Volunteers on the farm
Soil and Compost Forum
Composting Discussion
If you have completed reading the composting chapter, try out some of the practical activities. How did you get on with them? If you have a compost bin in your home or at your WWOOF hosts, perhaps you can upload the pictures here!
I have been raeding the text and think it is interesting. Found a typing failure will tell you later.
Our compost " bin" was a huge pile, we used it for years. After that we used the Composted material in the vegetablegarden. It was really very good.
Question, can we put Orange and banana shells in the compostbin? (in Germany?)
Hendrik, as far as I know there is no problem with banana. But orange peels (and other citrus fruits) are something that worms do not really like. I recommend you to keep your citrus peels (orange, grapefruit, tangerine, etc) in a glass jar filled with vinegar. When the jar is full, store it for 2 weeks. After that, take out the peels and dilute the liquid with water (1:1). Now you have a nice smelling surface cleaner (for kitchen, toilet, etc) which is free of harmful chemicals!
This is our WWOOFer, Alice Farneti, who is just about to open up and empty the compost bin. The triple bin system works well in our climate ( the middle of England) with each bin being left for about 6 months after it is completely full and turned. We spread the compost in the spring as a mulch to retain the soil moisture and also in the autumn to control weed growth. However we grow a green manure crop on some areas of the crop rotation.
Alice also tried the practical activity - Compare the colour, stoniness and structure of organically and non-organically (synthetically) farmed soil. She compared the soil from our plot (which had added organic matter and compost for over 30 years) with soil from a neighbour's farm field (which had no added organic matter or compost in that time). The photo below shows the two buckets of soil. It's easy to spot the difference - in terms of colour, stoniness, crumb structure, and inevitably soil biota and soil fertility!
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