Easy Way to Stretch Compost / Manure

I've been experimenting for years now with various compost and manure teas as ways to stretch fertility across a larger space and have now pretty much settled on a method that works excellently in our gardens.



I switch the inputs in the barrel as they become available. If I chop down some nitrogen-fixing tree branches, I strip off the leaves and add them. When a neighbor is running his cow through the lot behind us, I gather a bucket of fresh manure. If I have Epsom salt, I add it. And of course, urine is always a "go!"

I wouldn't use this on crops I'm going to eat from directly but it works incredibly on corn, squash, pumpkins and beans, both for foliar feeding and for feeding the soil.

When you garden over a large area it makes a lot of sense. I never have enough finished compost for anything but a small space.

Nice video! Thanks for posting this. It makes a lot of sense and I'm going to give it a try!
Do you keep the rotting veg in the 1st barrel and top up with water and vegetation, or do you 'restart' the whole thing when you've used up the liquor?
Lesley

Hi Lesley,

I often leave the last foot or so of the previous batch in the bottom of the barrel to get the next batch kick-started. That really seems to make it rot down a lot faster than when I start from scratch.

Rather like sourdough starter! That also makes sense as there'd be a fine brew of assorted microbes ready and willing to go!
Btw thank you for the many resources you make available.
Lesley

Yay - love it!

I make this too - usually with the really rank weeds that I don't want to compost, like bindweed and horsetail, but I add whatever else I have. It stinks to high heaven, but the veggies love it:)

The only thing I would suggest is to add a tap to the original barrel - makes it way easier to get the 'glop' water out of the barrel

David Goodman wrote:Hi Lesley,

I often leave the last foot or so of the previous batch in the bottom of the barrel to get the next batch kick-started. That really seems to make it rot down a lot faster than when I start from scratch.

Precisely.  This inoculates the next batch with the microbes needed to start the new batch brewing.

When I am pulling the spent glop from a barrel I spread it out on a tarp so it will mostly dry out.
Then I add it to a new compost heap, it seems to really help a heap finish out faster and the heat will kill off any pathogens that might be present.

David Good wrote:Hi Lesley,

I often leave the last foot or so of the previous batch in the bottom of the barrel to get the next batch kick-started. That really seems to make it rot down a lot faster than when I start from scratch.

I had not thought about leaving some at the bottom of the barrel as a "starter" for the next batch but you are so right. For me, it is out of dumb luck that it just turned out this way:
I have 6 of these barrels in my garden, and I harvest my comfrey and stick it in the barrel, cover with water and let brew. Next year, I'll make sure to find covers for them as the stench coming from them is ... intense!
This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes, for example. they would be wormy otherwise. and NO WEEDS in this organic garden juice.
At the bottom of each barrel, about 4" up, I have a valve and a hose. [that is how I kept some 4"of "starter"at the bottom of the barrel]. I made some raised beds and planted a rebar [at each corner of each bed] over which I slipped a small piece [10"] of 1-1/2"PVC pipe. This way, I can drag these hoses all over the garden without too much snagging. I have stopped watering overhead, which is not too good for a number of reasons. [I had noticed that the cucumbers did not like to be doused with 45 F water when they were in 90 F heat. They like same temp water and the strawberries developed spots on the leaves when watered from above].
When I'm short on comfrey, like early in the season, I place a few quarts [3-4 quarts] of well rotted compost in a painter's bag[nylon, the kind you use to filter the glump out of old paint], close it with a big rubber band [like they put around broccoli] and plop it in the barrel and cover with well water.
I always have 6 barrels pretty much full, which is lucky because in my sandbox of a garden, I would never be able to have a crop. I'm planning to do the same for my orchard next year, and I'll be able to feed my trees with something that sinks immediately in the ground. I even have earth worms, which is rare around here as the soil is extremely sandy! My soil is very dark now, and because of the comfrey/ compost stew I do not need any other fertilizer. At the end of the season, I empty the barrels in the beds of perennials, or over the garlic, juice and solids, which still can grab some of that good juice on its way down and clean up the annual beds, preparing for the rotation. Another person mentioned the valve at the bottom of the barrel. Yep: No more heavy watering cans sloshing around my knees. I think everyone can get really good soil this way in time.

"This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes, for example. "

Please explain the 'tobacco juice' idea.

Is this significantly different from the liquid fertilizer that comes out of an anaerobic digester such as this home biogas system? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1846577405/homebiogas-20-transforms-your-food-waste-into-clea?ref=nav_search&utm_source=website&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=redirect

Gary Grata wrote:"This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes, for example. "

Please explain the 'tobacco juice' idea.

I have heard of people soaking their cigarette/cigar butts in water to leach out some nicotine.  It only  takes the swallowing of only few
cigarette butts to cause a toddler to go into convulsions or stop breathing {although most of the time it causes a severe case  of vomiting}
The amount of nicotine in a cigarette butt is estimated to be 20 mg,so it doesn't take much to make a powerful herbicide.

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Edit:  OOps...I meant to write pesticide.  The word "pesticide", according to Wikipedia, includes all of the following: herbicide,
insecticides (which may include insect growth regulators, termiticides, etc.) nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide,
rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent,antimicrobial, fungicide, disinfectant (antimicrobial), and sanitizer.

The amount of nicotine in a cigarette butt is estimated to be 20 mg,so it doesn't take much to make a powerful herbicide.  

Insecticide, not herbicide. It doesn't hurt plants but if you use a lot of it your vegetables will supposedly have traces of nicotine in them.

Tobacco (due to the nicotine content) was the leading insecticide of the 1800's. Farmers used to grow some just for that purpose.  It will deter/kill any insect that comes in contact/eats the plant (which includes pollinators if it is applied around flowers).

Unfortunately chemical fertilizer companies started making a "similar" chemical in the form of Neonicotinoids and it is believed to be at least partly responsible for the bee die off (it messes up their ability to navigate/communicate).

Lucrecia Anderson wrote:

The amount of nicotine in a cigarette butt is estimated to be 20 mg,so it doesn't
take much to make a powerful herbicide.  

Insecticide, not herbicide. It doesn't hurt plants but if you use a lot of it your vegetables will supposedly have traces
of nicotine in them.

OOps...I meant to write pesticide.  The word "pesticide", according to Wikipedia, includes all of the following: herbicide,
insecticides (which may include insect growth regulators, termiticides, etc.) nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide,
rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent,antimicrobial, fungicide, disinfectant (antimicrobial), and sanitizer.

Unfortunately chemical fertilizer companies started making a "similar" chemical in the form of Neonicotinoids
and it is believed to be at least partly responsible for the bee die off (it messes up their ability to navigate/communicate).

..."similiar" would not be a word I would use to describe neonicotinoids....

In the meantime I'm still hoping someone will answer my question. Is there any difference between the liquid fertilizer in the video and that which comes out of the overflowing of an anaerobic digester?

Chad Sentman wrote:In the meantime I'm still hoping someone will answer my question. Is there any difference between
the liquid fertilizer in the video and that which comes out of the overflowing of an anaerobic digester?

The video describes the anaerobic method of making compost tea.  If you run a discharge tube from an aquarium air pump
into the container, it becomes an aerated compost tea.  I  hope that answers your question.

Gary Grata wrote:"This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes, for example. "

Please explain the 'tobacco juice' idea.

If you have radish maggots in your radishes, try putting a few cigarettes, or in my case tobacco "juice" on the ground next time, before you plant. I used to sprinkle a pouch of tobacco on the 4'X 8' raised bed where I planted my radishes with great success.. I'm not sure why it works, but my mother in law swore by it, [She was in clayey soil] and after getting wormy radishes, I have taken to putting tobacco in my radish bed. The spring radishes that stay 3-4 weeks in the ground seem more affected somehow by the disgusting worm, especially if the moisture is insufficient.
This year, I raised Daikon radishes, planted in late July and I harvested terrific Daikons with not a single worm, in raised beds, as a rotation after lifting the garlic. They reached about 15" long and 2-3" in diameter, very tender and mild. I reason that if I put a pouch of loose tobacco with the comfrey/ compost tea, I will be able to stretch the beneficial effect of the tobacco juice to every bed. I would have to figure out what is the name of the radish worm and see if it is the same as the one that used to infect my onions too, because I would also put it on the onions.
The short-lived radishes (21 days) are also very sensitive to the amount of *regular* moisture while they are in the ground. A week of dry weather, in my sandy box, is the death of them, although now that I have much better soil due to amendments and mulch, they too do better. Maggots seem worse in a dry season, but I've had maggots either way without tobacco juice, and now, with tobacco juice, I don't.  Not very scientific, but hey, if it works and does not damage other critters in the soil, I'm all for it. [Earthworms do well in this tobacco juice environment too].

R Jay wrote:

Chad Sentman wrote:In the meantime I'm still hoping someone will answer my question. Is there any difference between
the liquid fertilizer in the video and that which comes out of the overflowing of an anaerobic digester?

The video describes the anaerobic method of making compost tea.  If you run a discharge tube from an aquarium air pump
into the container, it becomes an aerated compost tea.  I  hope that answers your question.

I doesn't. What you wrote is already clear to me, but my question wasn't "what happens if you add oxygen to an anaerobic compost tea?"

If you understand how biogas is generated in an anaerobic digester, it seems to me that this video demonstrates a similar process to biogas production, minus the actual capture and use of the gas. Organic material is broken down anaerobically, under water, but in David's video, the methane produced can off-gas into the atmosphere (and let's not forget that methane is something like 21x more destructive than carbon dioxide when it comes to greenhouse gases), whereas with biogas, it is captured and burned (also called flaring off) to make it far less environmentally harmful, with the added benefit of providing useful functions like heating or cooking or in some cases, generating electricity.

After the anaerobes break down the organic material, the excess liquid can be used as a fertilizer, just like in the video.

My question is, is the liquid fertilizer from biogas production in any way different than what David produces in the video? And if it is different, how different?

This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes

I am guessing that what Cécile Stelzer Johnson meant by "tobacco juice" was only that FPJ/E (fermented plant juice/extract) looks and smells like tobacco juice.

Chad Sentman wrote:My question is, is the liquid fertilizer from biogas production in any way different than what David produces in the video? And if it is different, how different?

I believe it would be the same as the leachates produced by biofertilizers; such as that, which is produced by an anaerobic digester.

For further reading on this, these links may be "food for thought":
These Are The Stories That Microbes Tell
Fermented Plant Extracts
Cultural Healing and Life

Chad Sentman wrote:

R Jay wrote:

Chad Sentman wrote:In the meantime I'm still hoping someone will answer my question. Is there any difference between
the liquid fertilizer in the video and that which comes out of the overflowing of an anaerobic digester?

The video describes the anaerobic method of making compost tea.  If you run a discharge tube from an aquarium air pump
into the container, it becomes an aerated compost tea.  I  hope that answers your question.

I doesn't. What you wrote is already clear to me, but my question wasn't "what happens if you add oxygen to an anaerobic compost tea?"

If you understand how biogas is generated in an anaerobic digester, it seems to me that this video demonstrates a similar process to biogas production, minus the actual capture and use of the gas. Organic material is broken down anaerobically, under water, but in David's video, the methane produced can off-gas into the atmosphere (and let's not forget that methane is something like 21x more destructive than carbon dioxide when it comes to greenhouse gases), whereas with biogas, it is captured and burned (also called flaring off) to make it far less environmentally harmful, with the added benefit of providing useful functions like heating or cooking or in some cases, generating electricity.

After the anaerobes break down the organic material, the excess liquid can be used as a fertilizer, just like in the video.

My question is, is the liquid fertilizer from biogas production in any way different than what David produces in the video? And if it is different, how different?

I am not sure it is different than compost either. It is true that methane is worse for the environment. About 30 times worse, actually: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm and that as the earth warms, more methane is created, just because all organic matter "cooks" faster in its degenerescence the warmer we get. The barrels are wide open to the air, so I'm not sure about "anaerobic" production of fertilizer. Would "aerobic" be better? if so, how? I could put one of those little air pumps, but then the cost of making this fertilizer is eaten up by the electricity necessary for the air pump, isn't it?
Another thing to look at is the scale of production and when does the production of biogas on a home scale become feasible? The Home Biogas 2.0 tech specs indicate a 2.1 cubic meter capacity. A quick conversion gives you 2.1 cubic meter = 554.761 US gallons, which really surprised me but represents a lot more waste than I'm making with my 30 comfrey plants and my pouch of tobacco 3 times a year. Even with 6 of these 50 gallon barrels, filled 3/4 full, I'm not sure how much methane is released, if any. That production takes about 4 weeks, so you would have to figure the amount of methane created per day over the course of 4 weeks. The improvement to my sandbox by the use of this product should be figured into the math too, as a better soil enables me to grow a lot more veggies of high quality, and without any transportation costs. Math is not my forte, and if I do create methane, I would prefer to capture it and use it somehow. But perhaps there comes a point when we try so hard to micro manage every methane puff of every critter and every rotting plant on the planet that we risk paralysis by excessive complication. I'm not really being facetious or making fun of the argument you put forth: We should try to reduce methane emissions as well, and from a permaculture standpoint, getting more than one benefit out of one process is definitely sound. But this may be a situation where the perfect is the enemy of the really great.
About the nicotine in the tobacco juice, here too, scale is important. On a vaping site, I found the following:
Quote:
" Pipe tobacco [the loose stuff] presents the lowest observed pHs 4.7-4.9, while nicotine content averaged around 17 mg/g.". That is 17 milligrams or 17 thousandth of a gram is contained in one gram of tobacco. Just keeping the proportions, [17 / 1,000] you can gather that in one pound of tobacco, there is 17 thousandth of a pound of nicotine. Cut a pound of nicotine in 1,000 parts and take 17 of those parts. That is the total nicotine content in each of my 55 gallon barrels. That is not enough to kill my earthworms or give my radishes a smoke taste, but is more than adequate to keep radish worms at bay.
As a beekeeper, I can  also tell you that my bees love tobacco flowers but the neonics represent a monster product, a freak of nature, something that God never intended. It is very dangerous because our bees, remembering the tobacco flowers they love can actually get *attracted* to neonics. That is also why all the so called "scientific experiments" in a lab cannot reproduce what is actually happening in the field. It is like trying to compare what happens when a person drinks one glass of alcohol in a lab versus what an alcoholic can drink when left to his/ her own devices. Since the bees seek out these neonics, all the lab experiments are non-valid.

Chad Sentman wrote:I doesn't. What you wrote is already clear to me, but my question wasn't "what happens if you add
oxygen to an anaerobic compost tea?"

The video describes the anaerobic method of making compost tea.

... it seems to me that this video demonstrates a similar process to biogas production, minus the actual capture
and use of the gas. Organic material is broken down anaerobically, under water, but in David's video, the methane
produced can off-gas into the atmosphere.

The organic material is broken down anaerobically by anaerobes, same as a biogas generator.  What is not
the same is what happens to any methane produced, whereas with biogas, it is captured and burned (also called flaring off)
to make it far less environmentally harmful, with the added benefit of providing useful functions like heating or cooking or
in some cases, generating electricity.

After the anaerobes break down the organic material, the excess liquid can be used as a fertilizer, just like
in the video.

_IF_ you are using the same feedstock to both, there is no reason to be much difference.  

Different anaerobes digest different types of feedstock.  At one job I had, one of my duties was to monitor a storage
pond at a kraft pulp mill that contained high pH {13+} mixture of liquid and fibre.  Both pH and  anaerobe {rotifer} population
had to be monitored.

Maybe, since you appear interested,  you could make a small biogas generator of your own....several videos on Youtube on
how-to-build.....or....you can check out the biogas section at

http://www.pssurvival.com/

R Jay wrote:

Gary Grata wrote:"This barrel system for watering is also a great way to add a little tobacco juice for the radishes, for example. "

Please explain the 'tobacco juice' idea.

I have heard of people soaking their cigarette/cigar butts in water to leach out some nicotine.  It only  takes the swallowing of only few
cigarette butts to cause a toddler to go into convulsions or stop breathing {although most of the time it causes a severe case  of vomiting}
The amount of nicotine in a cigarette butt is estimated to be 20 mg,so it doesn't take much to make a powerful herbicide.

I agree on the dangers of nicotine on toddlers! Yikes! Nicotine is more of a danger to humans than to crops, and is not used as an herbicide.[I think you would have to use so much that you could not eat the crop around which you'd use it]:  http://homeguides.sfgate.com/nicotine-harm-grass-97933.html

_IF_ you are using the same feedstock to both, there is no reason to be much difference.  

Different anaerobes digest different types of feedstock.  At one job I had, one of my duties was to monitor a storage
pond at a kraft pulp mill that contained high pH {13+} mixture of liquid and fibre.  Both pH and  anaerobe {rotifer} population
had to be monitored.

Maybe, since you appear interested,  you could make a small biogas generator of your own....several videos on Youtube on
how-to-build.....or....you can check out the biogas section at

http://www.pssurvival.com/


So the stuff that is set out to rot dictates the type of bacteria that will develop? That is logical. I chose comfrey because in our sand, it will go very deep and retrieve a lot of nutrients that tend to leach. When it is allowed to rot, the fertilizer is so strong that it should really be diluted 50/50 with water. Thanks for the set of files on biogas [and so many other interesting topics].  It would be the cat's ass to build a biogas system, but I'm dangerous around numbers and I do not trust myself around flammable stuff. It sure is intriguing, but I don't think I'm talented enough in the machine building department. Especially if it involves flammable gas!

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:Thanks for the set of files on biogas [and so many other interesting topics].

You're welcome.  The site does have quite a collection of articles for a large number of topics....biogas, biodiesel,
beekeeeeping,composting....right thru to vermiculture....6922 files....14.8 Gigabytes of info...the site itself,however,
does deal with a subject people may find a bit "out there."  What can I say...valuable information can be found
in some of the most unlikely of places....and this is one of them:

http://www.pssurvival.com/

R Jay wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:Thanks for the set of files on biogas [and so many other interesting topics].

You're welcome.  The site does have quite a collection of articles for a large number of topics....biogas, biodiesel,
beekeeeeping,composting....right thru to vermiculture....6922 files....14.8 Gigabytes of info...the site itself,however,
does deal with a subject people may find a bit "out there."  What can I say...valuable information can be found
in some of the most unlikely of places....and this is one of them:

http://www.pssurvival.com/

Wow! Indeed, we have so much plastic that ends up in landfills and in the oceans it is sinful to NOT recycle. The plastic shredding machine, I would really like to make/ have one, would it be only to reduce the bulk of what we throw away. I noticed that all the plastic placed in the machine was squeaky clean. He did not mention that, but it does make sense, especially if a person is planning to extrude and shape new things.
I would even like my local town to build one and place it at the recycling station so folks could recycle it themselves, bring kids to show them new avenues. New possibilities...
I guess we are getting pretty far from stretching compost/ manure, so we should not keep posting on this thread ... but WOW!!! The ideas this brings!