- It might look like it's a cool, fall day,
but in fact it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 70% humidity.
And today Jacques and I are gonna show you
(fork thumps hay bale)
how to make your first compost pile.
So Jacques, I've been living here
for about two years actually.
- [Jacques] Yeah.
- [Kevin] It's actually a two year anniversary.
It might be right now
To September.
In that whole time we have just basically done
the lazy man's compost
which to be clear, works my friend.
- It does.
- It does work.
But that being said, we have a lot of gardening here.
We wanna do some more sophisticated activities such
as proper hot composting.
- Yep.
- That's what today's video is about.
And something we wanna share is
you don't have to do composting any particular way.
- [Jacques] Exactly.
There's so many different ways to do it.
And like here, we have a pretty good starting point
and we'll talk exactly about how to build the perfect pile.
- [Kevin] And you can go really
as deep down the rabbit hole as you want.
- Oh yeah.
- You can try to optimize
for the perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio, et cetera.
We'll get into that.
Or you could literally do this and it actually
works somewhat well as long as you get down into the middle.
So let's take a look at this pile.
We'll take a look at the compost bin
and let's talk about how compost happens.
Building your first pile,
you need to know about four key ingredients.
First you have your classics, your browns and your greens
or your carbon and your nitrogen.
So kick it off with nitrogen, Jacques.
- [Jacques] Nitrogen is your fresh plant material.
So think fresh grass clippings, tomato cuttings
anything that's alive and green, like everything here.
- Everything you see here
in its current state would be a green.
Then you have your browns like straw,
or dried leaves, or dried grass clippings,
or all the mulch that you see right here.
It is very, very high in carbon.
Then you have your air and your water.
You need air because this is an aerobic process with air.
So you can do bokashi, which is anaerobic,
which is what I used to do back in the day in my old space.
Great for apartment gardeners,
but that's not what we're talking about here.
So you need air, good air flow
which is why this design has some slats on the side.
And then water.
- [Jacques] Water without water, you don't really have life
and just like us, the microbes need the water to survive.
So as they're kind of all reproducing and replicating
that's generating all the heat.
So if your pile dries out
they die and your compost dies with it.
- Exactly. So how much volume do you need to start a pile?
Common recommendation is three by three by three,
or one cubic yard.
- Yep.
- This is a little bit bigger than that.
I'd say honestly, pretty good recommendation.
Can you get away with less?
- Yeah. It just requires more management.
- So let's go back to the pile
and we'll talk about how to actually construct your layers
in your very first bin.
So back here at the pile, there's two ways
or philosophies I think to go about building and layering,
trying to hit the perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio.
- Can get really intense.
- You can get really intense.
So Jacques, why don't you lead us off with the simpler way.
- So the simplest way and the way that I usually go
with is just 50/50 browns and greens.
So you put in a pile of tomatoes,
put an equal pile of brown in
via straw or whatever you have.
- That's the easy way.
Sometimes you can even skew
towards a two to one of brown to green.
- Yep.
- But the scientific holy grail, so to speak
is 30 to one carbon to nitrogen ratio.
And this is where we have to enter nerd mode.
Okay, now here's the wrinkle
that most people get confused about when building a pile.
It is the fact that you want to hit this magical 30 to one
carbon to nitrogen ratio.
- Yep.
- So 30 parts carbon by weight one part nitrogen.
But here's the trick.
Grab something from the pile
just anything, whatever you want.
Okay, so you have a sunflower stalk.
And I'm gonna grab, I think this was some mint.
Okay. Actually this is water crest.
And you see this big old root from the pond.
Now these have different carbon to nitrogen ratios.
Even a brown, like straw or sawdust or even wood chips.
Wood chips have a 500 to one carbon to nitrogen ratio.
Whereas grass clippings are something like
20 to one carbon to nitrogen ratio.
- [Jacques] And in the end of the day,
you don't know what this is and what that is,
so you can get really lost in the mix
if you think about it too much.
- You can get lost in the sauce,
and some people do, and honestly they find the holy grail.
- Yeah.
- You actually can create incredible compost
if you are that precise.
- Hats off.
I've never done it myself.
I have to be honest with you guys.
I try to just go, not necessarily chill mode,
but just like, hey, let's be reasonable.
I'm not hitting Excel and calculating my volumes and stuff.
So we put a chart up for you
so you can kind of nerd out on it if you want.
But let's just start to move this over there
and talk a little bit about surface area
which is weirdly important.
(groovy rythmic music)
so you could put these sunflower stocks
directly in the compost.
You could even break them up
and put them in and yes, it would break down.
The question is how long would it take?
- Very long time.
- Yeah, and what's the reason for that?
- It's because it, the microbes are what break it down.
So the more surface area,
the more action for the microbes to get
on to the material and break it down.
- Yeah, so if you shred it up or chop it up in some way
you certainly don't need this behemoth that we have here
but it's just gonna increase the overall surface area
of this material, which means more microbes
across more of the surface
eating it up quicker, reproducing, breaking it down.
- [Jacques] Yeah, and a quick tip,
if you don't have a chipper shredder
just throw all your stuff on the ground
and get a flat head shovel and just chop it up like that.
- [Kevin] Just stab it, yeah, just stab it and you're good.
- [Jacques] Yep.
- [Kevin] So we're into chip shred mode
and then this all goes over there to build the pile.
So take a look at what we have
broken the sunflower stock down into.
Actually kind of weird
it almost looks like a manufactured product
with the sort of cellulose squishiness in there.
Sunflower is a weirdly interesting plant,
but you can just see how much easier
this is gonna be to break down.
So we have a lot more to do.
We'll see you over at the pile.
Woo, little Bit of chipping, little bit of shredding,
but we have a lot of material here.
So we have some of that pre-ground down browns mostly
with the sunflower stocks looking really nice.
We have some kind of floaty greens and browns here
with some vining cucumbers and such.
Then we have an input that we bought basically
for like 10 bucks, right?
- Yeah.
- Just a bale of straw.
- [Jacques] Just an old bale of straw.
- [Kevin] So that's a pure brown.
Most homeowners have a hard time getting browns.
We especially have a hard time here in San Diego
'cause we don't live in an area with deciduous trees
that the leaves fall.
So Jacques.
- [Jacques] Yeah?
- Layers, talk to me.
- Layers. So the first most important layer
is actually soil.
In my opinion. It allows water to infiltrate somewhere.
And it also is where all the soil microorganisms live.
So then they're already here and ready to start your pile.
Next up you need something chunky
to help allow airflow at the bottom.
This is perfect 'cause it's not broken down.
Surface area is good, but too much surface area leads
to a wet pile that doesn't breathe.
So at the beginning having a nice chunky layer is perfect.
- [Kevin] Yeah, we talked about surface area.
That doesn't mean you should grind everything
to a fine powder and then put it in.
Of course you'd be making like organic cement
at that point in time.
So this is a really good way to start.
Typically you're thinking two to six inch layers
brown to green.
This is very fluffy.
So this will sort of compress down.
So I wouldn't worry too much about how high this is.
So I'm just getting a base layer in here.
- I like to start with brown, green brown
so that you have the sandwich
to soak up all that extra moisture.
- [Kevin] Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaking of, you do need to have a hose on hand.
- It's true.
- You want to be wetting this down as you go.
Nothing wild, but just like enough in each layer
that you're giving those microbes something
to actually act upon.
- At the start, it's a little looser
but basically you want the pile overall
to feel like a damp sponge.
So this shouldn't be filled with water,
but it should be at least damp.
- [Jacques] In my opinion tomatoes are the best thing
to start a compost pile with.
They're very high nitrogen, which means that
it's going to heat up the pile very quickly, very fast.
And this time of year, end of fall
or end of summer I should say,
you probably have a lot of tomatoes
and you are wondering what to do with them.
Best time to start a compost pile
it gets in fresh nitrogen
into that pile and gets hot real fast.
- So when you're adding a material like straw
you don't really want to add it in
in this big old clump like this 'cause it's matted.
It's gonna be a big block that's gonna kind of
have an anaerobic pocket.
So I like to come over, hopefully you don't have allergies
and just kind of brush it off into the pile like this
break it up a little bit 'cause it's such a flat material
it really can compress and mat
and you just don't want that to happen.
So this is the final layer of my browns before I go back
to the green layer that Jacques got with those toms
I've got my shears out.
So I have one of my favorite uses for shears.
You come through and just quickly cut these
down just a little bit.
You don't have to be precise or anything like that.
Just come in, just give it a little bit of this
just to kind of break it up a little bit.
These go in, if you've been counting,
as green layer number two,
we'll take one of our slats and actually slide it in here.
- [Jacques] So I guess this is another
nice moment to mention that the best compost pile,
is the one that's made with the most ingredients.
So alternating your brown source,
your greens, is gonna just make your pile have
the most nutrients and it'll just be better in the end.
- [Kevin] And you've got
basically fresh leaves from your place.
- [Jacques] Yeah.
- [Kevin] What's cool is
you actually can make leaf mold from that.
- [Jacques] Oh yeah.
- [Kevin] Which is its own...
that's its own beast.
- [Jacques] Yeah. I've never gone down that road
just because I basically don't have enough leaves.
Yeah, neither do I, Neither do I.
- And again, it doesn't have to be perfect.
You can build like perfect sandwich layers.
A four inch, four inch, four inch.
But you're going to mix it eventually, right?
So as long as your ratios are right, you're pretty good.
- Yeah. Well Jacques has a cool method too
'cause he's not going with that super precise model.
So basically what happens if you add too many greens?
- if you add too many greens,
it'll start smelling bad and it'll probably be wet.
So then you just add more browns.
If you have too many browns,
that means it's probably not heating up
and it's probably very dry.
- Very dry.
So you get that perfect balance.
You don't have to worry about it.
If it smells, add more browns.
If it's not heating up,
add more greens and just make sure it's moist enough,
Like we said, basically like a damp sponge.
And that's all there really is to it.
- What's your opinion Jacques,
on those compost activators?
I feel like I've had success with them.
- I was gonna say I've used one in the past
when I struggle to get it really hot.
'Cause I didn't have tomatoes basically and it worked.
I think it just basically a bunch
of alfalfa meal and it gives that boost to your pile.
I've also heard people put coca-cola?
'Cause they're adding sugar.
And then the microbes break it down and they heat it up.
- That makes sense.
- So really it's, don't worry too much about it.
It's about learning and it's just fun to kind of do this
in the end honestly.
- I have an experiment I wanna run.
I wanna throw some squash directly
in what will eventually be the middle.
(vocalizing)
(voice grunts)
full on.
- [Jacques] And actually pro tip,
if you're putting kitchen scraps in your compost pile
putting it right in the center is the best.
'Cause it'll decrease the chance for rodents
that'll find it on the edges and start eating it.
If you put it in the middle
it'll get hot really fast and break down.
- Yeah so if I put it on the edge there,
I'm never gonna see that look anything different
than the way it looks right now.
It's really not gonna break down.
So I threw about six in there. That's probably enough.
Gave you the old...
(chopping squash)
(Jacques laughing)
- [Jacques] I call you Ratatouille
- fruit and ninja.
Oh wait, reaction time, reaction time challenge.
(shears slicing)
- Too early!
- Too early.
- Right here though? Ready?
Oh!
- [Jacques] Right in half.
(laughing)
- Do you think I have the accuracy to 50% cleave it
right down the middle?
- If you throw it perfectly.
Oh, who doubting?
- [Kevin] Problem solved.
- [Jacques] Why am I doubting?
- [Kevin] Problem solved.
(drum music)
So we've built it up pretty dang high.
Jacques giving the final water.
I'm just kind of moving some stuff around here on the top.
But you gotta know what to do
once you actually build the pile.
For the most part, it's sort of sit and wait.
But we do have this Rio Temp compost thermometer,
actually up on our store.
One of my favorite compost thermometer.
Long, long, long guy, jam it down in.
You want that bottom
to be right around where the middle of the pile is.
Pretty sure I just hit a squash there.
(laughing)
But what you're waiting to see is roughly about
120 degrees by the next day, Fahrenheit.
Really perfect compost is above 140
but as long as you start seeing the heat climb,
you're in a good spot.
So you know how to build your compost pile.
But there's a lot of mistakes you can make when composting.
So this video right here
will show you the mistakes to avoid.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
(squash thumping)