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Composting: Nature's Most Interesting Process · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, you may have noticed this past Saturday, you got
0:05
Speaker 1: an extra episode of Stuff you should know. That's why,
0:08
Speaker 1: as case selects. That's right, it was not a mistake.
0:11
Speaker 1: What we decided to do here after nine plus years
0:14
Speaker 1: is um, you know, maybe you don't know that we
0:17
Speaker 1: have nine plus episodes. Uh, so we're gonna start throwing
0:21
Speaker 1: out all I don't want to call it a rerun. Well, no,
0:25
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hand selected curated episode by us. Yeah,
0:30
Speaker 1: a classic if you will. But Joshua pick one out,
0:33
Speaker 1: I'll pick one out. Um might be Newsy, it might
0:36
Speaker 1: just be one of our favorites, and we're gonna run
0:37
Speaker 1: those on Saturday. If you haven't heard it, check it out.
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Speaker 1: If you have, we'd love for you to listen again,
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Speaker 1: So check it out in your podcast feed. It's as
0:46
Speaker 1: simple as that. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from
0:51
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Hey, welcome to the pod kist.
1:00
Speaker 1: I'm josh the Man Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
1:05
Speaker 1: and I think I neglected to say last time you did,
1:10
Speaker 1: guest producer Noel was with us. That's right. So if
1:13
Speaker 1: you listened to the Shroud of Turn episode and you're like, man,
1:16
Speaker 1: that sounds great. Yeah, that was an all thanks nol
1:21
Speaker 1: uh this show. Today, I've been replaying my one of
1:25
Speaker 1: my favorite Simpsons jokes ever over my head. I laughed
1:29
Speaker 1: already just hearing. It was from the one of the
1:33
Speaker 1: Halloween episodes when um, they did the Nightmare on Elm Street.
1:37
Speaker 1: Riff is old old ones Um where groundskeeper Willie was
1:45
Speaker 1: Freddy Krueger and he turned into uh, I think like
1:48
Speaker 1: a shredder or a tractor or something and ran over
1:52
Speaker 1: people or something and said, when you had, when you
1:57
Speaker 1: had done, when I'm done, that they're gonna need to
1:59
Speaker 1: do a clumps bordered them. Oh wow, that is a
2:02
Speaker 1: bad joke. It was really good one of the I mean,
2:05
Speaker 1: the Simpsons didn't get too funny, but that was that
2:08
Speaker 1: was a good one. Well, anything goes on a treehouse
2:10
Speaker 1: of horror, you know, I agreed. So you know, Um,
2:16
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of cities that have kind of gotten
2:19
Speaker 1: woke to the idea that we should be recycling or
2:23
Speaker 1: composting our food. Did you know that? Sure? I saw
2:27
Speaker 1: a stat said something like of food gets wasted. But
2:33
Speaker 1: I guess suspicious because I also saw that of the
2:37
Speaker 1: um stuff that goes to municipal landfills or trash is
2:43
Speaker 1: food waste, which doesn't necessarily mean it's wasted food, because
2:48
Speaker 1: I don't think you would count like a banana peal
2:51
Speaker 1: as food waste as wasted food because the box. They're
2:56
Speaker 1: not counting food packaging food. No, but I think they're
2:59
Speaker 1: counting everything that has to do with food that could
3:03
Speaker 1: conceivably be eaten as wasted food, which is not the
3:07
Speaker 1: same as food waste. The point is, the legitimate stat
3:11
Speaker 1: that I saw just about everywhere is that if you
3:13
Speaker 1: took all the garbage that the United States throws away
3:16
Speaker 1: into a landfill, of that is food waste. And I'm
3:20
Speaker 1: sure some of it is a whole cake. Some complete
3:23
Speaker 1: moron through a whole cake away for no good reason.
3:26
Speaker 1: I was on a diet. Well that's actually a pretty
3:29
Speaker 1: good reason. But you know what I'm saying, Um, of
3:33
Speaker 1: all that trash is food. The problem is you might say, well,
3:36
Speaker 1: who cares trash? It decomposes. That's great, that's true, it
3:40
Speaker 1: does decompose. But in the landfills that the United States uses,
3:44
Speaker 1: we make sure they're anaerobic. Oxygen doesn't get down there.
3:48
Speaker 1: So a whole different decomposition process takes place, and in
3:52
Speaker 1: a landfill in anaerobic decomposition, methane is produced, and methane
3:57
Speaker 1: is bad news. Methane in is something on the order
4:01
Speaker 1: of sevent worse. I know, there's a much more scientific
4:06
Speaker 1: way to put it, but it's seventy batter than carbon
4:10
Speaker 1: dioxide as far as greenhouse gases go, more potent, how
4:16
Speaker 1: about that? Okay, So you don't want methane. If you
4:20
Speaker 1: have to choose between methane and carbon dioxide, you want
4:23
Speaker 1: to go with carbon dioxide. And it just so happens
4:25
Speaker 1: that if you compost food waste, mostly carbon dioxide is produced.
4:31
Speaker 1: Methane is not. So if you're diverting this food waste
4:34
Speaker 1: from landfill, there's a whole bunch of different stuff you're doing.
4:37
Speaker 1: Number one, you're saving all that the space for actual trash,
4:41
Speaker 1: So you're extending the life of your land sir. You're
4:44
Speaker 1: keeping all that methane from being produced. And as if
4:48
Speaker 1: it couldn't get any better, you are creating an amazing
4:52
Speaker 1: fertilizer that you can use to grow. You could grow
4:57
Speaker 1: a tree out of a shoe, for eyes are so
5:00
Speaker 1: good the old shoe tree. Uh yeah, it's Um, we've
5:06
Speaker 1: danced around this a lot. We we well, you just
5:08
Speaker 1: referenced star and I don't like to tutor on horns
5:11
Speaker 1: a lot, but that Landfills episode was great landfills And
5:14
Speaker 1: don't forget the plasma incinerator one. Yeah, basically any of
5:19
Speaker 1: our waste management ones are Yeah, what else? I think
5:23
Speaker 1: grilla gardening we touched on this, sum and um, a
5:27
Speaker 1: couple of others. We've mentioned composting and to the extent
5:31
Speaker 1: where I thought we had done one on composting, but
5:34
Speaker 1: we had not until about five and a half minutes ago. Um,
5:39
Speaker 1: And that's a guess. So if you're rite and say
5:40
Speaker 1: it like it was eight minutes, chuck, you're grounded. So,
5:45
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, we didn't. I don't think these numbers
5:47
Speaker 1: are accurate anymore. But we generate. Let's just say a
5:50
Speaker 1: lot of millions of tons, hundreds of millions of tons
5:53
Speaker 1: of trash, and about twenty five of that is recovered
5:59
Speaker 1: through recycling, which includes composting, which is good. But that number,
6:05
Speaker 1: if it was se would be amazing. Does that include composting?
6:09
Speaker 1: That that recycling number? Yeah, okay, yeah, fifties seventy would
6:13
Speaker 1: be great? Why not let's shoot for ninety. Well, supposedly,
6:18
Speaker 1: Seattle itself um has a goal of something like six
6:23
Speaker 1: of all of its trash being recycled by the end
6:25
Speaker 1: of the year. Of course they do, because Seattle does
6:27
Speaker 1: it right, and they actually have compulsory mandatory composting. Now,
6:32
Speaker 1: like you have to compost if you live in the
6:34
Speaker 1: city of Seattle. Why don't I live there? I don't know,
6:37
Speaker 1: I don't know. I asked myself that a lot. You know.
6:40
Speaker 1: Emily and I went for our two shows ago on
6:43
Speaker 1: that lovely spring weekend. It was gorgeous and we we
6:47
Speaker 1: stayed extra in Seattle, and after we were like, we're
6:49
Speaker 1: moving here. That's it. It's a great town. I've said
6:52
Speaker 1: it before on the show Dogs and Bars. That was
6:55
Speaker 1: all it took, uh Dog bar tenders. But again, and
7:00
Speaker 1: I'll explain poker again, it's easy to fall in love
7:03
Speaker 1: a Seattle on a perfect weekend in April. Yeah, I
7:06
Speaker 1: hear it. Range there a lot though I'd still live there.
7:09
Speaker 1: That's a great place. And you know what, you may
7:12
Speaker 1: see us again this year's Seattle tease tease. You're such
7:17
Speaker 1: a tease, all right, So composting is great for a
7:19
Speaker 1: thousand reasons. But one, uh, first and foremost is that
7:23
Speaker 1: it's it's not hard to do and it's not expensive
7:27
Speaker 1: to do if you just want to be uh. And
7:31
Speaker 1: there are many different levels of composting, from big city
7:34
Speaker 1: programs to the home farmer that takes it super seriously,
7:39
Speaker 1: to just if you just want to lessen the impact
7:42
Speaker 1: a little bit on your landfill, your local landfill, feel
7:45
Speaker 1: like you're doing the right thing, and get a little
7:48
Speaker 1: bit of nutrient rich goodness fertilizer to use. You can
7:53
Speaker 1: have it just a little, small, little composting operation going
7:55
Speaker 1: on at your house. Yeah, this is all. This is
7:57
Speaker 1: all you need organic waste. And we don't even mean
8:01
Speaker 1: something that's like organic. We mean like organic, meaning it's
8:04
Speaker 1: composed mostly a carbon. It was once alive at one point, right. Yeah,
8:08
Speaker 1: and I made a poopy noise, which you can't use poops. No,
8:11
Speaker 1: that's night soil. It's the opposite of what I should
8:14
Speaker 1: have done. Uh. What's a banana sound? That's a banana souniol. Ah.
8:25
Speaker 1: You need soil, you need water, need air or oxygen. Right,
8:29
Speaker 1: So the organic waste is the stuff you're gonna have
8:32
Speaker 1: broken down, which in this case, in the case of
8:34
Speaker 1: a compost pile is food the soil, well partially sure,
8:39
Speaker 1: but no, no, it's food for the things that in
8:42
Speaker 1: the soil, right, it's an energy source and nutrient source
8:46
Speaker 1: for what's in the soil. So you add soil. When
8:49
Speaker 1: you're adding soil, you're basically adding starter culture to the compost.
8:54
Speaker 1: What you're doing is grabbing microbes from say, in your yard,
8:57
Speaker 1: and putting them on the compost pile and say dinners
9:00
Speaker 1: on boys. Yes, but you don't want to poop in it.
9:06
Speaker 1: You need a little bit of water, like you said,
9:07
Speaker 1: to keep it moist, but you don't want to keep
9:09
Speaker 1: it over wet because microbes like slightly moist soil. And
9:13
Speaker 1: then air because again again this is really really important.
9:17
Speaker 1: You can let your compost pile um degrade anaerobically, but
9:23
Speaker 1: it's gonna produce methane, which is bad for the for
9:26
Speaker 1: the environment, a for your neighbors, bad for your neighbor's,
9:28
Speaker 1: bad for you. It's gonna stink, it might blow up,
9:31
Speaker 1: who knows. You don't want to smoke near a what's
9:33
Speaker 1: called a passive compost pile, so you want to just
9:36
Speaker 1: introduce oxygen and all this sounds very complicated. It's not
9:40
Speaker 1: it's hitting it with your hose. It's um and by
9:43
Speaker 1: that I mean spraying water on it with your hose.
9:45
Speaker 1: Just realized you can with your host too. Um. It's
9:49
Speaker 1: like turning it over right the pitchfork to add oxygen.
9:53
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's really easy. Um.
9:56
Speaker 1: So what you're gonna end up with the end, like
9:58
Speaker 1: we said, is is really fertilizer. But it's a it's
10:01
Speaker 1: called humus. I don't call it hummus. No, that's different.
10:05
Speaker 1: Has has two ms, right, Uh, this is just one M.
10:09
Speaker 1: And um. Those little micro organisms in there, they're gonna
10:13
Speaker 1: break this stuff down. They're gonna eat it, they're gonna
10:15
Speaker 1: poop it out, and they're gonna multiply, and there's gonna
10:17
Speaker 1: be we'll we'll talk about the critters a little more later,
10:19
Speaker 1: but they're gonna be different critters along the way that
10:21
Speaker 1: eat those gritters than gritters that eat those gritters. And
10:25
Speaker 1: it's gonna get really hot up in there. It might steam,
10:28
Speaker 1: then it's gonna cool back down. It's gonna get smaller,
10:31
Speaker 1: and it's just like this little micro environment. It is
10:34
Speaker 1: really really neat. There's actually a food web in there.
10:37
Speaker 1: There's a lot of physics and chemistry that's going on.
10:40
Speaker 1: It's it is very neat. I'm fascinated by it too.
10:43
Speaker 1: But the upshot of composting is that you're taking something
10:49
Speaker 1: and it's being broken down into its constituent parts so
10:54
Speaker 1: that it can be reused by plants and the whole
10:57
Speaker 1: circle of life can start over again. Yeah, you're sort
11:00
Speaker 1: of just accelerating the natural process of like rot, you're
11:05
Speaker 1: optimizing it. Yeah, Like you mentioned a passive composter, which
11:09
Speaker 1: is to say, you know, lazy hippies, you could you
11:14
Speaker 1: could just throw all that junk out of your window
11:16
Speaker 1: if you wanted, in a big pile and throw your
11:20
Speaker 1: some grass clippings on and throw throw your your fall
11:24
Speaker 1: leaves on there. Just leave it there, and that thing
11:26
Speaker 1: will eventually compost itself. Well again, it'll produce methane. You'll
11:32
Speaker 1: blow up, or you can turn you know, you can
11:34
Speaker 1: turn it every now and then and maybe avoid that.
11:37
Speaker 1: But no, I think that makes it an active pile. Well, uh,
11:42
Speaker 1: slightly active pile then, I don't mean like every other
11:45
Speaker 1: day just to avoid methane. Maybe, but that would still
11:48
Speaker 1: technically be an active pile, would be a poorly managed,
11:52
Speaker 1: active pile, slightly active, poorly managed. So I'm serious, that's
11:59
Speaker 1: what they call it. I know, Okay, I'm just we'd
12:01
Speaker 1: like to make up our own names for things. I
12:03
Speaker 1: didn't know you were going to cease that and in
12:05
Speaker 1: year nine. Sorry, we'll call that the dooby pile. Okay,
12:11
Speaker 1: now it's called active management. I just wanted to make
12:14
Speaker 1: sure that we got it on the record. So, uh
12:17
Speaker 1: the big goal here is to reduce your waste. They
12:20
Speaker 1: say in this article. Ultimately we'll save you tax money
12:23
Speaker 1: because your landfill won't. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah,
12:26
Speaker 1: I mean, don't count on seeing any any tax breaks
12:29
Speaker 1: coming anytime soon. But that that got William F. Buckley's
12:32
Speaker 1: attention probably, so, uh so, how do you how do
12:36
Speaker 1: you do this? Let's say you want to start composting.
12:39
Speaker 1: There's a one, two, three, five step process to get
12:44
Speaker 1: this thing going. Okay, well, let's talk about them. The
12:46
Speaker 1: first thing you want to do is just pick out
12:49
Speaker 1: the place you want to do it, all right, because
12:51
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a bit of a mess. It's
12:55
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be necessarily, but it depending on
12:58
Speaker 1: your neighbors. They might be like, well, great, I'm glad
13:00
Speaker 1: you started an unsightly pile of kitchen rubbish in food
13:06
Speaker 1: waste I can see from my deck. Thanks a lot
13:08
Speaker 1: for that. So that's something you want to keep in consideration. Apparently,
13:13
Speaker 1: even if you do have a very well managed active pile. Um,
13:19
Speaker 1: what would you call that. I'm not making it funny
13:22
Speaker 1: name anyway, I've ruined it. Um, It's still it's still
13:27
Speaker 1: may stink here there. So you want to kind of
13:30
Speaker 1: away from the house, but not so far away that
13:33
Speaker 1: if you're feeling lazy, you're not gonna go out and
13:36
Speaker 1: tend to it on a daily or every other day
13:39
Speaker 1: lead basis. Yeah, and if you have that much land
13:42
Speaker 1: that you have a compost pile a mile from your house,
13:46
Speaker 1: good for you. Yes, you got some acreage. Uh, there
13:50
Speaker 1: might be some local rules, either from your h o
13:53
Speaker 1: A heaven forbid if you have to belong to one
13:56
Speaker 1: of those, or maybe just your municipality might have of
14:00
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. Yeah, so check with them first. That's
14:03
Speaker 1: what everyone does before they started compost pile. They go
14:06
Speaker 1: down to city hall and say, what tell men the
14:09
Speaker 1: rules and regulations surrounding composting in my yard? And I
14:11
Speaker 1: think the first thing everyone does is start throwing their
14:14
Speaker 1: eggshells out the window. Sure, that's how it always starts.
14:17
Speaker 1: It's like I'm tired of these things being in my trash. Uh.
14:22
Speaker 1: They recommend down wind because, like you said, it might
14:24
Speaker 1: stink a bit. Uh. Sun it's good in a way,
14:27
Speaker 1: but you don't want it baking in the sun all
14:29
Speaker 1: day no, because it will dry it out. Remember, you
14:31
Speaker 1: want it to be kind of moist, and the sunlight
14:34
Speaker 1: can actually dry it out, so you want Apparently the
14:38
Speaker 1: best place to put it is under a deciduous tree.
14:41
Speaker 1: Good spot. Yeah, because in the in the wintertime there's
14:44
Speaker 1: no leaves on the tree, so the sun is gonna
14:46
Speaker 1: keep it warm when it's cold. But during summer it's
14:49
Speaker 1: going to be shaded by the tree so it won't
14:51
Speaker 1: dry out. It's just perfect. It is deciduous tree equals love. Uh.
14:57
Speaker 1: Wind is good to provide little air, but you don't
14:59
Speaker 1: want it low and scattering the stuff all over the
15:01
Speaker 1: place drying it out again. No good. What else drainage?
15:05
Speaker 1: Don't start one in that old baby pool that you
15:08
Speaker 1: don't want to throw out, especially if your baby's in there. Uh. Yeah,
15:14
Speaker 1: you want good drainage, like generally you build either build
15:17
Speaker 1: a bin. We'll talk about this stuff actually right now.
15:20
Speaker 1: But it's off the ground, it's on legs. Yeah, although
15:26
Speaker 1: you can't have a pile. But um, you know generally
15:29
Speaker 1: you want to you want to build a bin or
15:31
Speaker 1: buy a bin, and those things sit off the ground,
15:36
Speaker 1: right because of drainage, that's part of it for sure. Yeah. Um,
15:40
Speaker 1: you also want dirt rather than say like a concrete
15:44
Speaker 1: pad or something like that. Yeah, don't come post in
15:47
Speaker 1: your driver. It's not a good idea. Um. As far
15:50
Speaker 1: as structures go, you can, like you said, you can
15:52
Speaker 1: go buy one. They're not very expensive from what I understand, right, Yeah,
15:56
Speaker 1: it depends on the size. You can also say go
15:59
Speaker 1: buy some cinder block and build something like that. Um.
16:02
Speaker 1: But basically you can cut compost structures into two. There's
16:08
Speaker 1: a single bin and there's a three bin system. So
16:13
Speaker 1: in the single bin system, you put new stuff on top,
16:15
Speaker 1: new banan appeals. This is what I think of when
16:18
Speaker 1: I think composting. You know, Um, you put new stuff
16:23
Speaker 1: on top, and then you take a pitchfork or shovel
16:26
Speaker 1: or something like that and you work you work it
16:28
Speaker 1: in to the compost and at the bottom of this structure,
16:33
Speaker 1: say it's open when you're walking up to it, that
16:37
Speaker 1: the finished compost will accumulate at the bottom. And the
16:40
Speaker 1: reason it accumulates at the bottom because it's of a finer,
16:43
Speaker 1: finer grain um and that's it single bin new stuff
16:48
Speaker 1: at the top, stuff that's in the process in the middle,
16:52
Speaker 1: stuff that's finished in the bottom, and it will just
16:54
Speaker 1: naturally kind of separate like that. And when we're talking
16:57
Speaker 1: structure like that, if you want to build one, you know,
16:59
Speaker 1: build a way frame and it's like got chicken wire
17:02
Speaker 1: walls and a chicken wire bottom, and that gives you
17:05
Speaker 1: the air. And if you've got something that collected underneath,
17:07
Speaker 1: it's gonna fall, you know, when it's small enough, Uh,
17:11
Speaker 1: some other stuff might fall. You may need to add
17:13
Speaker 1: it back in. But with the three bend system, you've got,
17:17
Speaker 1: well you've got three bends, you've got the starter stuff,
17:20
Speaker 1: you've got the once it starts to break down a
17:22
Speaker 1: little stuff, and then you have the more finished product
17:25
Speaker 1: and you have to actively manage that system. Yeah, that
17:29
Speaker 1: system sounds unnecessarily difficult, kind of like it. Oh you're
17:34
Speaker 1: a three bing guy. Well, we're about to get into
17:36
Speaker 1: this for real. We've been um, lazily composting for a while,
17:41
Speaker 1: but um, we're we're doing our whole backyard, like we're
17:44
Speaker 1: getting rid of our grass. Basically, what are you gonna
17:48
Speaker 1: do compost mulch in beds and plants and herbs and
17:55
Speaker 1: cacti in and all that. Uh no cacti that we
17:59
Speaker 1: do have a palm tree. We've that forever though. Um, yeah,
18:02
Speaker 1: just getting rid of the grass basically because it takes
18:04
Speaker 1: up so much water. Just it's just it's not good
18:09
Speaker 1: grass to begin with. And I'm not the best about
18:13
Speaker 1: cutting it. Lawnmowers are terrible enough. You never let a
18:17
Speaker 1: quarter inch of water accumulating exactly, Yeah, just into you know,
18:22
Speaker 1: it'll it'll look nicer. So part of this in this
18:24
Speaker 1: company that's doing it is it's not just a landscaping
18:28
Speaker 1: company there there. They are a bunch of hippies. So
18:32
Speaker 1: they're they're designing it in such a way that that
18:35
Speaker 1: feeds itself. And part of that is composting anyway, A
18:39
Speaker 1: long long way of saying, we're gonna start like for
18:41
Speaker 1: real composting very shortly, and you're going with the three
18:44
Speaker 1: bin structure. I don't know, I think I'm gonna build
18:47
Speaker 1: it it's well, it's the structure Emily tells me to build.
18:53
Speaker 1: It's the easiest way to say it. Yeah, but if
18:56
Speaker 1: you buy one, like you were saying, Um, there's all
18:58
Speaker 1: different kinds, just you know, look look it up online
19:01
Speaker 1: or go to a hardware store, and you know, many
19:03
Speaker 1: of them will look like a big barrel on legs
19:07
Speaker 1: and it literally turns like has a crank on it
19:11
Speaker 1: where you can turn this thing in circles. It's old timing,
19:14
Speaker 1: so you don't have to use a pitchfork at all. Right,
19:17
Speaker 1: you don't have to muss your hands or your hair.
19:18
Speaker 1: It's like a bingo, yeah, spinner, but with banana pill.
19:24
Speaker 1: Have you ever played bingo, like legit bingo in a
19:26
Speaker 1: room with hundreds of people, not hundreds, well more than
19:31
Speaker 1: like you and you me, yes, like a bingo parlor?
19:34
Speaker 1: Is that what they're called. I've actually gone to um
19:38
Speaker 1: a couple of like uh senior retirement homes and helped
19:42
Speaker 1: out with bingo And that's a pretty pretty cool experience actually,
19:47
Speaker 1: because do you run the bingo? It's qualified to run
19:52
Speaker 1: the bingo, right, just walk around and point out if
19:55
Speaker 1: somebody missed one that they you know, it was called
19:57
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But did you want to talk
19:59
Speaker 1: about taking it seriously? Oh my god. And then you
20:02
Speaker 1: have to be a certified bingo master to run the show. Yeah,
20:07
Speaker 1: and they'll like tell you to hurry up and like
20:09
Speaker 1: shout if you're if you're not like loud enough for
20:12
Speaker 1: fast enough, for going too fast. Like. So the point
20:15
Speaker 1: is not to have fun now, the point is to win. Wow.
20:18
Speaker 1: What do they win their prizes? Yeah? Nothing much usually,
20:22
Speaker 1: I mean, but you can, I think, like you can
20:24
Speaker 1: play bingo and casinos for thousands and thousands of dollars
20:28
Speaker 1: usually at old folks humes. They don't, you know, sure
20:31
Speaker 1: there's not thousands of dollar prizes like honey bunds ugarettes,
20:35
Speaker 1: right exactly. All right, Well let's take a break here
20:38
Speaker 1: after we have talked structure and uh, we'll talk a
20:42
Speaker 1: little bit about what you want what kind of junk
20:44
Speaker 1: you want to throw in that pile? All right, chuck,
21:07
Speaker 1: So we're talking what you want to throw on the pile. Right,
21:10
Speaker 1: you got your ben either a triple three banger cat
21:14
Speaker 1: your site or single. You got your site. You bribed
21:16
Speaker 1: your neighbor to look the other way, right, your neighbor exactly,
21:20
Speaker 1: You bought a goat, oh man talking about green living.
21:24
Speaker 1: My neighbor has goats now, like five of them. Are
21:27
Speaker 1: they loud? No? Oh that's great. Everyone's while to hear them.
21:30
Speaker 1: But it's a joy to hear. So it's like it's
21:33
Speaker 1: not like a rooster. Do you wake up and look
21:35
Speaker 1: out and say morning satan. No, Well, goats one of
21:40
Speaker 1: my favorites, so it's kind of nice to have them around.
21:42
Speaker 1: But baby goats or adult goes, No, they're big ones.
21:44
Speaker 1: I mean she got them to maintain the property because
21:47
Speaker 1: she was started cutting. I guess she didn't want a
21:49
Speaker 1: zero escape it, so she bought goats. Anyway, it's it's awesome.
21:54
Speaker 1: Uh kitchen waist, Josh, that's what you want to throw
21:58
Speaker 1: in there? Well, yeah, that's the first one. That's the
21:59
Speaker 1: one that everybody says. That's why you compost, right, And yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: banana peels everybody knows that. But did you also know
22:08
Speaker 1: you can compost apple cores in orange rins. You can
22:11
Speaker 1: also eat apple cores. Yeah? You you believe there is
22:15
Speaker 1: no such thing as a core, right, that's because there's
22:17
Speaker 1: not um seeing people who leave their apple cores left over.
22:22
Speaker 1: They can compost those things. Those are the easy ones.
22:25
Speaker 1: You can also do coffee grounds. Yeah, that's a good one.
22:28
Speaker 1: Paper filters through that filter and all in there. Okay,
22:32
Speaker 1: So let's just say I a maybe a whole pizza
22:35
Speaker 1: to myself. I've got a couple of napkins wadded up.
22:37
Speaker 1: What do I do with those? Chuck? Uh? I think
22:41
Speaker 1: you can throw those napkins in there, Josh, Yeah, isn't
22:44
Speaker 1: that crazy? It is crazy. Newspaper Yeah, corn cobs if
22:49
Speaker 1: you still read a newspaper, if you get your news
22:51
Speaker 1: on the internet, throw your laptop in there. Watermelon rins, yeah, seeds,
22:59
Speaker 1: leaves uh, you know the butt end of the asparagus
23:03
Speaker 1: that no one cooks, but that junk in there. Um.
23:06
Speaker 1: You can also do yard waste too, sure, right, So
23:10
Speaker 1: you've got grass clippings, which we'll talk about in a second.
23:12
Speaker 1: We got a couple of warnings as far as grass
23:14
Speaker 1: clippings goes, not too much. Um. But like, let's say
23:18
Speaker 1: you're raking leaves or something like that, throw some leaves
23:21
Speaker 1: on their good crunchy brown ones. And you can also
23:24
Speaker 1: throw like, um, trimmings from your like shrubs if you
23:28
Speaker 1: trim your woody shrubs. Um. The key here is this, chuck.
23:33
Speaker 1: You want to cut all this stuff up in small bits. Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: don't throw a whole corn cob in there. You can
23:42
Speaker 1: know your compost pole. Just throw it right back out. Yeah,
23:45
Speaker 1: it'll just spit it right back out right. It's very funny.
23:47
Speaker 1: It'll make a burping noise. Uh. They say to shred
23:50
Speaker 1: the corn cob. I don't have a corn cobs shredder.
23:53
Speaker 1: I don't either. Um, I've never thought about that. I
23:57
Speaker 1: wouldn't waste like my blender blade on chopping up corn cops.
24:01
Speaker 1: I think the point is breaking into little pieces. Sure,
24:05
Speaker 1: you can breaking into little pieces though, yeah, you probably
24:08
Speaker 1: a corn coup up. Yeah, and you can also like
24:12
Speaker 1: you can take all this stuff and chop at anything.
24:15
Speaker 1: You can put in smaller pieces the better because, as
24:17
Speaker 1: we'll see, what you're really doing is you're not just
24:20
Speaker 1: breaking it up. You have to look at it like
24:22
Speaker 1: what you're doing is increasing the surface area so more
24:25
Speaker 1: microbes can work on it at once. Yeah. Like, if
24:28
Speaker 1: if you have I know you hate broccoli, but I
24:30
Speaker 1: hate broccoli. You cut the little florets off, and you've
24:34
Speaker 1: got that big green broccoli stalk. Uh, cut that thing
24:38
Speaker 1: up as small as you can and set it on
24:40
Speaker 1: fire you have patience for and throw that junk in there. Yeah,
24:44
Speaker 1: basically channel your inner anal chef. You remember him, the
24:50
Speaker 1: anal Chef? Yeah, is that a real thing? Yeah? And
24:52
Speaker 1: Saturday a Live Bill Hartman. No, I don't retain of chef. Okay,
24:57
Speaker 1: I forgot the retinive part that. Yeah, I remember qual
25:00
Speaker 1: of fire. It's like, I don't get that joke. Mommy,
25:05
Speaker 1: remember the anal retentive chef? Yeah? I do remember that. Now.
25:07
Speaker 1: He'd like start to if he was dicing like green
25:09
Speaker 1: peppers and one of them was bigger than the rest,
25:12
Speaker 1: he'd just be like, Okay, well you want to take
25:14
Speaker 1: those chunks and you want to put him into a
25:16
Speaker 1: paper towel, and then you want to fold that up,
25:18
Speaker 1: and then you put that into some aluminum fole and
25:20
Speaker 1: you fold that up, and you put that in a
25:22
Speaker 1: paper bag and you roll it up and then you
25:24
Speaker 1: staple it and then you throw it away. Boy man,
25:27
Speaker 1: what that was? Oh it still makes me sad. So
25:32
Speaker 1: you mentioned newspaper earlier. Um, if you live near the
25:35
Speaker 1: ocean and you've got your hands on some seaweed or
25:39
Speaker 1: some kelp, you can rinse that stuff off. So you
25:44
Speaker 1: don't want all that salt content in there. But it's
25:46
Speaker 1: really good and nutrient rich if you rent that off
25:49
Speaker 1: and put it in your compost pile. And it's also
25:52
Speaker 1: good for you to eat too. I know I saw
25:54
Speaker 1: him nuts, but just eat that stuff. What do you
25:56
Speaker 1: mean so good for you? Yeah? Sawdust? Do you know
26:02
Speaker 1: any that? No, But like I'm building my compost, then
26:06
Speaker 1: I can put that saldust back in it. How about that? Yeah?
26:09
Speaker 1: Pretty neat circle of life. Baby? What should not you
26:13
Speaker 1: compost night soil? Which is poopy soil? Cat You don't
26:20
Speaker 1: go take a big dumpost dumps? You want to know
26:24
Speaker 1: that's not good. UM disease garden plants, that's a big one.
26:30
Speaker 1: Some of this stuff though, as we'll find, it doesn't
26:33
Speaker 1: quite make sense. But it's just good to air on
26:35
Speaker 1: the side of um. Garbage in, garbage out, except with compost.
26:41
Speaker 1: If you put garbage garbage in, then it's going to
26:45
Speaker 1: be really bad. If you put good, healthy garbage in,
26:48
Speaker 1: it's going to come out is quite good. So you
26:50
Speaker 1: don't want to put any disease plants in there. UM
26:54
Speaker 1: invasive weeds or another one too. Yeah, but it says
26:57
Speaker 1: you can also put weeds in there, so I guess
26:58
Speaker 1: you just need to figure out which one are the
27:01
Speaker 1: bad ones. Yeah, so this specifically calls out buttercups, morning glory,
27:07
Speaker 1: and quack grass. I'm quite sure that there's plenty of
27:11
Speaker 1: seeds that wouldn't survive the composting process, but apparently these two.
27:15
Speaker 1: So stay away from the quack grass. That was I
27:20
Speaker 1: think that was the big mantra woodstock. It's a gateway drug.
27:24
Speaker 1: Don't have the yellow sunshine or the quack grass. It
27:26
Speaker 1: was the brown the brown as which I mean, who
27:30
Speaker 1: wants brown acid? You know? And what about uh you're
27:34
Speaker 1: talking abou kitchen stuff? What about meat and dairy? Okay,
27:38
Speaker 1: that's that's controversial. It is because Emily had taken classes
27:42
Speaker 1: and they were like, no, don't use any of that.
27:45
Speaker 1: That's like a animal cells and and fats in particular,
27:50
Speaker 1: they putrefy, they don't decompose, and future faction makes some
27:55
Speaker 1: stinky stuff and I think it can also generate a
27:57
Speaker 1: lot of disease bearing pathogen. So I was surprised to
28:01
Speaker 1: see this article say yeah, put it in there. Well,
28:04
Speaker 1: and they kind of said this article if you if
28:06
Speaker 1: you're really heavily managing this thing, you can do it
28:10
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I've just heard, don't They said,
28:12
Speaker 1: turn it into a slurry, which I don't want to
28:15
Speaker 1: see freud and Riches blender at home with corn cob
28:20
Speaker 1: leavings on it. But um, he said, whip it up
28:24
Speaker 1: into a slurry, and as long as it's a good, hot,
28:27
Speaker 1: actively managed pile, it'll it won't be a problem. I'm
28:32
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say, I don't think you should
28:33
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, I don't know what to do with
28:36
Speaker 1: the animal leavings, but I don't think you should compost it.
28:42
Speaker 1: All right, Uh, it might make sense to you to say, hey,
28:46
Speaker 1: I have an outdoor fire pit. I bet that would
28:49
Speaker 1: be great in my composter. Incorrect, although this specifically says
28:55
Speaker 1: charcoal ashes. I think that's any kind of charred ashes. Yeah,
29:00
Speaker 1: like burnt wood is called charcoal. So are you sure?
29:03
Speaker 1: Because I know what I know what you just said
29:06
Speaker 1: was true. But supposedly the entire Amazon Basin and I
29:11
Speaker 1: learned this from the Greatest Book of All Time by
29:14
Speaker 1: Charles C. Mann, The entire Amazon Basin was a managed forest,
29:20
Speaker 1: um that the indigenous people's down there had made completely
29:25
Speaker 1: fertile and fikoned by instead of slash and burn. They
29:30
Speaker 1: were using slash and char techniques, and there was way
29:33
Speaker 1: more carbon locked into the charred tree stumps and there
29:36
Speaker 1: was the ashes, so it became more fertile. So I
29:40
Speaker 1: have a question about that one. You know, I'm gonna
29:42
Speaker 1: back off of my determined stance because I don't know
29:47
Speaker 1: it would make sense if it was coal like it
29:50
Speaker 1: it was like charcoal briquettes because they have cement and
29:53
Speaker 1: all sorts of chemicals and jump on them. But if
29:55
Speaker 1: it's charred wood or wood ash, I wonder, all right, well,
29:59
Speaker 1: some boy, do you let us know Charles Man, tell us, uh,
30:03
Speaker 1: the pesticide treated plants. You you know, you know my
30:06
Speaker 1: stands on pesticides period, don't use them. But if you do,
30:09
Speaker 1: definitely don't put that stuff in there. Because your whole
30:12
Speaker 1: thing here is you want to you want to more
30:14
Speaker 1: or less organic compost pile right in the end, and
30:18
Speaker 1: so one of the things that people love about composted
30:21
Speaker 1: is it actually is organic. And we're going to explain how.
30:24
Speaker 1: I didn't know this until um we did this research,
30:27
Speaker 1: but we'll explain how because we're going to go through
30:29
Speaker 1: the process that your compost pile undergoes. Right after this, Alright,
30:54
Speaker 1: I did something we rarely do, which is looks something
30:56
Speaker 1: up as we're podcasting, because it just sounded lazy to
30:59
Speaker 1: be like, oh, we don't know this one. Um. Gardens
31:02
Speaker 1: alive dot com says, um, wood ashes are so strongly
31:10
Speaker 1: alkaline that it doesn't take a lot to upset the
31:12
Speaker 1: balance in the pile and stop the processing. You can
31:15
Speaker 1: add a very small amount of wood ash from like
31:19
Speaker 1: your fireplace or woodburning stove. Um, but apparently not much
31:24
Speaker 1: so I think, you know, like you're kind of right,
31:28
Speaker 1: and then it's it's not completely for boating, but it
31:31
Speaker 1: sounds like too much is not a good thing. I
31:33
Speaker 1: think that's what Freud was just saying, like, don't even
31:35
Speaker 1: mess with it. Put in animal fats instead. Well, and
31:39
Speaker 1: that's what the person from gardens alive was saying this,
31:42
Speaker 1: like it's so little that it's not really going to
31:44
Speaker 1: make a difference. And if you're trying to get rid
31:46
Speaker 1: of it in a different way, she's like, it's not
31:48
Speaker 1: really gonna matter. But the but it raises a great question, Chuck,
31:51
Speaker 1: why in the name of all things holy would it
31:54
Speaker 1: matter what the alkalinity is of your compost pile and
31:58
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. Because it's a chemistry experiment. It
32:02
Speaker 1: is it's a it's a chemistry experiment, it's also a
32:05
Speaker 1: biological experiment. You have a microcosm growing there, and there's
32:10
Speaker 1: actually really easy things you can do to optimize this
32:13
Speaker 1: and basically create a Zanna do paradise for the the
32:18
Speaker 1: microbes and primary and secondary and tertiary um consumers of
32:23
Speaker 1: this stuff that you're putting in there to break down
32:26
Speaker 1: so that they just have the greatest life that any
32:29
Speaker 1: invertebrate or microbe ever had. All right, should we talk
32:33
Speaker 1: chemistry a bit then come back to just uh the
32:35
Speaker 1: management and stuff. All right, what you're really talking about
32:38
Speaker 1: here for an ideal composting scene, you need a disco ball,
32:44
Speaker 1: and you need a proper uh C in ratio, which
32:48
Speaker 1: is carbon to nitrogen ratio. And depending on how walky
32:52
Speaker 1: you want to get, if you want to start measuring things,
32:55
Speaker 1: you can do that. But from what I gather, just
33:00
Speaker 1: eye and do a lot to a little about thirty
33:03
Speaker 1: to one carbon to nitrogen and and eyeball it. When
33:08
Speaker 1: the rule of thumb is this, if it's green and
33:12
Speaker 1: um recently deceased and by green like a nice banana
33:18
Speaker 1: peel would qualify as this. Right, if it's pliable and
33:23
Speaker 1: green or you know, again recently deceased, it is um
33:28
Speaker 1: high in nitrogen. Right, if it's brown and dried, it's
33:34
Speaker 1: high in carbon. So you want to actually when you're
33:38
Speaker 1: adding the compost, you want to just kind of layer
33:40
Speaker 1: this stuff in about those ratios thirty to one, And
33:43
Speaker 1: there's actually tables, like if you're a big time into this,
33:46
Speaker 1: there are tables out there that tell you just about
33:48
Speaker 1: exactly the carbon and nitrogen ratio in each individual thing.
33:53
Speaker 1: But what we said earlier, you want to avoid grass clippings.
33:57
Speaker 1: This is why, because they're too high in nitrogen. And
34:01
Speaker 1: what happens when you have too much nitrogen it's bad, right,
34:05
Speaker 1: It makes your pile stinky. Yeah, that's is that where
34:08
Speaker 1: the methane starts creeping in. That actually leads to ammonia gas. Right.
34:14
Speaker 1: But you also don't want too much carbon either, chuck,
34:17
Speaker 1: because so you carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is like the
34:20
Speaker 1: building block and it's an energy source for these microbes.
34:24
Speaker 1: Nitrogen is um essential to their growth and their metabolic
34:28
Speaker 1: activity as well. But when they have this in these concentrations,
34:32
Speaker 1: that's when they flourish. Yeah. And the other problem with
34:35
Speaker 1: carbon two is just just it breaks down so slowly. Um. Well,
34:38
Speaker 1: it depends on the source. Yeah that's true. But generally
34:43
Speaker 1: a lot of the carbon sources like newspaper and corn
34:45
Speaker 1: cobs and stuff like that, it's just a much slower process,
34:49
Speaker 1: right right, So like they have um much tougher uh
34:53
Speaker 1: structural support in their cells. If structural integrity exactly. Um,
34:58
Speaker 1: they need to have a good dang it rhymes. If
35:02
Speaker 1: it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down. Um.
35:06
Speaker 1: I thought you were heading towards that. I was just
35:08
Speaker 1: kind of like on the edge of my seat, like
35:10
Speaker 1: a bit screen. Maybe maybe there is one that we
35:14
Speaker 1: don't know, or maybe someone can write one like a
35:17
Speaker 1: creative listener. I would love to hear it. I'll bet
35:20
Speaker 1: we get a bunch of those, all right, oxygen if
35:23
Speaker 1: you're talking uh, if we're talking ratios, and again, you
35:27
Speaker 1: can walk out as much as possible. But the good
35:30
Speaker 1: news is about your compost piles that it's not like
35:32
Speaker 1: it needs to be like the oxygen that you need
35:36
Speaker 1: walking around to breathe, which is in the atmosphere. Yeah,
35:39
Speaker 1: that's what we have going on. It can get by
35:42
Speaker 1: these aerobic microbes as low as five percent. Yeah, that's
35:46
Speaker 1: cutting it close. That's getting close. They say, try to
35:49
Speaker 1: hover somewhere around ten or up. And how do you
35:52
Speaker 1: measure that? You don't? You just airate your pile and
35:55
Speaker 1: it's fine by either turning it or you can do
35:58
Speaker 1: hold PVC. And I guess that brings U kind of
36:01
Speaker 1: to the management part. Um. You don't just sit there
36:06
Speaker 1: unless you want to have a totally passive pile. And
36:10
Speaker 1: who wants that? You have to manage this thing, either
36:13
Speaker 1: every day or every other day. Turn it, like we're saying,
36:15
Speaker 1: either with the little crank if you've got a handy
36:17
Speaker 1: little barrel unit, or with a pitchfork or they call
36:21
Speaker 1: it a composting fork in here. That's pretty fancy. Probably
36:25
Speaker 1: the same thing. And it's the same thing as a pitchfork,
36:27
Speaker 1: except like fifty dollars more. Uh, you want to water
36:31
Speaker 1: it some, but again, um, do you want to give
36:34
Speaker 1: watering advice? You don't want it for me. You don't
36:38
Speaker 1: want it to be soaking wet. No, you want to
36:40
Speaker 1: be moist damp. People hate that word, so we'll see
36:44
Speaker 1: damp um. And again I mentioned the perforated PVC pipes
36:49
Speaker 1: that can help. Uh. It says you can avoid turning
36:52
Speaker 1: it by having those pipes. I would still turn it.
36:54
Speaker 1: I would too, just to mix it up right. Yeah,
36:56
Speaker 1: but putting PBC pipes throughout your pile would make it
36:59
Speaker 1: really if cult to turn. So well, you can pull
37:02
Speaker 1: them out, I guess you could, you know, but getting
37:04
Speaker 1: them back in is a real pain. You can stick
37:06
Speaker 1: him back in. Another way to get to introduce oxygen
37:10
Speaker 1: is earthworms. Oh man, this is where I go crazy.
37:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we have a lot of worms on our property.
37:17
Speaker 1: And just because there's a lot of worms in Georgia. Um,
37:20
Speaker 1: we did a great episode on earthworms, remember, yeah, And
37:23
Speaker 1: every time I find them, Um, I picked them up,
37:26
Speaker 1: I show them to Emily and she immediately says, throw
37:30
Speaker 1: it in the garden, you know. And that's because we
37:33
Speaker 1: weren't composting heavily. Now it's gonna be throw them in
37:35
Speaker 1: the compost pile. But these guys are great because they
37:38
Speaker 1: naturally It made you a lot of things. But one
37:40
Speaker 1: of the things they do is naturally aerate by just
37:42
Speaker 1: tunneling through that stuff. Yeah. So earthworms and then worms
37:45
Speaker 1: in general are probably the most important non microscopic resident
37:53
Speaker 1: in your compost pile. Yeah, because they do so much.
37:56
Speaker 1: So worms and especially earthworms and most types of nematodes um.
38:02
Speaker 1: They actually go in and like eat a lot of
38:05
Speaker 1: the stuff that's in the compost pile, a lot of
38:07
Speaker 1: the food waste, right or organic waste, and in doing
38:11
Speaker 1: so they break it down, and as they break it down,
38:14
Speaker 1: they make it easier for the microbes to digest themselves.
38:19
Speaker 1: Should we start with the microbes? Okay, So again this
38:23
Speaker 1: compost pile, when you add food waste to the pile
38:25
Speaker 1: and add soil, you're introducing energy source to energy consumer. Okay.
38:32
Speaker 1: And at the base of this is the is microbial
38:36
Speaker 1: life bacteria mostly but um. The bacteria go to town,
38:41
Speaker 1: they start eating this stuff, and the smaller it is,
38:44
Speaker 1: the more service area there is, the more the bacteria
38:46
Speaker 1: can eat. And they actually take the nutrients out of
38:49
Speaker 1: this and use it for cellular respiration, which is why
38:52
Speaker 1: they need oxygen, because they take oxygen and combine them
38:55
Speaker 1: with the carbon and they create a t P which
38:58
Speaker 1: they use as an energy source to power their cells
39:00
Speaker 1: and live and frolic and play, and in doing so
39:03
Speaker 1: they create carbon dioxide. That's right. So um as they're
39:08
Speaker 1: doing this, they're they're actually breaking the stuff down from
39:12
Speaker 1: what you'd recognized as a banan appeal closer and closer
39:15
Speaker 1: to that finished humus project product. So you've got bacteria
39:19
Speaker 1: and they're a big part of it. And depending on
39:21
Speaker 1: the phase that the compost pile is in, uh, the
39:25
Speaker 1: there will be different kinds of bacteria in your compost pile. Yeah,
39:29
Speaker 1: and it's not you know, just bacteria. There's a fun
39:32
Speaker 1: guy doing lots of work. Um. We mentioned neba toads there.
39:38
Speaker 1: You're gonna eventually get mites in there, and slugs. You've
39:42
Speaker 1: already thrown your worms in, some millipedes doing some action
39:46
Speaker 1: with all this cute little legs. And overall these are
39:49
Speaker 1: known as primary consumers. Uh some are are there are
39:53
Speaker 1: all of them primary consumers while they're listed okay by
39:58
Speaker 1: this person who made this fancy chart. So then above that, chuck,
40:01
Speaker 1: you get the secondary consumers and those are right, those
40:05
Speaker 1: are the um those are the predators of the primary consumers, right,
40:10
Speaker 1: and then you have tertiary consumers. They're the predators of
40:13
Speaker 1: the secondary consumers. And so you put all this together
40:16
Speaker 1: and what you have is a food web. If microbes
40:19
Speaker 1: breaking the stuff down, worms and stuff doing the same
40:22
Speaker 1: thing in some ways. Um, and then other predators, different
40:26
Speaker 1: graduated levels of predators preying on the smaller animals to
40:30
Speaker 1: keep their population in check and to keep everything in
40:33
Speaker 1: a perfect balance so that it's as efficient as possible.
40:36
Speaker 1: And eventually a great white shark comes along. What gets me,
40:40
Speaker 1: eats the whole pile thanks to a shark. Nato. What
40:44
Speaker 1: gets me though, um the best. The best part of
40:46
Speaker 1: all this to me is that if you look at
40:49
Speaker 1: the lifespan of a compost pile from brand new to
40:54
Speaker 1: finished humus to humus, it's a it forms a bell.
40:59
Speaker 1: It's as the temperature gradient goes right, Yeah, it's really
41:02
Speaker 1: kind of cool. So the first stage is the mesophilic stage.
41:06
Speaker 1: Temperatures get up to I think forty degrees celsius. I
41:10
Speaker 1: can't remember what that is in fahrenheight. Yeah, we'll go
41:12
Speaker 1: with celsius. Okay, Um, so it's warmish. And then as
41:18
Speaker 1: the cellular respiration mounts and builds, a more more bacteria
41:23
Speaker 1: born and start eating and carry this cellular respiration out.
41:27
Speaker 1: The byproducts are c O two and heat, and heat
41:31
Speaker 1: starts to accumulate in the compost pile so much so
41:34
Speaker 1: that it gets up to something like UM fifty to
41:37
Speaker 1: sixty degrees celsius, which is like a hundred to a
41:39
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit, and it's hot. At this point,
41:43
Speaker 1: your organisms are gonna change. You're gonna have thermophilic. These
41:46
Speaker 1: are a little heat loving critters, and they move in
41:49
Speaker 1: because it's nice and warm. There snowbirds, their desert dwellers,
41:53
Speaker 1: and they like it when it's warm. Um. But here's
41:56
Speaker 1: the thing is you want to like you want you
41:59
Speaker 1: don't want to get too hot, so you want to
42:01
Speaker 1: continue to airate and keep that temperature and check. What
42:04
Speaker 1: you want is that natural bell to happen on its
42:06
Speaker 1: own right. So the mesophilic Um bacteria die off or
42:12
Speaker 1: they go kind of dormant as it enters the thermophilic phase,
42:16
Speaker 1: and then after the thermophilic phase ends. The reason it
42:19
Speaker 1: ends is because they've eaten up all of the stuff
42:23
Speaker 1: that's there to eat and only the hard stuffs left over.
42:28
Speaker 1: And so the thermophiles go away and some of the
42:31
Speaker 1: mesophiles come back and new stuff comes in like um
42:35
Speaker 1: acts in of my seats, actin of my seats, which
42:38
Speaker 1: are kind of like a weird fungi bacteria cross and
42:41
Speaker 1: they break down like the really hard woody shrubby stuff.
42:45
Speaker 1: Um and they finish it off. And this third phase
42:47
Speaker 1: is called the curing phase, right, And at the end
42:51
Speaker 1: of all of it, you have this great nutrient rich
42:55
Speaker 1: hummus humus. But in the middle of that, when it
42:59
Speaker 1: gets really hot, Yeah, it gets so hot, chuck that
43:02
Speaker 1: pathogens that can make you sick, that can make animals sick,
43:05
Speaker 1: that can make plants sick, are actually killed off in
43:08
Speaker 1: the face. Which is why when you get your hands
43:11
Speaker 1: on compost on humus, it's organic. It's been basically treated
43:16
Speaker 1: naturally to rid itself of parasites, pathogens, all sorts of
43:21
Speaker 1: bad stuff. And all that's left is the nutrients that
43:25
Speaker 1: have been broken down in the process that a plant
43:28
Speaker 1: can use very easily. And again the circle of life
43:31
Speaker 1: starts over again. Yeah, and you know I mentioned sun
43:33
Speaker 1: earlier can dry it out, but if if it gets
43:36
Speaker 1: over sixty five celsius, it's gonna kill off so many
43:40
Speaker 1: microbes it's gonna really slow down your process. Uh. So
43:43
Speaker 1: that's another reason you turn it is to kind of
43:46
Speaker 1: keep and again don't have it direct sunlight, but it's
43:48
Speaker 1: gonna keep that temperature where it does its thing naturally.
43:53
Speaker 1: Where you don't want to, you know, put a heat
43:55
Speaker 1: lamp on it. I just want to keep it moist,
43:57
Speaker 1: turn it over and let it do its thing, and
44:00
Speaker 1: you might come out there on a chilly morning there
44:03
Speaker 1: might be steam coming off of that sucker and dude,
44:06
Speaker 1: that's when you just like you go hot dog dog.
44:11
Speaker 1: You go inside and you eat a banana. Yeah, and
44:13
Speaker 1: you throw it on the on the pile. All right,
44:16
Speaker 1: So when is it all over? Man? I just love
44:18
Speaker 1: this is why I love earth science. Yeah, it's really
44:21
Speaker 1: amazing because it's like it requires a little bit of
44:23
Speaker 1: human management. But then you kind of just step away
44:25
Speaker 1: and say, do your thing. It's really neat. Uh when
44:28
Speaker 1: is it over? Well, you can tell. There's a few
44:30
Speaker 1: ways of being able to tell. Um the temperature starts
44:34
Speaker 1: to go down. If it's below a hundred degrees fahrenheit,
44:38
Speaker 1: it's out of the thermophilic phase and it's now into
44:41
Speaker 1: the mesophilic phase. This says that it's probably done. I disagree.
44:46
Speaker 1: I think you probably wanted even cooler than that, because
44:48
Speaker 1: the longer you let it cure the more um diverse,
44:53
Speaker 1: the microbes inside are gonna be the better. The soil
44:56
Speaker 1: that you use to amend it with is going to
44:58
Speaker 1: be sure. Temperatures one uh, one of it is just
45:02
Speaker 1: eyeball it. And if it's if it's about decomposed, like
45:07
Speaker 1: if you still see clearly a banana peal, then it's
45:10
Speaker 1: not done right. You don't want to recognize this stuff
45:13
Speaker 1: is food at this point, um or an eggshell or whatever. Um?
45:18
Speaker 1: And is it is it smaller? Is if it's been
45:20
Speaker 1: reduced by and it's dark brown or black and crumbly
45:28
Speaker 1: and it looks kind of like soil, then you're you're
45:30
Speaker 1: cooking with gas. That's my dad used to say. Um,
45:34
Speaker 1: the texture, did you say, smooth, crumbly? Yeah? What about
45:38
Speaker 1: the smell, Well, it shouldn't um, it shouldn't stink bad
45:41
Speaker 1: at this point. No, it should smell earthy. And actually
45:45
Speaker 1: one of my favorites the actin of my sites, the
45:49
Speaker 1: actin of my seats. Okay, they are the reason that
45:53
Speaker 1: soil and dirt has its smell. It's those guys, Yeah,
45:57
Speaker 1: they give it. It's earthy smell. That cool. Yeah, And
46:00
Speaker 1: I think we didn't mention you know that it's doing
46:02
Speaker 1: well along the way if it stopped smelling like it
46:05
Speaker 1: doesn't just stink the whole time, right, And it's not
46:08
Speaker 1: gonna smell earthy. The soil that you add will smell earthy.
46:11
Speaker 1: But when you grab a handful of humus, it should
46:15
Speaker 1: just fall through your fingers. It should be the closer
46:17
Speaker 1: to black, the better. And it should smell like every
46:21
Speaker 1: everything associated with earth should smell like. It's like the
46:25
Speaker 1: word earth. That's what it should smell like. Like, you'll
46:27
Speaker 1: understand what earth smells like. Yeah, they said pete moss.
46:30
Speaker 1: If you if none of this makes sense, go to
46:32
Speaker 1: your local hardware store or lawn and garden center and
46:35
Speaker 1: smell the pete moss exactly. Um. So, now that it's done,
46:40
Speaker 1: you've got your wonderfully natural fertilizer. Use it, Put it,
46:47
Speaker 1: spread it out in your garden, spread it out around
46:49
Speaker 1: your trees, through it in your yard, spread it around
46:51
Speaker 1: your naked body, and run around your yard if you
46:54
Speaker 1: want to. Um, it's got a doobie pile, make you
47:00
Speaker 1: or quack grass. Yeah, stay away from that stuff. Um.
47:05
Speaker 1: It's basically like the easiest way to put it without
47:09
Speaker 1: getting too scientific, is it's gonna make everything better. It's
47:12
Speaker 1: gonna increase soil microbes, it's gonna increase nutrients and enhance them.
47:17
Speaker 1: It's gonna improve the pH and chemistry of your soil,
47:20
Speaker 1: your yards structure. And again, like what you've just done
47:24
Speaker 1: is taken stuff and had it broken down into its components,
47:28
Speaker 1: unlocked it for your plants to use. So your plants
47:31
Speaker 1: are gonna say thank you brother. Pretty amazing. Uh. Some
47:36
Speaker 1: people create a lot of it and sell it, but
47:38
Speaker 1: you know, mainly people do this to just use around
47:41
Speaker 1: their house. Yeah, and increasingly towns are starting to do
47:44
Speaker 1: curb side composting. Pickup food waste, pickup where you got trash, recycling,
47:49
Speaker 1: been food waste, been anipelesnipples Right, that's it, all right,
47:55
Speaker 1: go forth and composts. If you want to know more
47:57
Speaker 1: about composting, you can type that it in the search
48:00
Speaker 1: part house to work dot com. Cornell actually also has
48:03
Speaker 1: a really great site about composting if you want to
48:05
Speaker 1: know more about the science of it. You were very excited.
48:08
Speaker 1: I love that. Um And since I said Cornell, it's
48:11
Speaker 1: time for listening mails, I'm gonna call this child Life
48:17
Speaker 1: Specialists made a couple of these road and remember we
48:20
Speaker 1: talked about this in the Pain scalops and we kind
48:23
Speaker 1: of surminds what it was, and we turns out we
48:25
Speaker 1: were right. And by the way, we heard from paramedics
48:28
Speaker 1: doctors quite a few people about the worst pain. Yeah,
48:33
Speaker 1: you don't want a long bone fracture. Yeah, almost of
48:36
Speaker 1: them said of broken femur is like the worst pain
48:39
Speaker 1: you can experience. And should we say why? Yeah, go ahead,
48:43
Speaker 1: So several reasons. Right, we are right because apparently it's
48:46
Speaker 1: a very sensitive area, but also because without that structure,
48:50
Speaker 1: your muscles start um spasm ing, which just rocks the
48:55
Speaker 1: whole thing back and forth even more. And then then
48:57
Speaker 1: like fragmented bone hitting nerve and like all kinds of badness.
49:04
Speaker 1: So steer clear of that, all right. So, uh, we
49:08
Speaker 1: heard from from two I'm gonna read the one, but
49:10
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shout them both out. Hey, guys, very excited
49:13
Speaker 1: to hear you mentioned child life specialists during a recent
49:15
Speaker 1: episode on Pain Scales. As a childlife specialist myself, I
49:18
Speaker 1: thought we'd take the opportunity to tell you a little
49:20
Speaker 1: bit about our profession. You are right, Chuck, a childlife
49:24
Speaker 1: specialists is uh, we help kids deal with being hospitalized
49:28
Speaker 1: that's really the essence of our job. We support children
49:31
Speaker 1: and families throughout stressful situations such as hospitalizations, using our
49:35
Speaker 1: knowledge of child development and play to facilitate coping. Child
49:39
Speaker 1: Life specialists UM provide children with developmentally appropriate education about
49:44
Speaker 1: diagnoses and treatments, preparation and support for procedures and opportunities
49:49
Speaker 1: for normalization and play. UM. What a great job. Seriously,
49:54
Speaker 1: I can't think of too many jobs that are more
49:56
Speaker 1: rewarding than that. Seriously. We also provide support for siblings
50:00
Speaker 1: and provide legacy building and memory making and end of
50:02
Speaker 1: life situations. Our profession is very rewarding. Josh, you are right.
50:08
Speaker 1: She predicted that you would say that, and I love
50:11
Speaker 1: going to work every day. To become a c l
50:14
Speaker 1: S you must have a bachelor's or master's degree in
50:16
Speaker 1: child development or a related field, complete a six hundred
50:20
Speaker 1: and forty our Childlife Internship, and past a national certification exam.
50:26
Speaker 1: You can visit UH www dot child life dot org
50:31
Speaker 1: to learn more about it. UH thanks for what you
50:34
Speaker 1: guys do. You've made all my road trips interesting and
50:37
Speaker 1: thanks for spreading the word about child life. Maybe you
50:39
Speaker 1: can do entire episode on our profession in the future,
50:43
Speaker 1: she said, and that is Natalie Valentine. And also a
50:47
Speaker 1: big shout out to Amanda Butler from Auburn University who
50:51
Speaker 1: does that there. Thanks for writing in Ladies, it sounds
50:54
Speaker 1: like just a really, really great job. Thanks to you
50:58
Speaker 1: both for that, and thanks for every buddy who has
51:00
Speaker 1: anything to do with making kids who are hospitalized feel better. UM,
51:05
Speaker 1: hats off to you. If you want to get in
51:07
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can tweet to us at s
51:10
Speaker 1: y s K podcast or Josh m Clark. You can
51:13
Speaker 1: hang out with us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
51:16
Speaker 1: you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You
51:19
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff Podcast how stuff
51:22
Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
51:24
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com
51:32
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
51:34
Speaker 1: it how Stuff Works dot com