015 – Helen Atthowe on Compost, Veganic Permaculture, Native Plants

What this episode covers

In this podcast, Paul speaks with Helen Atthowe , and they speak about compost , vegan permaculture , and native plants. Paul recalls the first time he saw Helen’s compost piles 15 years ago. Paul underlines the difference between industrial composting facilities that just serve as getting rid of the industrial waste, and with Helen’s piles of compost where the important thing is the ingredients. Helen had a laboratory to study what was going in her piles. Paul discusses the importance of innovation and how Helen used a lot of compost pushing the limits to understand how much compost one should use. Helen explains how her interest in composting started twenty years ago and how it has evolved over the years. She talks about the difference we can get using compost in the field, and in containers with plants that have to be transplanted. Paul and Helen agree on the fact that when we do our compost at home we really can’t go wrong. Helen highlights the most important concept for a quality compost: good balance of carbon to nitrogen. One has to have a diversity of compost materials and have a good balance of high carbon materials and high nitrogen material. They help understand well what material is brown and dry and high in carbon; green, succulent, like green clippings, are high in nitrogen . Poop is brown but high in nitrogen, every animal residue is high in nitrogen. The ratio is 30:1; 30 carbon’s to 1 nitrogen, but one actually doesn’t have to worry about that, if it’s not breaking down we just add nitrogen, and then if it stinking we add some carbon rich ingredient. The best rule of thumb is just to mix 50:50 green and brown, and then make sure you put 50:50 course and fine material, that helps having space in between our ingredients so when we make a pile we have oxygen. Compost tea is the next thing they discuss.They realize how awesome it is, but one has to see when it is of value and when not. Compost tea is great when you have to build soil fertility, but after you don’t have to work so hard. Compost tea actually is time consuming and costs a lot of money in the long run but is awesome as a kickstarter for soil fertility. They talk about how we have to be careful with compost because every time you add it to our soil we add a variety of nutrients, but especially N,P,K: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. One has to be careful to their concentration that changes the ph of one’s soil. They say how wee need to look for balance and they discuss how we can actually see the balance or in-balance in our crops.They discuss hot composting and how one has to be careful about too high pile temperature. Once the soil fertility is built, Helen says that it is useful to continue to add compost, her experience is just take the scraps, and the greens, all the cuttings and let them decompose on the fields, or in the gardens and we will just mimic the natural process having great results. They move into discussing home composting versus commercial composting.

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