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I don't read newspapers anymore. I only read the "fiction" part of the New Yorker. I don't even read the Alibi, I just do the crossword puzzle in 5 min. stints while waiting for soccer practice to end. But I read blogs. I like blogs because they can offer really good perspectives into what people, normal people, are doing, thinking, living.

There are pretty-picture blogs, how-to blogs, medicinal blogs, irate and revolutionary blogs, travel blogs. There are all kinds of blogs out there. I don’t really care what a blog is about. I like to read well written thoughts. In fact, I prefer to read well written blogs about things I don’t know; blogs about compost are generally pretty boring.

 

My current favorite is http://shawndrawn.blogspot.com. 

Shawn Turner is an artist and a swimmer (and other things, too, of course) from the Sacramento CA area. I had the good fortune to swim with him this winter in the San Francisco Bay for the 24 hour Swim Relay (https://www.facebook.com/events/250072395142618/). 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend much time with him because, well, we were all swimming an insane amount (for me, anyway) in (admittedly welcomed) frigid waters.

 But I started to follow his posts and subsequently his blog after the event. Now I look forward to his bi-weekly observations. He writes about swimming with an artist’s eye; or about art from a swimmer’s perspective. But most of all he shows himself to be one of the rare people in this world that stops at various times to observe what’s occurring around him. 

What does this have to do with compost or Soilutions? A couple of things actually: in case you get bored with ill-written ramblings about something of which many of you are intimate—I offer an alternative; or, most of you have figured out that what makes this and any endeavor worthwhile is diversity.

To Age is to Learn

Just recently I took up painting again. I will often go weeks without painting a thing. But when I do finally address a canvas, I have a fervent, slap-dash style that allows me to apply color passionately without much mind to technique. This method soothes me. Painting is a way for me to make sense of the world, my world, whether the physical or the emotional. There are always big splashes of color and lots of texture from the globs of paint.  But there is no definition in my paintings.

As a youngster, a car meant freedom, freedom to move fast around my environment, and maybe expand that environment. I’m not a gearhead; my first vehicle was a stock ’66 VW bug (cherry red, by the way). But I did get speeding tickets. And I did expand my environment. Again, there was no definition in my movement, just so long as I was moving, I was happy.

When I started at Soilutions, I worked in the yard. I didn’t care what I did, just as long as it was hard and new. I wanted to unroll hoses as fast as I could. I wanted to build a pile higher than the previous guy and load a truck more efficiently. I wasn’t sure why, and I certainly didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to absorb all the new sounds, smells and textures that abounded.

Now, I notice subtleties. By noticing subtleties I am beginning to learn.

Yesterday I changed the oil in my car.  I removed the drain plug, and the warm oil seeped onto my latex glove. I watched in awe as the first of it gushed out, splashing and spilling. The pressure decreased, the steady stream slowed to drops, then droplets. I thought each droplet represented a mile driven. While watching the last of the chocolate brown used oil drip from the drain pan, it occurred to me how things had changed. Like the oil, where I once gushed through my environment, I now drip slowly. I drip through the side roads.

At work, too, subtleties have proven very instructive. The timbre in a customer’s voice is useful in indicating their level of confidence. There is a minute olfactory difference between grass and manure. I try to notice the first cranes’ arrival.  And in doing so, I have learned to do my job to my satisfaction.

 I have grown better at what I do because I have paid attention to details. So in order for me to improve as a painter, I will need to slow down and let my brush slip slowly over the canvas. Let the brush define the subtle edge of rocks, trees and visages.

Is there such a thing as organic compost

A friend of mine wanted me to address a question she fielded one day: "Is there really such a thing as organic compost?"

There are two kinds of organic: one is biological, one is a fabricated label. The former refers to  the carbon content of a material, the latter refers to the  method and the level of chemicals used in the growing process.

In terms of the biological sense, ALL compost is organic. It is the accelerated biological process by which microbes physically break down the biologically organic aspects of a material. But, as all things are a mixture of organic compounds and inorganic compounds (water for example is inorganic---it has no carbon; a tree is made of carbon, water, nitrogen, and minerals) there are inorganic residues in all composts. In the industry, we use  a test called the "organic matter" test to determine what percentage of the finished product is organic, what percentage is inorganic (minerals, i.e., "soil"--in other words, little particles of sand silt and clay.) so for this reason, NO composts are completely organic.

Confused yet?

As for the other type of organic, the one subject to labels and laws, there are certainly many ways to achieve that level of certification. It is the same process by which you certify your tomatoes--know the origin of everything you put into it. That means verify the "organic-ness" of  the feed for the animals that contribute the manure, verify the carbon source. In extreme cases, insist that the chainsaws used to cut the tree branches use organic vegetable oils rather than petroleum based oils. There are some materials that are specifically banned in "organic" composts--biosolids mainly but also construction glues and paint.  You then have to document it and submit those documents to the certifying organization for approval.

I think the bigger question should be directed towards the quality of the compost. It is well documented that compost is an excellent bio-remediator. It is used to clean contaminated soil, it is used to increase the infiltration properties of soil, it is used to increase the bio-diversity of the topsoil layer. But that same remediation property also pertains to the materials that go into it. The  microbes present in the compost pile don't care if the carbon they are eating is a carbon from a certified organic tree or from petro-carbons (diesel fuel). If a pile is fully composted and cured and managed properly (the specifics of its ingredients were taken into account and the recipe tweaked accordingly) there will be every benefit to the soil, whether the initial ingredients were certified organic or not. By the same token, if a pile is built using only certified organic ingredients but mismanaged, not fully composted, nor cured, it could  prove temporarily detrimental to your over all project.



The decompostion of organic matter is going happen regardless of whether we want it to. Some areas of the world have the right environmental conditions to make this rapidly occur naturally. The southwest does not. Until we collectively reach a good balance of organic material in our soils, I think our time and energy should be spent correcting that imbalance. The semantics of whether it's organic can come later

Rain Ruminations

So I got a little bit of rain last night at my house. It was all the things that rain in the desert are: cooling, aromatic, tempestuous. Rain in the desert is also strengthening, alleviating, and magical. Rain has some effect on us that opens the creative spirit. Of all the things rain in the desert may be, substantial it is not.

 I awoke thinking how unbelievable it is to me how many calls I get this time of year from people putting in lawns. I appreciate a small lawn for the kids to play on, or even one to create a comfortable place to entertain. But the calls I get aren’t for these types of lawns; a small lawn doesn’t cover 2500 square feet. I almost always bite my tongue and walk them through what I think they should do to maximize their efforts. But sometimes I lose it. When someone calls and says that they plant a lawn “every year and it always dies”, I lose it. I don’t think I’ve ever called a customer an idiot (out loud). I‘d like to think that I’ve changed a couple of minds through conversation. I’m pretty sure that after talking (what I call) sense, a customer has hung up and called me some harsh words. 

 One definition of insanity is doing the same thing repetitively while expecting different results. Another definition might well be planting a lawn in the desert without an irrigation system installed. Or planting sod over the shallow thirsty roots of a mulberry tree. Or planting seed but not keeping the dogs or the kids off it for a year. Or sowing seed and forgetting to water it. Or planting a lawn and later blaming everything else for its failure except the fact that THERE ISN’T ENOUGH WATER HERE TO SUSTAIN A LAWN!

I then got to thinking that there are so many environmental variables in this climate, that it surprises me we aren’t all insane. Consider what it takes to grow a tomato… sun, water, soil. That’s pretty much it. In the rest of the world, we provide the tomato, and nature provides the rest. Not here. Here, we have too much sun so we have to shade our tomatoes (the nursery tag says “full sun” because they were grown in Arkansas or California or some such),  or there’s not enough sun to ward off the late May  freezes ( I used to have neighbor who swore she “had snow here on the fourth of July). There is never enough water, but when it does rain, it comes with such force as to physically damage the plant. Our soils aren’t that bad, but everybody swears it’s the source of ills. I’ve heard “crappy Albuquerque sand”, and “that really compacted sandy dirt.” So they tinker with it, adding all sorts of non-sense until the whole web of micro-biota is sent out of whack. Then the accusations start flying. 

But I digress…

My favorite word is petrachor. Look it up. I’m fairly certain it’s a real word.

Chemical vs. Biological

Last week I attended the annual Organic Farmers Conference held at the Marriott Albuquerque Pyramid. The conference offers a chance for me to see and thank the many local farmers that support us year 'round. I always feel humbled when farmers who, in my eyes, are rock stars, go out of their way to thank us and tell us how much they appreciate what we are doing. There is always plenty of good coffee and amazing snacks. This year we had fresh local organic bread with local organic fruit jams and jellies. Someone at the NMDA likes us because their placement of our table always ensures high traffic volume. And, I always strike up a fast friendship with the occupants of adjacent tables. Over the years, lots of faces come and go, but there are those steady few that, year after year, plug away, doing what they love to do and, thus doing well. If you don't think your dollar spent at the farmer's markets is appreciated, I strongly suggest that you go to the conference next year and listen to their comments. everyone is grateful for the opportunity provide the community with fresh healthy food. This year I found myself in the middle of a conversation with the director of the Rio Grande Community Farm. He is quite the experimenter; I first became involved with them when he was implementing a large scale no-till program at the farm. He is currently researching the benefits of high quality compost tea. I have known intuitively and seen anecdotally, through my professional career and personal endeavors, the benefits of compost tea and compost extract. For those that don't know, a "tea" is a living, oxygenated brew of various ingredients, while an "extract" is not living, no longer oxygenated. One is a biological product, one is a chemical product. Most gardeners and farmers are concerned with the chemical makeup of the soil. Does it have sufficient nitrogen levels, what's the pH, EC? These are chemical questions that can be chemically addressed. Not to be confused necessarily with chemicals, but rather the chemistry of the soil make up. Very important, to be sure, but not the only aspect of soil health and, I would argue, not the most important. Organic farmers are, generally, more concerned with a healthy soil ("A healthy soil grows healthy plants") then are conventional farmers, but both are constantly analyzing, adjusting, and amending the chemical content of their soil. But when you talk of compost tea, you find that there is a strong biological aspect to the health of a crop. Each plant has a coating of protective microorganisms just as every human is covered with billions of germs. Each germ is keeping other germs in check. When our germ count is out of whack, we are sick. Same is true for the plants and soils. When we address biological issues with a chemical remedy, we find ourselves exacerbating the problem. "I know an old lady who swallowed a fly..." She eventually end up swallowing a horse? and who-knows-what-else? in order to ameliorate a simple fly problem! I read in a recent New Yorker that the scientific world is starting to map germs. They are finding that the intestines of humans have very specific populations of germs. When an anti-biotic is prescribed, that balanced population is thrown into turmoil and it often takes weeks or months to recover. If we use those examples and apply them to food crops, the same holds true: a broad application of a general pesticide kills more beneficial micro-organisms than detrimental ones. Destructive micro-organisms always seem to be more opportunistic; the sudden absence of beneficial micro-organisms allows them to reproduce rapidly thus exacerbating the problem...

Harvesting Worm Compost

I was asked the other day if I had any pictures of my worm bin. After a resounding mental "DUH!", I checked my photo back log and in fact hadn't any younger than '09. So I went out yesterday and screened my worms...had to do it anyway. Here's my bin.

It is an 8 foot hole, 12" deep and lined with plywood that I scavenged from another project. I lined it with plywood so that the dirt wouldn't fall back in. You don't want dirt in your compost, any type of compost. Dirt is inorganic material and as such not subject to the processes of organic decomposition. You will want to add you compost to the soil when it is finished "cooking". Kinda like whipped cream on a cake...you don't bake the cake with the whipped cream, but rather add it to the whipped cream after you're done baking it. It makes the cream so much better but would probably ruin it if you added it too soon. Anyway, back to the bin...you'll notice I have a lid on mine. I use the lid for at least two reasons. One is to keep the dogs and the kids and the coyotes out. The other reason is that worms are photo-phobic; without the lid, the top portion of the material wouldn't get eaten. And third (okay so there are three reasons) is that the lid keeps the sun off the bin, thus reducing evaporation. And here's what the inside of my bin looks like.

If you look closely, you may notice that there is a lot of "raw" material on one side and not so much on the other. I do this to make harvesting easier. By putting a bunch of wet gooey stuff on one side, and allowing the other side to decompose and dry, there is more material that can pass more easily through the screen.

 "The screen?", you ask.

You will need a screen, a wheelbarrow, and a shovel. I don't like a screen too small, I don't see the point. So I use a square of hardware cloth that has 1/2" webbing. I only screen the compost because I am lazy on the front end--I am not too particular about contaminates that may end up in the bin;  and partly to screen out the harder to digest materials: the avocado pits, and turkey bones and whatnot. The wheelbarrow and the shovel don't need discussion, do they?

I shovel the dry material...

onto the screen..

and shake it all about...

When I am done shaking and grooving ( a good set of music on the iPod helps), I am left with the finished material...

and the stuff too big to pass through the scree.

After I sort out the trash from the other big stuff**, I put the bigger stuff back on top of the other raw feed stocks--a sort of cover on the material.

This will help it to stay moist and allow it to continue to decompose, but also will remind me to add material to the other side. As an aside benefit, it is also a good indicator of the worm activity--in the spring, when the vermi-metabolism kicks in, the level almost visibly drops from day to day. After the cover has been spread level, I am ready to start adding material to the freshly cleaned out side. In the spring, I'll do it all over again.


 **I strongly recommend experimenting with various feed stocks...who knows what you'll come up with. Some of the strangest things I've discovered is that cardboard milk containers have a very thin plastic lining on the inside. Worms eat the cardboard but leave the lining. Most cotton t-shirts aren't--there is always a significant percentage of inorganic fabric. Toothpaste boxes (not the tubes, but rather the cardboard packaging) are really not so much cardboard. And those little stickers on organic fruit--the ones that say "organic fruit"-- aren't. I love pulling out countless plastic "windows" left over from junk mail envelopes. Eggshells don't decompose.

Another Home Project Using Recycled and Found Objects

Here’s another project finished!




This is a fence panel that blew down before Thanksgiving. As always, it took longer than I had anticipated; I needed to find some posts, waterproof them, and set them. Then I had to design the whole thing according to the materials on hand, taking into account the deficiencies and inadequacies and quirkiness of those materials. During the period when the whole thing was tossed akimbo on my lawn, several people commented on how nice it was to have it opened to the other parts of my yard. I got comments like “I didn’t know that whole back area was so pretty”, and “You’d better not close off the energy flow.” Who says I don’t listen.

So, with a found gate and re-apportioned hardware, portions of the old fence, a stout beam too short for anything structural, some telephone wire ceramic resistors, a box of screws (new), and about 10 Mondays (maybe 8 actual hours of labor), I present to you my new Chinese New Year, Feng shui-kosher gate to the outside world.

Customer's Garden

Here are a couple of pictures of one of our customer's yard. He writes "Basically, our story is that in 2005 the yard was gravel and weeds. Prior tenants had used the yard for auto repairs and parking. With pecan hulls, plants and seed from the nursery, and a whole lot of love, we have transformed the yard into a lush green space. And this year we began irrigating through the acequia, and it's just exploded."

Congratulations on a beautiful oasis.








I love it.

Persistent Herbicide

I am pretty sure that not many of you follow national compost news as closely as we do.

Recently, the big news has been the introduction of a persistent herbicide by DuPont. Imprelis (also Milestone and Forefront) contains a broad leaf herbicide, aminocyclopyrachlor, designed to withstand "wear and tear", as it were, and remain active for up to a year. This means that when sprayed on a lawn to end growth of broad leaf weeds such as dandelions, the active ingredient remains active, even after being composted, for up to a year or more. Most herbicides available to certified applicators and all those available to the general public are broken down by the microbial action that occurs during the commercial composting process. For this reason, Soilutions has never been worried about what chemicals our tipping customers use on the greenwaste we receive at our recycling facility. (10 years ago, Dow Chemical introduced a persistent herbicide containing the active ingredient clopyrlid. The US Composting Council, and several states quickly joined forces to demand that Dow remove it from circulation.)

After a story by the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/science/earth/15herbicide.html?pagewanted=all) told of 1000's of people in the northeast experiencing die-back or death of certain conifers resulting from "misuse" of Imprelis, we began to followed the story more closely in the trade magazines. Because of the location of the events, and the fact that most use was on golf courses or municipal parks, greenwaste generators of which we don't see much, we were still not worried about it. Then a customer came to us claiming that he planted tomatoes in our soil and they were showing signs of herbicide distress, according to his nurseryman. (Never mind that the soil he bought this year was made two years ago before Imprelis was even on the market, nor that the other 1000 cubic yards of topsoil was getting its usual rave reviews.) The idea that there was toxic soil being sold in the area was becoming a stronger one and that would not do anybody in the business any good.

I called all the nurseries, shopped at the big box stores, checked all the labels of all the available herbicides and found not one contained the active ingredient of Imprelis. Our friends at Plant World, Inc even promised that if they were given the opportunity to carry it, they would decline. Then I called a chemical fertilizer manufacturer in Albuquerque. They do carry Milestone, but that turns out to be an insecticide and it is costly ($500+/gal), too costly to be widely used by our customers. Even they had not yet heard of Imprelis.

So this all happened in July and August. Just as I was writing the draft for this article, DuPont issued a "voluntary recall" of Imprelis and set up a website (http://www2.dupont.com/Professional_Products/en_US/Products_and_Services/Imprelis/index.html) to assist those affected by its misuse. I was skeptical that they would cop to any wrong doing. It is registered with the EPA (http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/imprelis.html) and there are specific restrictions concerning its use on page 9 (or some such)of the warning label booklet (who reads those things anyway?).

Just the next week, while browsing a discarded New York Times I noticed an article claiming that the EPA had banned the sale and use of Imprelis (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/e-p-a-halts-sale-of-suspected-tree-killer/?scp=1&sq=imprelis&st=cse). Score one for the EPA, the USCC,BioCycle and all the others that put pressure on the chemical giant.

Compost Innovations

In my travels this week-end, I had opportunity to repeat the phrase, "We were so early, we were late" several times. In the New Mexico solid waste management business, it is more appropriate to say "We are so far behind, we are leading the way."

At Soilutions, as strange as it may sound, we have to invent every means of production. At first, fifteen years ago, those innovations came fast and furious. But over the years, we got in a routine, got comfortable, got efficient.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am happy to announce that today we had a MAJOR break-through in the process of compost production.

Check it out.



When I see creativity and innovation of this magnitude, it makes me proud to work here.

Vermicultural Mycology

This morning, in a rush to get the kids up and ready for the day, coffee drunk, breakfast made, and house organized for the early morning guests (long story), I decided to take the kitchen waste from the last couple of days to the worms. The import of this is not that I recycled my food waste, but rather that I decided that it NEEDED to be done this morning. I could have and maybe should have taken the five minutes it usually takes to feed the worms to sweep the floor of dog hair, or to return the "camping" gear from last night's sleep over from the living room to the bedroom. I could have paid a couple of bills, scrubbed the toilet, picked up dog poop, shaved, loaded the washing machine, or ... you get the picture. But this morning I decided to reward myself with an early morning jaunt to the worm bin. (Without getting into details, the last couple of weeks have rewarded me fairly obviously when I have made seemingly selfish or pleasurable decisions rather than the responsible or logical ones.) So I gambled with being late and falling behind, with missing that first moment of sleepy innocence (which is getting more and more fleeting) when my boys arise, and took the containers to the worm bin.

As I said, I have recently been rewarded with my rash decisions. This morning was no different. Check out what greeted me when I lifted the lid...







I, as usual, have no idea what I am looking at here, but it is so darn beautiful that I don't really care.

I am often asked about things in a worm bin that aren't worms: rolly-pollys, flies, ants, mice, etc. My response is always "those macro creatures are just participating in the decomposition process. If they don't bother you, they shouldn't bother you." Mushrooms fall into the same category. Mushrooms and other fungi breakdown the "harder" woody material in your bin, i.e., wood, paper, and in this case, corn cobs.

So I snapped a couple of pictures, carefully dumped the kitchen waste away from the mushrooms, closed the lid, and recognized the fleeting beauty just offered to me.

Happy composting.

Farmer's Market

Just a couple of photos of last week's Farmers Market.

Our waste collection station


Our fearless leader: Ski


Look for these signs at future events

This next week, we will have for sale bags of vermicompost and bottles of liquid compost extract as well as bags of our Premium Compost. If nothing else, stop by to check out our tumblers.