 Okay, everyone, we're going to wrap up tonight's forum with the presentation on backyard composting in here to teach us is Kerry Knudson. Kerry is the horticulture agent in Grand Forks County, and she received her master's degree in horticulture from North Dakota State University. She has been working in extension service for 15 solid years. And her favorite programs are youth gardens and Kerry enjoys going out on house calls to help presidents deal with their horticulture problems. So everybody in Grand Forks County, keep that in mind. Kerry, welcome to the forums. Thanks, Tom. Also have to mention Harleen was my advisor as I was getting my master's at NDSU. So it's a, I am here because of Harleen, we'll put it that way too. All right, so I'm happy to be here tonight with everyone and I'm excited to talk about composting with you. I know not everybody thinks that talking about rotting decomposing materials is fun, but I think it's exciting. My composting journey started in 2019 after I took a master's composter course from Vermont Extension. And I really wanted what I wanted to get out of that course was I was intimidated by composting I thought it was this huge scientific thing and it was too much time and too much thought and I really didn't want to do it. But after I went through that course I realized if you have a basic understanding, and you commit a little bit of time to it, you can compost in your backyard. So that's my goal tonight is to share some knowledge and tips with you so you can start on your composting journey. First off, hopefully everybody knows on the call tonight that compost is the best thing that you can do for your soil. No matter what type it is if you're in the Red River Valley and you have a heavier clay soil, or you're out west and it's a little bit lighter a little bit sandy. It's going to increase the water holding capacity of your soil. It's going to increase the amount of nutrients that it can, your soil can hold and compost will also add nutrients to your soil. And it's going to increase drainage in your soil those organic compounds and compost are going to work with your soil and they're going to form aggregates in the soil and pour spaces and allow water to drain through the soil as well. So composting ingredients can be broken down into two basic types I'm sure hopefully you've heard of them before. Browns which are carbon rich are greens which are nitrogen rich. Browns basically are anything that's dried or hard ish. So dried leaves, nuts and eggshells are considered browns, dry flowers, newspaper, cardboard, shredded paper, your dry grass clippings that have not been treated with herbicide or you've waited at least six weeks before you're putting that into your compost file. Straw, you can use sawdust as well, although in smaller quantities. Typical greens are fruits and vegetable scraps, coffee or tea. A lot of times even the filters are the tea bags are degradable themselves. Fresh grass trimmings and animal manure. While you can compost almost anything that was once living there are things that you want to avoid especially in a backyard compost pile. The items on these lists can be composted and usually are in commercial settings. But that's where the piles are monitored and managed fairly heavily but well to make sure that the temperature stays hot enough and long enough to break down things quickly or kill the disease organisms. So you don't want to put in there any disease plants that you have from your yard or garden. You want to make sure you keep all bird and pet feces. Toxic plants like poison ivy or you know based on Harleen's talk if you have anything that was treated with a herbicide accidentally or on purpose keep that out until that time has passed. And weeds with seeds so if you can't kill your your nemesis with a herbicide don't put it in your compost pile either. If you have plants that have a seed heads on them. You don't want to put them in there because your pile won't get hot enough to kill it typically. And there's nothing worse than spreading weed seeds or if you have quack grass or Canada thistle spreading that to a place that doesn't have it already. And you also don't want to include meats bones dairies fats and oils in your compost pile. As I mentioned before those things can be used in composting, but typically in backyard piles, they don't decompose fast enough and then that's when you're going to attract those critters and past your yard. Ashes can be included in compost piles at very, very, very small quantities they are higher in pH so you want to be careful with those and any ashes that come from Chol excuse me coal or charcoal should be left out as well. So the recipe for composting. Basically, let's think of it as a ratio two to one so two parts brown to one part green. That's the best mix of the nitrogen and carbon that gets that was bacteria and organisms working in your compost pile breaking it down. Whatever you use to collect your greens, whether that's five gallon pales of Tupperware, excuse me, rubber made totes or garbage cans, as long as you're keeping it one green, and then measure out to Browns and mix the pile you be fine, you will be fine. There is a math formula some algebra if anybody wants to know that formula I can help you with that. I will share my email and you could just email me and we'll we'll work through that if you want to get a little bit more exact in your recipe for your pile, but compost is pretty forgiving and we'll talk about that a little bit later. So let's talk about the recipe are you actually going to put your ingredients together. The first thing to remember is particle size, you want to chop your compost ingredients so that they are smaller size, so they have a larger surface area and break down more quickly. If you put a whole apple in your compost pile it's going to take a little bit longer to break down than if it was cut up. Generally, large things like corn cobs or branches should be cut up into about a half inch piece as well. Now aeration and moisture go together. You want to make sure that your pile is not so compacted that there is not any air movement in the pile, and you can do that by not cutting up all of your hard materials like branches to make sure that there is room for air to move in there. Knowing that you'll eventually have to take them out and cut them up and incorporate them into the pile. Now if you have the right mix, you got air flowing in there moisture, you want it about 40 to 60% moisture. It said that your compost should feel like a well wrung out sponge. I have to be honest, I haven't actually put my hand in my compost pile and tried to wring it out to see what it feels like. I don't mind working with compost, but if I want to go that far. But you can actually tell if you're working with it, you can tell if it's too wet or if it's too dry. And it's something that you're going to have to monitor depending on weather conditions to, if there's not enough moisture in there, the pile isn't going to break down or the items in the pile are not going to break down. In terms of volume for backyard gardeners, compost piles as small as a cubic yard in size up to five cubic yards in size are both manageable for composters are five feet in size. It's smaller than that and your compost is not going to break down very efficiently, and any bigger than that you might have issues just in a in your backyard with space of moving and being able to turn it. So keep the pile between one cubic yard and about. So three feet up to about five feet cubed. Temperature is important for a compost pile you want those organisms in there working and generating heat. We'll talk about it a little bit later but you can purchase a compost thermometer and take the temperature of your compost pile daily to make sure that it's it's heating and if the temperature goes down that means you need to turn it and start activating the bacteria getting new material to them and new moisture and air to them so they can work the bacteria micro organisms. It's a hard thing, especially in our climate when it comes to composting and we'll talk about that a little bit later too but you can get fresh compost or get compost made in about six months to a year. This is the last stage when it comes to composting, and it's just letting the finished compost just sit for two weeks or a month. Now finished compost should loosely resemble resemble soil, it shouldn't have any identifiable or organic matter in it if it does that stuff should be screened out, and it shouldn't have an order order to it it'll just kind of smell earthy and like So methods for composting, there's two basic methods hot and fast and cool and slow and their titles are kind of very descriptive of the different types. And you want to put some thoughts into which method you want to use you know how much time do you want to commit to being out there and working with your compost and the hot and fast method it's intensive. The pile is built all at once. It's put in layers and mixed, and then the temperature is monitored, as I mentioned early earlier taking the temperature charting it when the temperature starts to decline, then you turn it and when the pile no longer heats, especially after turning And then your compost is done in the cool and slow method it's the method I use in my yard it's pretty low maintenance if you forget about it for a while it's pretty forgiving. You basically do the same thing as hot and fast you start your pile with your two parts brown to your one part greens you mix it, but then you can keep adding materials as they are produced in your yard or in your home. It can take a long time up to six months to a year, depending on how well you manage it. In terms of composting systems so how you want to want to set up your composting piles. There's a few things to consider, you know the amount of material that you're going to compost. Do you can use bins which is the most common system or do you have a large garden that you're going to need to use piles and windrows. And then how much time do you want to commit to your your composting as well for compost bins. Pretty much anything goes as you can use wire chicken wire wire fencing, as long as it has small enough spacing between the wire that your materials aren't going to fall out. You can also use wooden supports around the wire cage to help keep the compost in. And as we see here with the pallets, there are plastic and metal type composters on the market you can use recycled garbage bins as long as you drill holes in them to make sure that there's airflow. I've seen pictures of gardeners using just straw bales. That's what they had around to make their bins or you can use concrete blocks or patio pavers whatever you have left over. Sometimes composters will have a multiple bin system, and this enables them to have different if they're doing the hot method they can have different stages of compost going on, or if it's the cool and slow method you maybe have one area to collect your bins. The middle one is where you're actually actively composting, and then the third bin is maybe for that curing stage of that finished compost. And as I mentioned earlier if you have a lot of material to compost it does not have to be kept in a neat bin, as long as you got the space composting in piles and windrows works just need to have the equipment to get the piles turned. These are the methods for composting that don't require bins or windrows. If you have the space in your garden pit composting works. Essentially you're just digging a hole in a garden area that you don't have any plants are not going to plan on growing things over the season and you layer your materials in there. There are greens from your kitchen scraps in there layer some browns on top and put soil on top and keep going until you fill up your hole. And then next year. Use it as a walkway or put plants over the top of it and then find another space in your garden to. So you can kind of do it as a three roll method alternating over three years what you put where but am I garden anywhere I have an open space I dig a hole and I put compost in and go from there soon have to be as exact as that. Earlier I think there was some questions with Harleen about starting new garden spaces, you can actually use composting to increase your garden area, whether it's for vegetables or perennials. What is done is that in that method if you're starting over turf, you would scalp the soil, you would put down a layer of newspaper or cardboard, and then you would layer your browns and greens on top till it's about 18 inches high and just leave it alone. This would be cold composting. It does require some planning in advance like if you know this spring or this fall, or the summer if you want to have a new garden space next year you would make sure you have plenty time to put that down, and just let it break down and then next year you can plant into it or work it into the soil. So where should you put your composting system. It seems to be a lot of, I don't want to call it stigma or compost gets a bad rap that it smells and you're going to attract pests. But if you do it correctly, you should not have either of those problems. So locating it really depends on what structures you have in your yard, you want to keep your bins or windrows, at least two to three feet away from existing structures. You want it to be in an area that's level and dry you don't want it to be in a low spot in your yard where water is going to collect. You can put in our environment. It's recommended to put it in part sun part shade. So it doesn't get so hot during the summer days, and it gets some sunlight during the winter. You can put your bins on bare soil is probably the best but you can put them on concrete just with the understanding that eventually long term composting will more than likely break down the concrete. And like I mentioned earlier you can use any type of material this gentleman here has a really nice composting system with some lattice work in it. That's probably prettier to look like look at if you need to look at your compost pile in your yard if you can't put it somewhere out of sight or the wire bins work to if it's somewhere not as noticeable. What kind of tools do you need for composting I think, you know, most gardeners have the tools they need already for composting in their yard, with the exception of maybe a bin set up. So you will need things for chopping and shredding, whether that's a pruners or a big loppers. If you have a lot of leaves or branches that needed to be shredded, you might think about investing in a mulcher. I use an ice pick. I didn't get a lot of work this winter but I did use it in my compost pile to chop up things. You'll also need tools for mixing and churning. Really shovels are not going to work as well as spade or tile shovel might work to help turn but I think a potato fork works the best for turning and it also serves, you know, multiple purposes to you can use it in your garden. I do make compost churners are actually called wing dingers that you can buy to help turn your compost piles but I like multi purpose tools so I stick with the potato fork. Water, you need to have a water source for your compost pile for you do need to add water so a watering can or a garden hose if it's a larger pile. That's when a good old scoop shovel comes in handy to shovel the compost and then you're going to need to to screen it out because there will always be some materials that aren't going to break down as fast as others and you can screen them out and then put them back into another compost pile that you already have going some common issues with composting I have the dogs nose up here because use your nose as you're working with your compost if you can smell something like ammonia or rancid butter or vinegar. That means there's issues with your pile and you need to take some time turning it adding maybe browns if things are too wet to help soak up the moisture, or maybe some bulking agents to as I mentioned earlier some sticks or bigger items to increase air flow. If your compost isn't heating, usually that means it's too dry so add some vegetable scraps because they are really high in water content or add some water to your compost pile. If you have non decomposed later layers that goes back to probably not having enough air movement in your compost pile so turning it will help. If you have non decomposed items that goes back to the size of the item if it's branches are larger chunks, surprisingly egg shells need to be broken down to, I mean you would think that they're so delicate they break. I learned this lesson the hard way all winter by just throwing egg shells into my compost pile, and then finding out they look exactly like they did the day I put them in there so breaking up even egg shells will help your compost decompose faster. If you have insect pests, you know, millipedes pill bugs, different things like that are good for a decomposing pile or for a compost pile. If you have lots of flying insects that might mean you have too many greens in there your piles too wet you need to add some browns, or if you're adding kitchen scraps you need to make sure that you're capping the pile, putting a good layer of browns over those greens so those flying insects can't get to them. And rodents, you really shouldn't have a problem with rodents as long as you're keeping away from those meats, dairies and oil products in your compost pile. But if you do feel like you're having an issue with four legged creatures, you can always put some chicken wire around your bin to keep it to keep out those pests. That's about out of time I had a couple minutes I want to talk about winter composting. This is for me one of the most valuable things I learned during my master composter course is we can take advantage of our cold temperatures and North Dakota. We can store our vet fruit and vegetable scraps over winter. You just need to collect brown leaves in the fall, have a, I use trash bins with holes drilled on the sides sides, I layer leaves dump in my brown or my excuse me my greens as they are produced in the kitchen put a layer of browns on them. Keep going over winter and then when the temperature starts warming up outside either compost directly in my bins or I might dump them out in a wire bin system so they can compost over the summer. All right, that's all I have got questions hopefully. Yes, we do carry here we go. You say the magic recipe is two parts brown and one part green. Is that by volume or by weight volume so it's it's a five you put a five gallon pale in there. You, I can see why you would think wait to because your wet greens are going to be or your vegetable scraps are going to be a little bit harder. You can start by just by volume and as you work with your pile, your, you will see that you're going to need to add browns, especially with vegetable scraps because they produce so much moisture, moisture, as they decompose. Okay, how about what do you do if your compost pile is too dry. Can you add more greens or should you just give it water. So if you can add more greens if you have those readily available or just add water, and you don't want to add too much remember you don't want to stop in what pile think of it as a dry run out sponge. So you can do both. Can we compost colored newsprint. I, that's a good question. I don't know that have an answer off. I think you can do newspaper because that is soy. A lot of the inks are soy based but I'm not sure on colored paper. I was just going to look here and see if I can find the answer. And of course I can't. I think this was an issue. Many, many years ago that they were toxic chemicals in the car newsprint but no, no it's all soy based so I don't think you really have to worry about it. No, I don't know that I've used like colored paper leftover from arts and crafts I would recycle that but I don't know that would put that in my compost file. So you don't have to worry about methane or carbon dioxide emissions with that pit style of composting. I never have I have yet to have issues with that in my, in my garden. So I haven't noticed any, any weird smells, I think the soil the organisms in the soil do a good job breaking it down efficiently and it's not. It's all where it's captured and there isn't things there to decay the material you do have to watch out for if you have dogs in your yard and you use pit composting. They will love to dig in those areas. Okay. How about what do you think about those plastic tumbler composters, those barrel composters that you turn are they quicker. The slow type of composting is if you're going to add material continuously to it if you fill it and let it go and you are able to turn it that way. In theory they should be a little bit faster because it's easier for you to turn and there might be more airflow in it, but it all comes up to how you manage it to use the same recipe with those tumbler systems. Yep, two to one it's just the basic composting recipe. Do you know do you have a general idea about how often you need to turn a pile, maybe hot or cold methods. It really depends on the temperature so it could be every couple days or once a week for cold composting, at least once a week, you can do less sometimes I forget to turn it, turn it more one week than the other week it's pretty forgiving. You mentioned temperature is there like a target temperature that you want to reach. A good range of temperature for composting is 105 to 150. Okay. And how about can you use citrus rinds in the compost. Sure, might even smell good for a while. How do you mention curing compost. How do you cure it. You know, are there any bread makers out there where you just leave the dough alone and you let it rise you don't do anything with it that's kind of what curing is you just let it set. It's finished, you can cover it so you're not if it rains, which I hope it does around here. You're not adding any water to it but it just gives the compost a chance to kind of mellow out if there was any improper there was some anaerobic decomposition it gives it the chance to mellow out and leach out a little bit of those compounds before you use it in your garden. Okay, how about you can't use droppings from a chicken coop. Is that right. Chicken manure chicken manure, those types of minors need to be composted on their own and they should be composted for a long time. Long time before you're putting them into your garden. It's not that you can't compost with them. But they need to age a long time before you're killing those, the bacteria in there you put in your comp I'm not real caught up on animal manure animal manure composting so I don't know if I can give a good answer to that. How about pine needles. You can include them and limited amounts to in your compost pile, you know if they would if they're dry, I wouldn't want that to be your only source of your, your nitrogen or excuse me your carbon. How about, should you put a compost pile on a greenhouse. Oh, that's an interesting. Question, it would stay warm your rounds so there would be some benefits to it. I don't know. This is waste we're talking about are you going to put it in a greenhouse. My goodness. Okay. What ratio of completed count how much compost can you add to your garden beds. Yeah, what amount should you like an inch of it to garden beds or what do you recommend. I think typically it's adding one to two inches over the top layer of your garden soil and working it in. You can do that every year. A lot of people put just use compost as mulch over the growing season to put a few inches over the soil and then work it in the fall too. Okay, I know you mentioned sawdust. Is there a limit on how much sawdust you can use in a compost pile and are there any special types of wood that should or should not be used. So for sawdust you want to stick to, I want to say true sawdust that comes from milling lumber, not sawdust that's left over from cutting plywood or any wood material that has glue in it because of those compounds being in your compost. And sawdust is really fine. It's, if you put too much in your compost pile is going to compact and you're going to have aeration issues. So you can use it. I would mix it in with some leaves and then use that as your browns and mix in with your greens. I wouldn't want to have just a layer of compost in there. Speaking of sawdust, can you just put that in the garden before you tell it up or do you think it should be composted first? It needs to be composted first. You need to break down the carbon that's in there, otherwise you will tie up all the nitrogen in your garden will be used to break down that sawdust and it will not be available to your plants. Okay, Carrie, what do you think about verma composting? Have you ever done it? I have never done it. I have heard people having great luck with that. What I have heard is people with issues that the worms multiply so fast that they don't have enough to materials to feed the worms and then having to get rid of the worms after that is sometimes an issue. How about is worm composting better than just standard composting or doesn't really make a difference? You know, I don't know that I can answer that, but to me as long as you're composting, it's good. Not putting it in the landfill. Should you put worms in your compost pile? No. Not outside, no. And you know what? This person, we had a question for Jan about this composting, but I thought you're the one who should answer it. It's a person. They have a garden tower that calls for Wigglers for composting. Have you ever heard of that? I think they're the most common type of worm that's sold for composting because in nature, that's where they live. Like if you think of them in the forest, they live right in that leaf litter area, so they eat organic matter and they decompose and that's what they do. So that, I mean, that makes sense to me that that's the type of worm they're asking for. And can you just get that at a bait shop? I think Amazon for that? I don't know. That's one thing Amazon might not sell. I don't know. You have to, there are lots of businesses on the internet that will sell you the Red Wigglers, but do some research and make sure, get down to scientific names. Like we have scientific names for plants. And I don't know what the scientific name for Red Wigglers is right now, but do a little bit of research and make sure you're actually buying what they say you're buying. And you have to be careful too, because some worms you are not native to North Dakota and you might be introducing a non-native species that could cause problems. So make sure you do your homework. Wow, invasive worms, huh? Yep, there's always something. How about, we got a gardener who's very lazy and she refuses to turn her compost pile. Will it ever be composted naturally? I would liken that to sheet composting. So if you, the best thing to do is collect your ingredients and then layer them and then leave it alone and eventually it will break down. I want to make sure that you have that two to one in there, otherwise it's not going to have the right amount of nutrients for those bacteria and microorganisms to work on the pile. Now you mentioned about ash, you can use a little bit of ash from burning twigs. How much can you use? That is really hard to find an answer, it's a little. I think the recommendation, if you have a lot of ashes, people always want to put them in gardens or in their lawns and it's like a five gallon pail for a thousand square feet is the recommendation. So for ashes and a compost pile, definitely not the main ingredients in your pile, maybe just to help give it a little bit of air moving our poor space in there. And you said ash can make your soil, can make it more alkaline, or it raises the pH I should say. I think it can because wood ashes have a generally higher pH. Now I don't know if anybody has read about biochar uses biochar that's made a little bit differently. There's a lot of research into using biochar and in compost, but for us here at least on the Red River Valley side of North Dakota with our high pH soils, you don't want to keep adding high pH ingredients to the soil you have. Right. How about working someone take a master composter class carry. I look for Vermont extension. What about Grand Forks. I know I'm not a master composter. But if you have questions I'd be more than happy to visit with you about them like you like I said I'm still on my journey. I learned something different every day I was just out turning my pile. And I had a corner that smelled like ammonia and I thought I'm not doing a good enough job getting air movement in there so it's a journey. You're well along the journey, you know, you don't have to be like the Dalai Lama you know you can just be like a very far along master master composter. Just a researcher yep figuring it out. How about, can a person put dried leaves directly into the garden in the fall, or will that use up. Will they take up too much carbon to break it down without composting first. Or will they put dried leaves in the garden in the fall. I don't. I don't know that I have an answer for that and I am. If anything. Oh, there's all sorts of things running through my mind you could chop them up and you could use them as mix them with green grass clippings and you could use them as a mulch in the garden. You know, I'm not sure on that Tom what do you think I don't, I just, you know what, it's anything in moderation is okay, but there's a risk when you put those, those browns, as you say. I think one of the biggest risks is people who put too much on, then the garden is very slow to warm up in the springtime very slow it can delay for weeks. It's too much organic matter I just think just that I just a little bit an inch maybe but and then work it in if you want to but collect them and garbage bags to use over the summer if you need browns. Yeah. This person has a huge compost pile. And they have someone come in with the skid steer in spring and then in fall to turn it. Is that okay. Twice a year. You're probably not going to get compost very fast. And if that's that's what you can do. I mean that's fine. It's, it's all the amount of time and effort you want to put into it if you don't want compost immediately. It's kind of cold composting so. And just a couple more to go here how about the little about that elevated tumbler compost you know people keep talking about that on the barrel bins like you see those ads now is that oh you can have compost in three weeks that kind of thing. Any good or is it just a scam. I think it all goes down to what you put in the bin if you measure out your browns and greens get them in there, and then turn the use it to turn I think it's a good method if it works for you. Try it I don't mean there's some days that I wish I had one because I think it would be easier to turn. I don't think there's, I don't think it's a scam I think it's a good system but you have to start with the right recipe and the right ingredients and monitor it to get it to work. So we've got a master gardener who says she's surprised because how come you can't use bird manure. I think that comes down to the bacteria. And in backyards you can't. Oftentimes back your gardeners are not going to get your pile hot enough and for long enough to kill that bacteria and we don't want you spreading that in your garden and then eating a green bean and getting sick. Okay, it sounds good. Carrie want to thank you. You've inspired a lot of people into having composed piles you made it sound so easy and thank you and also I want to say thank you to everybody out there.