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Organic Gardener's

by Steve Solomon


Making Superior Compost

    The potency of composts can vary greatly. Most municipal solid waste compost has a high carbon to nitrogen ratio and when tilled into soil temporarily provokes the opposite of a good growth response until soil animals and microorganisms consume most of the undigested paper. But if low-grade compost is used as a surface mulch on ornamentals, the results are usually quite satisfactory even if unspectacular.

    If the aim of your own composting is to conveniently dispose of yard waste and kitchen garbage, the information in the first half of the book is all you need to know. If you need compost to make something that dependably GROWS plants like it was fertilizer, then this chapter is for you.

A Little History

    Before the twentieth century, the fertilizers market gardeners used were potent manures and composts. The vegetable gardens of country folk also received the best manures and composts available while the field crops got the rest. So I've learned a great deal from old farming and market gardening literature about using animal manures. In previous centuries, farmers classified manures by type and purity. There was "long" and "short" manure, and then, there was the supreme plant growth stimulant, chicken manure.

    Chicken manure was always highly prized but usually in short supply because preindustrial fowl weren't caged in factories or permanently locked in hen houses and fed scientifically formulated mixes. The chicken breed of that era was usually some type of bantam, half-wild, broody, protective of chicks, and capable of foraging. A typical pre-1900 small-scale chicken management system was to allow the flock free access to hunt their own meals in the barnyard and orchard, luring them into the coop at dusk with a bit of grain where they were protected from predators while sleeping helplessly. Some manure was collected from the hen house but most of it was dropped where it could not be gathered. The daily egg hunt was worth it because, before the era of pesticides, having chickens range through the orchard greatly reduced problems with insects in fruit.

    The high potency of chicken manure derives from the chickens' low C/N diet: worms, insects, tender shoots of new grass, and other proteinaceous young greens and seeds. Twentieth-century chickens "living" in egg and meat factories must still be fed low C/N foods, primarily grains, and their manure is still potent. But anyone who has savored real free-range eggs with deep orange yokes from chickens on a proper diet cannot be happy with what passes for "eggs" these days.

    Fertilizing with pure chicken manure is not very different than using ground cereal grains or seed meals. It is so concentrated that it might burn plant leaves like chemical fertilizer does and must be applied sparingly to soil. It provokes a marked and vigorous growth response. Two or three gallons of dry, pure fresh chicken manure are sufficient nutrition to GROW about 100 square feet of vegetables in raised beds to the maximum.

    Exclusively incorporating pure chicken manure into a vegetable garden also results in rapid humus loss, just as though chemical fertilizers were used. Any fertilizing substance with a C/N below that of stabilized humus, be it a chemical or a natural substance, accelerates the decline in soil organic matter. That is because nitrate nitrogen, the key to constructing all protein, is usually the main factor limiting the population of soil microorganisms. When the nitrate level of soil is significantly increased, microbe populations increase proportionately and proceeds to eat organic matter at an accelerated rate.

    That is why small amounts of chemical fertilizer applied to soil that still contains a reasonable amount of humus has such a powerful effect. Not only does the fertilizer itself stimulate the growth of plants, but fertilizer increases the microbial population. More microbes accelerate the breakdown of humus and even more plant nutrients are released as organic matter decays. And that is why holistic farmers and gardeners mistakenly criticize chemical fertilizers as being directly destructive of soil microbes. Actually, all fertilizers, chemical or organic, indirectly harm soil life, first increasing their populations to unsustainable levels that drop off markedly once enough organic matter has been eaten. Unless, of course, the organic matter is replaced.

    Chicken manure compost is another matter. Mix the pure manure with straw, sawdust, or other bedding, compost it and, depending on the amount and quantity of bedding used and the time allowed for decomposition to occur, the resultant C/N will be around 12:1 or above. Any ripened compost around 12:1 still will GROW plants beautifully. Performance drops off as the C/N increases.

    Since chicken manure was scarce, most pre-twentieth century market gardeners depended on seemingly unlimited supplies of "short manure," generally from horses. The difference between the "long" and the "short" manure was bedding. Long manure contained straw from the stall while short manure was pure street sweepings without adulterants. Hopefully, the straw portion of long manure had absorbed a quantity of urine.

    People of that era knew the fine points of hay quality as well as people today know their gasoline. Horses expected to do a day's work were fed on grass or grass/clover mixes that had been cut and dried while they still had a high protein content. Leafy hay was highly prized while hay that upon close inspection revealed lots of stems and seed heads would be rejected by a smart buyer. The working horse's diet was supplemented with a daily ration of grain. Consequently, uncomposted fresh short manure probably started out with a C/N around 15:1. However, don't count on anything that good from horses these days. Most horses aren't worked daily so their fodder is often poor. Judging from the stemmy, cut-too-late grass hay our local horses have to try to survive on, if I could find bedding-free horse manure it would probably have a C/N more like 20:1. Manure from physically fit thoroughbred race horses is probably excellent.

    Using fresh horse manure in soil gave many vegetables a harsh flavor so it was first composted by mixing in some soil (a good idea because otherwise a great deal of ammonia would escape the heap). Market gardeners raising highly demanding crops like cauliflower and celery amended composted short manure by the inches-thick layer. Lesser nutrient-demanding crops like snap beans, lettuce, and roots followed these intensively fertilized vegetables without further compost.

    Long manures containing lots of straw were considered useful only for field crops or root vegetables. Wise farmers conserved the nitrogen and promptly composted long manures. After heating and turning the resulting C/N would probably be in a little below 20:1. After tilling it in, a short period of time was allowed while the soil digested this compost before sowing seeds. Lazy farmers spread raw manure load by load as it came from the barn and tilled it in once the entire field was covered. This easy method allows much nitrogen to escape as ammonia while the manure dries in the sun. Commercial vegetable growers had little use for long manure.

    One point of this brief history lesson is GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. The finished compost tends to have a C/N that is related to the ingredients that built the heap. Growers of vegetables will wisely take note.

    Anyone interested in learning more about preindustrial market gardening might ask their librarian to seek out a book called French Gardening by Thomas Smith, published in London about 1905. This fascinating little book was written to encourage British market gardeners to imitate the Parisian marciér, who skillfully earned top returns growing out-of-season produce on intensive, double-dug raised beds, often under glass hot or cold frames. Our trendy American Biodynamic French Intensive gurus obtained their inspiration from England through this tradition.

Curing the Heap

    The easiest and most sure-fire improver of compost quality is time. Making a heap with predominantly low C/N materials inevitably results in potent compost if nitrate loss is kept to a minimum. But the C/N of almost any compost heap, even one starting with a high C/N will eventually lower itself. The key word here is eventually. The most dramatic decomposition occurs during the first few turns when the heap is hot. Many people, including writers of garden books, mistakenly think that the composting ends when the pile cools and the material no longer resembles what made up the heap. This is not true. As long as a compost heap is kept moist and is turned occasionally, it will continue to decompose. "Curing" or "ripening" are terms used to describe what occurs once heating is over.

    A different ecology of microorganisms predominates while a heap is ripening. If the heap contains 5 to 10 percent soil, is kept moist, is turned occasionally so it stays aerobic, and has a complete mineral balance, considerable bacterial nitrogen fixation may occur.

    Most gardeners are familiar with the microbes that nodulate the roots of legumes. Called rhizobia, these bacteria are capable of fixing large quantities of nitrate nitrogen in a short amount of time. Rhizobia tend to be inactive during hot weather because the soil itself is supplying nitrates from the breakdown of organic matter. Summer legume crops, like cowpeas and snap beans, tend to be net consumers of nitrates, not makers of more nitrates than they can use. Consider this when you read in carelessly researched garden books and articles about the advantages of interplanting legumes with other crops because they supposedly generate nitrates that "help" their companions.

    But during spring or fall when lowered soil temperatures retard decomposition, rhizobia can manufacture from 80 to 200 pounds of nitrates per acre. Peas, clovers, alfalfa, vetches, and fava beans can all make significant contributions of nitrate nitrogen and smart farmers prefer to grow their nitrogen by green manuring legumes. Wise farmers also know that this nitrate, though produced in root nodules, is used by legumes to grow leaf and stem. So the entire legume must be tilled in if any net nitrogen gain is to be realized. This wise practice simultaneously increases organic matter.

    Rhizobia are not capable of being active in compost piles, but another class of microbes is. Called azobacteria, these free-living soil dwellers also make nitrate nitrogen. Their contribution is not potentially as great as rhizobia, but no special provision must be made to encourage azobacteria other than maintaining a decent level of humus for them to eat, a balanced mineral supply that includes adequate calcium, and a soil pH between 5.75 and 7.25. A high-yielding crop of wheat needs 60-80 pounds of nitrates per acre. Corn and most vegetables can use twice that amount. Azobacteria can make enough for wheat, though an average nitrate contribution under good soil conditions might be more like 30-50 pounds per year.

    Once a compost heap has cooled, azobacteria will proliferate and begin to manufacture significant amounts of nitrates, steadily lowering the C/N. And carbon never stops being digested, further dropping the C/N. The rapid phase of composting may be over in a few months, but ripening can be allowed to go on for many more months if necessary.

    Feeding unripened compost to worms is perhaps the quickest way to lower C/N and make a potent soil amendment. Once the high heat of decomposition has passed and the heap is cooling, it is commonly invaded by redworms, the same species used for vermicomposting kitchen garbage. These worms would not be able to eat the high C/N material that went into a heap, but after heating, the average C/N has probably dropped enough to be suitable for them.

    The municipal composting operation at Fallbrook, California makes clever use of this method to produce a smaller amount of high-grade product out of a larger quantity of low-grade ingredients. Mixtures of sewage sludge and municipal solid waste are first composted and after cooling, the half-done high C/N compost is shallowly spread out over crude worm beds and kept moist. More crude compost is added as the worms consume the waste, much like a household worm box. The worm beds gradually rise. The lower portion of these mounds is pure castings while the worm activity stays closer to the surface where food is available. When the beds have grown to about three feet tall, the surface few inches containing worms and undigested food are scraped off and used to form new vermicomposting beds. The castings below are considered finished compost. By laboratory analysis, the castings contain three or four times as much nitrogen as the crude compost being fed to the worms.

    The marketplace gives an excellent indicator of the difference between their crude compost and the worm casts. Even though Fallbrook is surrounded by large acreages devoted to citrus orchards and row crop vegetables, the municipality has a difficult time disposing of the crude product. But their vermicompost is in strong demand.

Sir Albert Howard's Indore Method

    Nineteenth-century farmers and market gardeners had much practical knowledge about using manures and making composts that worked like fertilizers, but little was known about the actual microbial process of composting until our century. As information became available about compost ecology, one brilliant individual, Sir Albert Howard, incorporated the new science of soil microbiology into his composting and by patient experiment learned how to make superior compost

    During the 1920s, Albert Howard was in charge of a government research farm at Indore, India. At heart a Peace Corps volunteer, he made Indore operate like a very representative Indian farm, growing all the main staples of the local agriculture: cotton, sugar cane, and cereals. The farm was powered by the same work oxen used by the surrounding farmers. It would have been easy for Howard to demonstrate better yields through high technology by buying chemical fertilizers or using seed meal wastes from oil extraction, using tractors, and growing new, high-yielding varieties that could make use of more intense soil nutrition. But these inputs were not affordable to the average Indian farmer and Howard's purpose was to offer genuine help to his neighbors by demonstrating methods they could easily afford and use.

    In the beginning of his work at Indore, Howard observed that the district's soils were basically fertile but low in organic matter and nitrogen. This deficiency seemed to be due to traditionally wasteful practices concerning manures and agricultural residues. So Howard began developing methods to compost the waste products of agriculture, making enough high-quality fertilizer to supply the entire farm. Soon, Indore research farm was enjoying record yields without having insect or disease problems, and without buying fertilizer or commercial seed. More significantly, the work animals, fed exclusively on fodder from Indore's humus-rich soil, become invulnerable to cattle diseases. Their shining health and fine condition became the envy of the district.

    Most significant, Howard contended that his method not only conserved the nitrogen in cattle manure and crop waste, not only conserved the organic matter the land produced, but also raised the processes of the entire operation to an ecological climax of maximized health and production. Conserving the manure and composting the crop waste allowed him to increase the soil's organic matter which increased the soil's release of nutrients from rock particles that further increased the production of biomass which allowed him to make even more compost and so on. What I have just described is not surprising, it is merely a variation on good farming that some humans have known about for millennia.

    What was truly revolutionary was Howard's contention about increasing net nitrates. With gentle understatement, Howard asserted that his compost was genuinely superior to anything ever known before. Indore compost had these advantages: no nitrogen or organic matter was lost from the farm through mishandling of agricultural wastes; the humus level of the farm's soils increased to a maximum sustainable level; and, the amount of nitrate nitrogen in the finished compost was higher than the total amount of nitrogen contained in the materials that formed the heap. Indore compost resulted in a net gain of nitrate nitrogen. The compost factory was also a biological nitrate factory.

    Howard published details of the Indore method in 1931 in a slim book called The Waste Products of Agriculture. The widely read book brought him invitations to visit plantations throughout the British Empire. It prompted farmers world-wide to make compost by the Indore method. Travel, contacts, and new awareness of the problems of European agriculture were responsible for Howard's decision to create an organic farming and gardening movement.

    Howard repeatedly warned in The Waste Products of Agriculture that if the underlying fundamentals of his process were altered, superior results would not occur. That was his viewpoint in 1931. However, humans being what we are, it does not seem possible for good technology to be broadcast without each user trying to improve and adapt it to their own situation and understanding. By 1940, the term "lndore compost" had become a generic term for any kind of compost made in a heap without the use of chemicals, much as "Rototiller" has come to mean any motor-driven rotarytiller.

    Howard's 1931 concerns were correct--almost all alterations of the original Indore system lessened its value--but Howard of 1941 did not resist this dilutive trend because in an era of chemical farming any compost was better than no compost, any return of humus better than none.

    Still, I think it is useful to go back to the Indore research farm of the 1920s and to study closely how Albert Howard once made the world's finest compost, and to encounter this great man's thoughts before he became a crusading ideologue, dead set against any use of agricultural chemicals. A great many valuable lessons are still contained in The Waste Products of Agriculture. Unfortunately, even though many organic gardeners are familiar with the later works of Sir Albert Howard the reformer, Albert Howard the scientist and researcher, who wrote this book, is virtually unknown today.

    At Indore, all available vegetable material was composted, including manure and bedding straw from the cattle shed, unconsumed crop residues, fallen leaves and other forest wastes, weeds, and green manures grown specifically for compost making. All of the urine from the cattle shed-in the form of urine earth--and all wood ashes from any source on the farm were also included. Being in the tropics, compost making went on year-round. Of the result, Howard stated that

    "The product is a finely divided leafmould, of high nitrifying power, ready for immediate use [without temporarily inhibiting plant growth]. The fine state of division enables the compost to be rapidly incorporated and to exert its maximum influence on a very large area of the internal surface of the soil."

    Howard stressed that for the Indore method to work reliably the carbon to nitrogen ratio of the material going into the heap must always be in the same range. Every time a heap was built the same assortment of crop wastes were mixed with the same quantities of fresh manure and urine earth. As with my bread-baking analogy, Howard insured repeatability of ingredients.

    Any hard, woody materials--Howard called them "refractory"--must be thoroughly broken up before composting, otherwise the fermentation would not be vigorous, rapid, and uniform throughout the process. This mechanical softening up was cleverly accomplished without power equipment by spreading tough crop wastes like cereal straw or pigeon pea and cotton stalks out over the farm roads, allowing cartwheels, the oxens' hooves, and foot traffic to break them up.

    Decomposition must be rapid and aerobic, but not too aerobic. And not too hot. Quite intentionally, Indore compost piles were not allowed to reach the highest temperatures that are possible. During the first heating cycle, peak temperatures were about 140°. After two weeks, when the first turn was made, temperatures had dropped to about 125°, and gradually declined from there. Howard cleverly restricted the air supply and thermal mass so as to "bank the fires" of decomposition. This moderation was his key to preventing loss of nitrogen. Provisions were made to water the heaps as necessary, to turn them several times, and to use a novel system of mass inoculation with the proper fungi and bacteria. I'll shortly discuss each of these subjects in detail. Howard was pleased that there was no need to accept nitrogen loss at any stage and that the reverse should happen. Once the C/N had dropped sufficiently, the material was promptly incorporated into the soil where nitrate nitrogen will be best preserved. But the soil is not capable of doing two jobs at once. It can't digest crude organic matter and simultaneously nitrify humus. So compost must be finished and completely ripe when it was tilled in so that:

    ". . . there must be no serious competition between the last stages of decay of the compost and the work of the soil in growing the crop. This is accomplished by carrying the manufacture of humus up to the point when nitrification is about to begin. In this way the Chinese principle of dividing the growing of a crop into two separate processes --(1) the preparation of the food materials outside the field, and (2) the actual growing of the crop-can be introduced into general agricultural practice."

    And because he actually lived on a farm, Howard especially emphasized that composting must be sanitary and odorless and that flies must not be allowed to breed in the compost or around the work cattle. Country life can be quite idyllic--without flies.

The Indore Compost Factory

    At Indore, Howard built a covered, open-sided, compost-making factory that sheltered shallow pits, each 30 feet long by 14 feet wide by 2 feet deep with sloping sides. The pits were sufficiently spaced to allow loaded carts to have access to all sides of any of them and a system of pipes brought water near every one. The materials to be composted were all stored adjacent to the factory. Howard's work oxen were conveniently housed in the next building.

Soil and Urine Earth

    Howard had been raised on an English farm and from childhood he had learned the ways of work animals and how to make them comfortable. So, for the ease of their feet, the cattle shed and its attached, roofed loafing pen had earth floors. All soil removed from the silage pits, dusty sweepings from the threshing floors, and silt from the irrigation ditches were stored near the cattle shed and used to absorb urine from the work cattle. This soil was spread about six inches deep in the cattle stalls and loafing pen. About three times a year it was scraped up and replaced with fresh soil, the urine-saturated earth then was dried and stored in a special covered enclosure to be used for making compost .

    The presence of this soil in the heap was essential. First, the black soil of Indore was well-supplied with calcium, magnesium, and other plant nutrients. These basic elements prevented the heaps from becoming overly acid. Additionally, the clay in the soil was uniquely incorporated into the heap so that it coated everything. Clay has a strong ability to absorb ammonia, preventing nitrogen loss. A clay coating also holds moisture. Without soil, "an even and vigorous mycelial growth is never quickly obtained." Howard said "the fungi are the storm troops of the composting process, and must be furnished with all the armament they need."

Crop Wastes

    Crop wastes were protected from moisture, stored dry under cover near the compost factory. Green materials were first withered in the sun for a few days before storage. Refractory materials were spread on the farm's roads and crushed by foot traffic and cart wheels before stacking. All these forms of vegetation were thinly layered as they were received so that the dry storage stacks became thoroughly mixed. Care was taken to preserve the mixing by cutting vertical slices out of the stacks when vegetation was taken to the compost pits. Howard said the average C/N of this mixed vegetation was about 33:1. Every compost heap made year-round was built with this complex assortment of vegetation having the same properties and the same C/N.

    Special preliminary treatment was given to hard, woody materials like sugarcane, millet stumps, wood shavings and waste paper. These were first dumped into an empty compost pit, mixed with a little soil, and kept moist until they softened. Or they might be soaked in water for a few days and then added to the bedding under the work cattle. Great care was taken when handling the cattle's bedding to insure that no flies would breed in it.


    Though crop wastes and urine-earth could be stored dry for later use, manure, the key ingredient of Indore compost, had to be used fresh. Fresh cow dung contains bacteria from the cow's rumen that is essential to the rapid decomposition of cellulose and other dry vegetation. Without their abundant presence composting would not begin as rapidly nor proceed as surely.

Charging the Compost Pits

    Every effort was made to fill a pit to the brim within one week. If there wasn't enough material to fill an entire pit within one week, then a portion of one pit would be filled to the top. To preserve good aeration, every effort was made to avoid stepping on the material while filling the pit. As mixtures of manure and bedding were brought out from the cattle shed they were thinly layered atop thin layers of mixed vegetation brought in from the dried reserves heaped up adjacent to the compost factory. Each layer was thoroughly wet down with a clay slurry made of three ingredients: water, urine-earth, and actively decomposing material from an adjacent compost pit that had been filled about two weeks earlier. This insured that every particle within the heap was moist and was coated with nitrogen-rich soil and the microorganisms of decomposition. Today, we would call this practice "mass inoculation."

Pits Versus Heaps

    India has two primary seasons. Most of the year is hot and dry while the monsoon rains come from dune through September. During the monsoon, so much water falls so continuously that the earth becomes completely saturated. Even though the pits were under a roof, they would fill with water during this period. So in the monsoon, compost was made in low heaps atop the ground. Compared to the huge pits, their dimensions were smaller than you would expect: 7 x 7 feet at the top, 8 x 8 feet at the base and no more than 2 feet high. When the rains started, any compost being completed in pits was transferred to above-ground heaps when it was turned.

    Howard was accomplishing several things by using shallow pits or low but very broad heaps. One, thermal masses were reduced so temperatures could not reach the ultimate extremes possible while composting. The pits were better than heaps because air flow was further reduced, slowing down the fermentation, while their shallowness still permitted sufficient aeration. There were enough covered pits to start a new heap every week.

Temperature Range in
Normal Pit

Age in days Temperature in °C
3 63
4 60
6 58
11 55
12 53
13 49
14 49
  First Turn
18 49
20 51
22 48
24 47
29 46
  Second Turn
37 49
38 45
40 40
43 39
57 39
  Third Turn
61 41
66 39
76 38
82 36
90 33
Period in days for each fall of 5i C
Temperature Range No. of Days
65°-60° 4
60°-55° 7
55°-50° 1
50°-45° 25
45°-40° 2
40°-35° 44
35°-30° 14


97 days


    Turning the compost was done three times: To insure uniform decomposition, to restore moisture and air, and to supply massive quantities of those types of microbes needed to take the composting process to its next stage.

    The first turn was at about sixteen days. A second mass inoculation equivalent to a few wheelbarrows full of 30 day old composting material was taken from an adjacent pit and spread thinly over the surface of the pit being turned. Then, one half of the pit was dug out with a manure fork and placed atop the first half. A small quantity of water was added, if needed to maintain moisture. Now the compost occupied half the pit, a space about 15 x 14 and was about three feet high, rising out of the earth about one foot. During the monsoons when heaps were used, the above-ground piles were also mass inoculated and then turned so as to completely mix the material, and as we do today, placing the outside material in the core and vice-versa.

    One month after starting, or about two weeks after the first turn, the pit or heap would be turned again. More water would be added. This time the entire mass would be forked from one half the pit to the other and every effort would be made to fluff up the material while thoroughly mixing it. And a few loads of material were removed to inoculate a 15-day-old pit.

    Another month would pass, or about two months after starting, and for the third time the compost would be turned and then allowed to ripen. This time the material is brought out of the pit and piled atop the earth so as to increase aeration. At this late stage there would be no danger of encouraging high temperatures but the increased oxygen facilitated nitrogen fixation. The contents of several pits might be combined to form a heap no larger than 10 x 10 at the base, 9 x 9 on top, and no more than 3-1/2 feet high. Again, more water might be added. Ripening would take about one month. Howard's measurements showed that after a month's maturation the finished compost should be used without delay or precious nitrogen would be lost. However, keep in mind when considering this brief ripening period that the heap was already as potent as it could become. Howard's problem was not further improving the C/N, it was conservation of nitrogen.

The Superior Value of Indore Compost.

    Howard said that finished Indore compost was twice as rich in nitrogen as ordinary farmyard manure and that his target was compost with a C/N of 10:1. Since it was long manure he was referring to, let's assume that the C/N of a new heap started at 25:1.

    The C/N of vegetation collected during the year is highly variable. Young grasses and legumes are very high in nitrogen, while dried straw from mature plants has a very high C/N. If compost is made catch-as-catch-can by using materials as they come available, then results will be highly erratic. Howard had attempted to make composts of single vegetable materials like cotton residues, cane trash, weeds, fresh green sweet clover, or the waste of field peas. These experiments were always unsatisfactory. So Howard wisely mixed his vegetation, first withering and drying green materials by spreading them thinly in the sun to prevent their premature decomposition, and then taking great care to preserve a uniform mixture of vegetation types when charging his compost pits. This strategy can be duplicated by the home gardener. Howard was surprised to discover that he could compost all the crop waste he had available with only half the urine earth and about one-quarter of the oxen manure he had available. But fresh manure and urine earth were essential.

    During the 1920s a patented process for making compost with a chemical fertilizer called Adco was in vogue and Howard tried it. Of using chemicals he said:

    "The weak point of Adco is that it does nothing to overcome one of the great difficulties in composting, namely the absorption of moisture in the early stages. In hot weather in India, the Adco pits lose moisture so rapidly that the fermentation stops, the temperature becomes uneven and then falls. When, however, urine earth and cow-dung are used, the residues become covered with a thin colloidal film, which not only retains moisture but contains combined nitrogen and minerals required by the fungi. This film enables the moisture to penetrate the mass and helps the fungi to establish themselves. Another disadvantage of Adco is that when this material is used according to the directions, the carbon-nitrogen ratio of the final product is narrower than the ideal 10:1. Nitrogen is almost certain to be lost before the crop can make use of it"

    Fresh cow manure contains digestive enzymes and living bacteria that specialize in cellulose decomposition. Having a regular supply of this material helped initiate decomposition without delay. Contributing large quantities of actively growing microorganisms through mass inoculation with material from a two-week-old pile also helped. The second mass inoculation at two weeks, with material from a month-old heap provided a large supply of the type of organisms required when the heap began cooling. City gardeners without access to fresh manure may compensate for this lack by imitating Howard's mass inoculation technique, starting smaller amounts of compost in a series of bins and mixing into each bin a bit of material from the one further along at each turning. The passive backyard composting container automatically duplicates this advantage. It simultaneously contains all decomposition stages and inoculates the material above by contact with more decomposed material below. Using prepared inoculants in a continuous composting bin is unnecessary.

    City gardeners cannot readily obtain urine earth. Nor are American country gardeners with livestock likely to be willing to do so much work. Remember that Howard used urine earth for three reasons. One, it contained a great deal of nitrogen and improved the starting C/N of the heap. Second, it is thrifty. Over half the nutrient content of the food passing through cattle is discharged in the urine. But, equally important, soil itself was beneficial to the process. Of this Howard said, "[where] there may be insufficient dung and urine earth for converting large quantities of vegetable wastes which are available, the shortage may be made up by the use of nitrate of soda . . . If such artificials are employed, it will be a great advantage to make use of soil." I am sure he would have made very similar comments about adding soil when using chicken manure, or organic concentrates like seed meals, as cattle manure substitutes.

    Control of the air supply is the most difficult part of composting. First, the process must stay aerobic. That is one reason that single-material heaps fail because they tend to pack too tightly. To facilitate air exchange, the pits or heaps were never more than two feet deep. Where air was insufficient (though still aerobic) decay is retarded but worse, a process called denitrification occurs in which nitrates and ammonia are biologically broken down into gasses and permanently lost. Too much manure and urine-earth can also interfere with aeration by making the heap too heavy, establishing anaerobic conditions. The chart illustrates denitrification caused by insufficient aeration compared to turning the composting process into a biological nitrate factory with optimum aeration.

Making Indore Compost in Deep and Shallow Pits
  Pit 4 feet deep Pit 2 feet deep

Amount of material (lb. wet) in pit at start

4,500 4,514
Total nitrogen (lb) at start 31.25 29.12
Total nitrogen at end 29.49 32.36
Loss or gain of nitrogen (lb) -1.76 +3.24
Percentage loss or gain of nitrogen -6.1% +11.1%

    Finally, modern gardeners might reconsider limiting temperature during composting. India is a very warm climate with balmy nights most of the year. Heaps two or three feet high will achieve an initial temperature of about 145°. The purchase of a thermometer with a long probe and a little experimentation will show you the dimensions that will more-or-less duplicate Howard's temperature regimes in your climate with your materials.


    Howard's technique of mass inoculation with large amounts of biologically active material from older compost heaps speeds and directs decomposition. It supplies large numbers of the most useful types of microorganisms so they dominate the heap's ecology before other less desirable types can establish significant populations. I can't imagine how selling mass inoculants could be turned into a business.

    But just imagine that seeding a new heap with tiny amounts of superior microorganisms could speed initial decomposition and result in a much better product. That could be a business. Such an approach is not without precedent. Brewers, vintners, and bread makers all do that. And ever since composting became interesting to twentieth-century farmers and gardeners, entrepreneurs have been concocting compost starters that are intended to be added by the ounce(s) to the cubic yard.

    Unlike the mass inoculation used at Indore, these inoculants are a tiny population compared to the microorganisms already present in any heap. In that respect, inoculating compost is very different than beer, wine, or bread. With these food products there are few or no microorganisms at the start. The inoculant, small as it might be, still introduces millions of times more desirable organisms than those wild types that might already be present.

    But the materials being assembled into a new compost heap are already loaded with microorganism. As when making sauerkraut, what is needed is present at the start. A small packet of inoculant is not likely to introduce what is not present anyway. And the complex ecology of decomposition will go through its inevitable changes as the microorganisms respond to variations in temperature, aeration, pH, etc.

    This is one area of controversy where I am comfortable seeking the advice of an expert. In this case, the authority is Clarence Golueke, who personally researched and developed U.C. fast composting in the early 1950s, and who has been developing municipal composting systems ever since. The bibliography of this book lists two useful works by Golueke.

    Golueke has run comparison tests of compost starters of all sorts because, in his business, entrepreneurs are constantly attempting to sell inoculants to municipal composting operations. Of these vendors, Golueke says with thinly disguised contempt:

    "Most starter entrepreneurs include enzymes when listing the ingredients of their products. The background for this inclusion parallels the introduction of purportedly advanced versions of starters-i.e., "advanced" in terms of increased capacity, utility and versatility. Thus in the early 1950's (when [I made my] appearance on the compost scene), starters were primarily microbial and references to identities of constituent microbes were very vague. References to enzymes were extremely few and far between. As early ("pioneer") researchers began to issue formal and informal reports on microbial groups (e.g., actinomycetes) observed by them, they also began to conjecture on the roles of those microbial groups in the compost process. The conjectures frequently were accompanied by surmises about the part played by enzymes.

    Coincidentally, vendors of starters in vogue at the time began to claim that their products included the newly reported microbial groups as well as an array of enzymes. For some reason, hormones were attracting attention at the time, and so most starters were supposedly laced with hormones. In time, hormones began to disappear from the picture, whereas enzymes were given a billing parallel to that accorded to the microbial component."

    Golueke has worked out methods of testing starters that eliminates any random effects and conclusively demonstrates their result. Inevitably, and repeatedly, he found that there was no difference between using a starter and not using one. And he says, "Although anecdotal accounts of success due to the use of particular inoculum are not unusual in the popular media, we have yet to come across unqualified accounts of successes in the refereed scientific and technical literature. I use a variation of mass inoculation when making compost. While building a new heap, I periodically scrape up and toss in a few shovels of compost and soil from where the previous pile was made. Frankly, if I did not do this I don't think the result would be any worse.

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