Compost / nettle manure / watering

[oli 80]

Good evening, here is an explanatory video on compost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqnIoN3ID8c

[oli 80]

Hello, here is a video about compost https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-aLTbpsb1s

here it is a mixture of dead leaves and cut grass

[Lolounette]

I did not quite understand why the compost so much recommended in the vegetable literature is not "the ideal fertilizer".

basically to summarize what Didier explained to you and to make him scream by making a gigantic shortcut :
If, like a good lazy gardener, you want earthworms to loosen the soil of your vegetable garden for you while you sip a cocktail on your deckchair, you have to feed them all over the surface of the soil to be worked. It is by coming to the surface for food at night and returning to the soil during the day that they aerate and structure your soil (with the help of many other soil inhabitants). but what they eat is precisely what you usually put in your compost (among other things... you have to add extra stuff like hay to make enough quantity)...

and if you put all that in the compost instead of on your floor, well, you'll have to let go of the deckchair, take out the spade and get back to work!

I had always dreamed of having a vermicomposter and now I have a giant one the size of my vegetable garden!

[Did67]

If I can complete: the question of whether it is an "ideal" fertilizer or not has, for me, little meaning. Since I don't want to bring fertilizer.

Individual composting, when you have a vegetable garden, on the other hand (the production of compost), is a huge waste of energy, which goes "into smoke", whereas we could feed the soil organisms, which "work" the ground for us. IF WE FEED THEM.

The result of their work is a well-aerated, well-structured, but also well-fertilized soil, because in the end, everything is the same: CO² and mineral elements in the soil, available for vegetables...

Finally all that if you want to produce a lot, "more than organic", without getting tired. Without fertilizer (even natural). Without pesticides (even "authorized in "organic") Without any tillage (even grelinette).

If you want to get tired, other ways exist... Which always consist more or less in destroying or starving the soil organisms. That is to say, to make your vegetable garden "less naturally fertile"...

[oli 80]

Good evening, here is another video on compost and its preparation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_2Fgdoj4AU

here, last news, this gardener from the north pas de Calais seems to take example on Did67 because he subscribed to his youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/f1rcx/channels

cordially

[Grelinette]

I did not quite understand why the compost so much recommended in the vegetable literature is not "the ideal fertilizer"...

I bring my brief and subjective reflection on the interest of composting and compost...

In my region (PACA) several municipalities and communities have launched for several years in a very sustained and widely documented communication in favor of composting, followed by proposals for the sale of composters at unbeatable prices: 10€ for the 500 l composter to 1000 l, several models to choose from in wood or plastic.

Logically, we conclude that composting is the civic gesture par excellence and that compost is the ultimate fertilizer, as claimed by the many flyers, explanatory notices and advice, articles in local newspapers and other days of awareness organized within municipalities and schools...

It should be noted that I have been asked several times to do communal activities entitled "The compost tour" which consists of circulating in neighborhoods and residences with a harnessed horse and a compost recovery bin to transport it to an information space where specialists lead workshops and explain that the compost obtained from household organic waste is a fabulous fertilizer...

Each time it is a great success, especially with the children who conscientiously sort and prepare their little bag of compostable waste all week long to put in the dumpster... and who can then get into the carriage during the tour!

In reality, although this does not detract from the interest of composting and the value of compost, the approach is above all to lighten the large garbage containers at the corner of the streets to reduce the volumes collected by the trucks and unclog the recycling centers by avoiding finding organic waste which can degrade on its own at the source directly at the producer(s), namely the citizen(s) .

In short, all the interest of composting lies mainly in the fact that the volumes of waste collected, transported and stored in the recycling centers are much reduced.

That said, many citizens who compost their waste do nothing more than keep and dump their organic waste in a crate at the bottom of the garden... but don't really need this fertilizer, and don't use it. ... it is my case!

We talked about it in another post: thanks to very active and very prolific little worms (which Did calls "wankers" ) the volume of waste in the composter is always very minimal! For my part, there are 4 of us at home and we pour about 3 liters of waste into the composter every day (peelings, leftover meals, green waste, spoiled vegetables and fruits, etc.) and the level of compost has not changed. never exceeded a third of the height of the composter!

[Lolounette]

it is obvious that it will always be more ecological to put compostable waste in the compost rather than in the trash, that goes without saying...
For those who don't have a garden and/or vegetable garden or access to a composting platform, you can even have vermicomposters in the apartment... and at the limit go and pour the compost obtained in the surrounding flowerbeds.

but we are talking about waste reduction and not production in the vegetable garden.

When it comes to the production of vegetables and/or flowers, it is much more beneficial to let the various inhabitants of the soil take care of these resources rather than putting them in the composter, as mentioned above. .

[Did67]

To be very clear: while I argue that agronomically it is a mistake to compost, I encourage composting as a technique for reducing organic waste. And all the forms of "sensitization" that go with it, in particular that consisting in introducing children to cyclical processes (recycling).

To make my thinking clear:

a) if you don't have a vegetable garden, or not enough surface area for a vegetable garden, composting is a very reasonable way to lighten the bins; including, where appropriate, using "wankers" (epigeal - surface worms, which do not effectively "till"); I encourage him then. Including when the "composter" is far from being a composter, but a "rotten" (whoever reaches 60° in the heart of his household compost raises his hand - 60°, it's hot on the verge of burning ).

b) if you have a vegetable garden, it's a great pity; cold surface decomposition is much more profitable for vegetables, by first feeding all the living organisms in the soil, which aggravate it instead of the gardener, before ending up in mineral elements (and possibly a little humic substances if there were fibrous materials)... This makes it possible to dispense with any tillage... And the useful worms (the "anecic", those which make vertical galleries) will have their share...

[Grelinette]

What I simply wanted to say is that all the interest and the good that we currently hear about composting (which I do not question far from it) comes largely from the fact that composting mainly reduces the volumes of urban waste to be treated at the end of the consumption cycle, the production of compost being secondary, and organic waste also not having a sufficiently attractive economic value for manufacturers.

But indeed, the sorting habits having been acquired, we can now think about another broader organization (a process to speak industrial language) which would consist in recovering this organic waste to spread it after a summary sorting on large natural or agricultural spaces. in order to enrich them in a natural and effective way!
The idea seems interesting... but goes against the habits of our hyper sanitized society where everything that looks like waste must be sterilized, formatted and valued commercially speaking... and without overshadowing the producers of chemical fertilizers!

In short, I imagine that it would be difficult to have people accept the spreading of large volumes of organic waste directly on fields that are not very fertile or over-exploited by intensive agriculture: the interest in the soil is obvious, the birds would come eat healthily rather than scrounge from open-air recycling centers, but the visual pollution would be prohibitive (and the agri-food lobbies would cry foul!)

For example, my municipality has just launched a shared garden project: the plots are drawn with a line, well delimited and aligned, all separated by pretty little gravel paths: I think they would see it with a dim view that we spread a layer of organic waste on certain plots that would make a "stain" in this pretty, well-organized bucolic landscape. But why not ? I will propose the idea if only as an experiment on a plot!

[Did67]

1) It exists: commune of La Gorce, in Ardèche.

http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/ ... 67201.html

2) What is done in shared gardens is far from always making good agronomic sense. It's often even the exact opposite: the most radical expression of gardening fantasies, under the guise of "nice".