Colleen's Composts 2023
When making a bioamendment such as compost extract or tea, it all starts with a high quality compost. The compost is the source of your soil foodweb, and we want it to be as diverse and abundant as possible. We also want to think about the successional stage of the plants we are growing, and match the appropriate fungal:bacterial ratio to that soil.
At Rewild Uxbridge we source our feedstock from farmers, friends, and on-site, so we know the quality of everything we bring in to our composts. We know the horses weren't fed dewormers in the past 4 months, and we know there are no herbicides on our green and brown feedstocks. We use a lot of beer mash in our composts, which comes from our home brewery! We also inoculate piles with a fantastic Mother Pile and healthy soils/composts that we have collected elsewhere in Ontario. The goal is DIVERSITY. The plants will associate with the microbes that work best for them, and a symbiotic relationship will occur that will help those microbes establish long term.
To make the compost, we bring all feedstock to approximately 60% moisture, mix it, and pile it in a 1*1m cylinder or larger pile. We monitor the moisture and temperature daily, and turn the pile at least 3 times in 15 days to make sure all parts of the pile reach threshold temperatures that kill the "bad guy" microbes and weed seeds. All of this is according to Dr. Elaine Ingham's recommendations for thermal aerobic compost. Finally, we age the compost under the bows of our trees.
This year we have built four piles, all of which met the requirements of Dr. Ingham's BioComplete Compost (not yet certified, but working on it!). We are building more piles that will be available next year. Our pricing is based on the amount of labour and education required to make and monitor the piles. We use a microscope regularly to confirm the quality of our piles. Below are the results of our piles as of July 20, 2023.
At Rewild Uxbridge we promote transparency and communication. See the attached document for full microbial reports for our composts and comparisons with other composts and BioComplete standards, and always feel free to connect if you have any questions.
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