Compost

Admittedly, I'm crazy about compost. I've got piles going at home and here at the nursery. I'm using worm towers in my vegetable garden and I look at every scrap of yard debris as material that can be turned into nutrients for my plants! I wanted to show a couple of photos here of the compost pile I have at the nursery. You will be able to see the dramatic change in the color of the pile in just three weeks. The grass clippings are almost completely broken down and the wood chips are covered with strands of fungal hyphae. the microorganisms are doing their job! Take a look...

In the first picture, all of the materials used are still intact. In the second picture (after the pile has been turned a couple of times) the material is beginning to break down, though the grass clippings are still identifiable. In the third picture (taken today, after the pile was turned) the color is almost uniform and the grass clippings are almost completely gone now. I will continue to turn and moisten this pile until most of the material has been ingested by the millions of bacteria and fungus present in the pile.

Side note: I add compost tea to my pile. The tea is brewed for 12 hours with compost, worm castings and molasses.

In this video, you can see the heat coming off of the pile when I turn it. That's a lot of activity in the pile creating all of that heat. Stay tuned as I will post more pictures as the pile continues to break down...