Johnson Su Composting Process

I had collected some images from our Johnson Su composting process.  We set up this system 2 years ago now.   This process is not good for creating yards of compost, it was more of an experiment for us and I used the finished compost in our nursery to introduce biology to the mix.

This system is a pile that you don't need to turn, and uses worms as the finishing agent.  To get air to the pile, as you'll see in the images, you form vertical air channels with pipes.  The idea is no compost in the reactor is further than 1 foot away from air.  

The container is made of 2x4 welded wire with landscape ground cloth fixed to it.  The whole thing sits off the ground on a pallet, and holes are cut in the pallet to allow air to flow up into the vertical channels.

The materials were rotted wood chips and grass clippings, mixed about 50/50.  I also added in some native soil and some nearly finished compost to help get the process going.

My daughter was on mashing duty, stirring up the materials in water to saturate them.

After she mashed the materials together, I filled the container with the pipes situated above the holes to form channels.  The challenge here was keeping the pipes in place while packing in the materials.  

After the whole thing was full, we waited a couple of days and then pulled the pipes out.  The result was formed channels through the compost.

Then we measured temperatures.  they rose to about 165 and stayed there for 3 or 4 days, then dropped back down.  When the top 6" of the pile were about 80 degrees, I added in a pound of red wiggler composting worms.

We built this in August and let it work the rest of the year and the whole next year.  I kept it watered daily with a soaker hose.

The finished compost was like the finest worm castings, almost like dust when dry.  When it is damp, it's almost a clay like material, it really broke it down.

This option is great if you don't want to do any turning and want to use your compost more to introduce biology to soil.  As far as bulk compost, this method would be more space and time intensive to build the bioreactors and let them sit for a year or more.