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Put together another bioreactor in our long-term compost area yesterday. This is a shady spot in a corner of the property behind the orchard where this stuff can sit for a year (or more) and let the fungi do its magic. Now we've got five bioreactor style bins (the four on the right were filled with woodchips last March, the one on the left is leaves, grass clippings, and coffee grounds) and two bins for growing leaf mold. My goal is to double this capacity by the beginning of summer.

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#gardening #permaculture #compost #gardening

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Discussion

A.A.Ron 1y ago

That's great. I need to do that this spring, with the proceeds from cleaning out my chicken coop. What does the pallet do? Any tips or resources to share?

Squeaky Frog 1y ago

The pallet isn't strictly necessary. After a couple days, the material is settled enough to remove the pipes and leave behind air tubes through the material, so lifting the whole thing up with a pallet lets more air through the whole thing. It probably speeds up the process a little, but it also means you have to water them a little more often as they dry out from the airflow.

A side benefit is I can put pallet forks on my tractor and move them around if necessary (though it's a little wobbly and unstable, so it has to be moved very carefully).

NaturalNerd 1y ago

I am curious, have you built any on the ground? I will be doing this in the next few weeks.

Seems like you would get less air flow, but gain benifit from all kinds of soil life moving up from the ground into the pile. Maybe life moves down into the ground in winter to avoid freezing.

Squeaky Frog 1y ago

I have put all of mine on pallets so far. I thought that would help reduce the likelihood of them being invaded by fire ants, but that didn't work. The ants still moved in to two of them. I may omit the pallet on the next few and see if there's any noticeable difference.

Without the pallet constraining the size, you could increase the diameter a bit and get a couple more air vent tubes in there, to offset the lack of airflow from underneath.

I suspect you're right about soil contact helping to increase the diversity of the life in the compost. It will be an interesting side-by-side experiment.