sprays their leaves or something and then brings that to the composter, and then it doesn't really get worked all the way through, right? So, some farmers are more conscientious of these things, and they aren't trying to, like, poison anybody. And then, you know, other people are not necessarily thinking about that. Like, they're not thinking about the end product going into making food. So, you just have to be conscious of that. And some composters are being conscious about who's bringing what, and they're making them sign, like, agreements that I will not bring you X because of the risk of contamination. So, poor quality. Not mature would be, like, if it's hot when it arrives. Weed seeds and roots, that goes with poor quality. If it's not turned enough, sometimes you'll be, like, somebody will get really excited about their composting operation, and then you'll go look at it, or you'll see pictures of it, and you'll see, like, Johnson grass, which for us is, you know, really dangerous weed, all around it. Or, like, you know, I've had compost that I put it down, and I'm like, wow, I didn't have, you know, lamb's quarters before. This is fun. So, that's how it goes, right? Like, these weed seeds can come in because it's poorly composted, and the site's not well managed. It can be too expensive sometimes to do some of these things. You can get really poor quality, but you're paying a lot of money for it. It may be worth looking at a different system to grow your food, right? PFAS, PFOS, PFOS, these, this is, like, a whole other level conversation, but you have to make sure that your composter is not using biosolids, sludge, and not using anything that's coming from, like, paper waste streams. That's another big source of PFAS. So, these are called forever chemicals, and they've been linked to all sorts of health concerns, and they're essentially, like, all of us have them in our bodies right now, on our bodies right now. They are everywhere. They are what we use for water, for keeping stuff, making stuff water resistant. They are used in, like, you know, everything from makeup, like lots of mascaras and stuff. They use them because that keeps it from running. So, yeah. Yeah, and there's, I think there's, there's only a handful that are really, really high up there on the list, but there's tons of them. Yeah, and you don't want it in your compost because it actually, like, kind of concentrates it a little bit. So, you want to avoid, you want your composter to be avoiding heavily PFAS-infected feedstocks. Go to the next one. So, yeah. So, like, it would be, so you don't want them using biosolids. You don't want them using sludge. You don't want them using, because those are two really big sources of it. You don't want them using, you know, the, the paper. What are some other ones, Jean? PFAS is kind of the term that people, or PFAS, P-F-A-S. So, it's, yeah, I mean, any sort of waste products from, like, industries, you just want to make sure it's not something, you know, all the paper ones, especially from, like, cardboard and stuff, that's a, there's a lot of that in there. Are there other big feedstocks I'm not thinking of? Our, our wastewater is, is contaminated. Yep. So, it's contaminated that that's cleaned up, and then that goes into your municipal systems. Yep. So, you actually have PFAS, most of our water supplies have PFAS. Very early emerging thing, and so we don't know much about it. Yep. And we're trying to figure it out. They think, and I don't really believe this, that they can use, like, reverse osmosis to take it out, but it doesn't break down in the short term. It can take, you know, I don't even know, we don't know how many years it can take to actually disappear. Yeah. And it may never be able to, because we create all these chemical formulas that make plastic that we use every day, and we become dependent on it, really. I mean, I can't say I'm not, but we try to use as little as we can, you know, to try to remediate that. If you're on a well, you probably have better chance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and anywhere, anywhere around anywhere that's been dumping PFAS, like bio sludge or anything in your, in your area for farms, and they use that as a fertilizer in a lot of areas, so it's pretty common. We've contaminated full farms now. There was a huge case in Maine, in the state of Maine, where every animal was so contaminated that they couldn't use it. Yeah. So it was in their milk, it was in their body fluid, everything. And we have it in us, if there's no doubt that we don't have it in us. Oh, everyone, yeah, everyone in this room has it. Do you pass through DNA? I don't know about that. That, it's, but it won't need to, because they're, they last for 20, 30 years. Q&A? Yeah. I know I had a question in the back. That's interesting. That's hard for me. I had no idea, because when I teach about backyard composting, I'm always like, I don't think I'm old enough. So do I need to maybe curtail some of that, or is it that important in backyard composting? I mean, my feeling, well, I don't know. I, obviously, like, that's something that requires research. I haven't looked at any specific research on, like, whether or not you should be using, you know, like, using your toilet paper, or whatever, like, any of your hand wipes, or that sort of stuff in there. I mean, yeah. I believe it's more of the box boards. Yeah, cardboard boxes. But I don't know that either. I'm standing right beside you, because we haven't done the testing to know where all these things are. Yeah. If something has a, any kind of slippery surface, like the inside of a pizza box, so that it doesn't leak through, then it does have some Yeah. And also, my understanding, I would like to talk to more people within the cardboard industry, because on the outside, they're like, no, we're not using a lot of these sort of things. But then you talk to people who work in the cardboard industry, and they're like, no, I have to have, I have to mix that into, like, I get comments all the time. They're like, I work in a cardboard factory, and I literally mix in water-resistant chemicals into the cardboard process. That's, like, my job. So, and that may be just for those wax containers, and those sorts of containers, but it may be for others, and I don't know. And like Gene, like, I don't want to say yes or no, because I'd just rather look at the research. Yeah, I'm not sure either. I think the reduction in, if it doesn't have wax, or it doesn't have that filmy sort of feel to it, and it doesn't have a lot of ink on it, you're probably more on the safe side, but there's just no way of knowing without testing it. Yeah. Other questions? I, I mean, I, this is also my favorite. This is ways of, of finding, you know, good compost. Ask composters how they mitigate the contamination, and then seek out the nerds. When you call somebody, and they're like, oh, let me tell you about PFAS, then you know you're in the right, you know, you know you're in the right space. Like, if you call somebody, and they're like, P what? Then you're like, okay, never mind, this is not my spot, right? Like, you want somebody who's like, geeks out with you about microbes. Yeah? Okay, so this is something I came, like, said, you're, you're a farmer that uses compost, right? Yeah. So, a question that, like, I've had that I've, like, been, like, this has been the answer, but I don't understand it, is, how does compost dissolve? Like, like, dissolved? So, yeah, it doesn't really dissolve. It sort of decomposes and turns into smaller and smaller materials, until it basically becomes a nutrient, and then it's gone. Like, so, if you're looking at, like, a, if you lay down a layer of compost on the soil, right, the microbes underneath it are slowly going to eat away at it, and turn it into, kind of, like, a rich organic matter that it will itself, over time, slowly break away, too. And you're losing moisture, the carbon is being turned into carbon dioxide and escaping into the atmosphere, the, because that's, like, in the same way that, like, when we eat a sandwich, most, not, maybe not the majority, but a lot of that sandwich just comes out in our respiration, right? CO2 is a large part of where that carbon is going, and then, so, yeah, it's being breathed out of the soil. The microbes do the same thing we do when they eat it. They, you know, they burp out the carbon dioxide, goes into the atmosphere, so that's one way, one thing that happens to it. Yeah, it's slowly decomposing into smaller, smarter, smaller particles, and it just becomes part of the soil, and then some of it just, kind of, you know, burns up into the atmosphere a little bit from sun. Some of it blows away as it gets lighter and lighter and smaller and smaller, and, yeah, I mean, you know, a variety of different things. It's not all just, like, one thing that happens. Is there anything I was missing there, Jean? Microbes work in the whole system, so it's really the microbes that are doing that, and the stuff that blows away, it's the stuff that probably is a duct part. Yeah, dehydrated. It will silt. Yeah, is that good? Oh, yeah, just look up, I mean, Instagram and YouTube are the places that we probably do the most work, so, um, at no-till growers, uh, that's mainly what I'm able to be found on. Uh, could not end that sentence without a preposition, so it's just how it goes sometimes. Um, yeah, is that it? Are we good? All right, yeah, thank you. All right, I hope you enjoyed that talk. Shout out to Keith and Thomas and everyone who put that, uh, Kentucky composting conference together. I am looking forward to the future of composting in our state, and it's very exciting. Pick up a copy of the Living Soil Handbook, uh, this holiday season, or any holiday season, really, over at no-till-growers.com. That helps to make this work and everything we do possible, or if you'd like to support our work in just in general, you can do so at patreon.com slash no-till growers. Otherwise, uh, thanks for watching. We'll see you tomorrow for Growers Daily. Bye.