Debbie has a question here.
When discussing 18 day compost,
Geoff emphasized ideal moisture levels
but I do not remember hearing it mentioned
how to deal with a pile that gets too wet.
What's the best way to deal with excess moisture
and how to prevent excess moisture in the compost pile
from becoming a problem to begin with?
Well that's the way you do it.
You cover it up, right?
So you keep it covered from the rain
so our piles have always got a cover on it.
This is a pile that's just, probably a few days, a week old.
Still got some moisture.
Now if this gets too wet and we've got to dry it out,
what we'll do is, we'll make that assessment
and then we'll say right, okay, this is very wet,
much too wet, let's say it's extremely wet,
something's gone wrong.
What we'll do is we'll pile up some branches and sticks here
where we're going to turn it on to,
which will kind of lift it above the ground
so we'll put a tangle of sticks and branches just here,
about that high and we'll turn onto it,
just the way we normally turn so it'll be sitting on
a set of branches that we can remove on the next turn.
Then when we've got it piled up,
and we've got it back into a profiled shape,
we'll get the end of the pitchfork handle
and we'll drive it into the pile,
right down through the pile,
through the branches til we touch the ground.
We can feel it banging on the ground.
Then we rattle around,
we make a sort of,
round rattling movement with the pitchfork handle.
Pitchfork head's up here, handle's down there.
Right down to the ground.
Until we make a smooth hole
and that's actually like a chimney
and then we keep the top off, unless it's raining,
so that it exhausts out,
and it will literally exhaust on a cold night,
you'll actually see a column of steam coming out of the top.
So it's drawing the moisture from underneath
and taking it up through this chimney
we've put in the middle.
If it is raining and you think, okay, this is difficult,
you can put a cage over the top.
So you can put a cage over the top like a wire cage
and we've got some just here,
and then cover up over the top
so we'll put the cage over,
after making the chimney, we'll put the cage over the top
and put the cover back over it
so there's some room for the air to escape.
So if you follow me just over here,
I don't know why they've done this,
maybe these were a bit wet
but this is almost the end of the game,
and they've got some wire cages here,
holding up off the compost.
I don't think it's 'cause of moisture.
They're just trying to keep their compost
from being too anaerobic.
Keeping that plastic sheet off the surface of the compost
in the final stages stops it becoming an anaerobic heap
right on that edge because the,
where the plastic sheet touches the actual compost,
you will get a bit of an anaerobic layer there.
So having something like a wire cage
or some sticks or something with branches
and then put on your tarp over the top,
it's kind of being a bit of a perfectionist
but it'll make it not have that little anaerobic layer
right on the outside.
Most of the time it doesn't matter at all.
But it's quite easy to dry them out,
using the chimney and branches underneath,
next turn, if its moisture's come good now,
you can just turn it and take the branches out
in the last minute and make yourself a standard heap again
on the next turn.