Composting: Nature's Most Interesting Process

You may think composting is just a bunch of old banana peels rotting away into dirt but, friend, you're not looking closely enough. Inside that compost pile is a microcosmic universe doing some magical stuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, you may have noticed this past Saturday, you got
an extra episode of Stuff you should know. That's why,
as case selects. That's right, it was not a mistake.
What we decided to do here after nine plus years
is um, you know, maybe you don't know that we
have nine plus episodes. Uh, so we're gonna start throwing

(00:21):
out all I don't want to call it a rerun. Well, no,
it's a it's a hand selected curated episode by us. Yeah,
a classic if you will. But Joshua pick one out,
I'll pick one out. Um might be Newsy, it might
just be one of our favorites, and we're gonna run
those on Saturday. If you haven't heard it, check it out.
If you have, we'd love for you to listen again,

(00:43):
So check it out in your podcast feed. It's as
simple as that. Welcome to Stuff you should Know from
how stuff works dot com. Hey, welcome to the pod kist.
I'm josh the Man Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

(01:05):
and I think I neglected to say last time you did,
guest producer Noel was with us. That's right. So if
you listened to the Shroud of Turn episode and you're like, man,
that sounds great. Yeah, that was an all thanks nol
uh this show. Today, I've been replaying my one of

(01:25):
my favorite Simpsons jokes ever over my head. I laughed
already just hearing. It was from the one of the
Halloween episodes when um, they did the Nightmare on Elm Street.
Riff is old old ones Um where groundskeeper Willie was
Freddy Krueger and he turned into uh, I think like

(01:48):
a shredder or a tractor or something and ran over
people or something and said, when you had, when you
had done, when I'm done, that they're gonna need to
do a clumps bordered them. Oh wow, that is a
bad joke. It was really good one of the I mean,
the Simpsons didn't get too funny, but that was that
was a good one. Well, anything goes on a treehouse

(02:10):
of horror, you know, I agreed. So you know, Um,
there's a bunch of cities that have kind of gotten
woke to the idea that we should be recycling or
composting our food. Did you know that? Sure? I saw
a stat said something like of food gets wasted. But

(02:33):
I guess suspicious because I also saw that of the
um stuff that goes to municipal landfills or trash is
food waste, which doesn't necessarily mean it's wasted food, because
I don't think you would count like a banana peal
as food waste as wasted food because the box. They're

(02:56):
not counting food packaging food. No, but I think they're
counting everything that has to do with food that could
conceivably be eaten as wasted food, which is not the
same as food waste. The point is, the legitimate stat
that I saw just about everywhere is that if you
took all the garbage that the United States throws away

(03:16):
into a landfill, of that is food waste. And I'm
sure some of it is a whole cake. Some complete
moron through a whole cake away for no good reason.
I was on a diet. Well that's actually a pretty
good reason. But you know what I'm saying, Um, of
all that trash is food. The problem is you might say, well,
who cares trash? It decomposes. That's great, that's true, it

(03:40):
does decompose. But in the landfills that the United States uses,
we make sure they're anaerobic. Oxygen doesn't get down there.
So a whole different decomposition process takes place, and in
a landfill in anaerobic decomposition, methane is produced, and methane
is bad news. Methane in is something on the order

(04:01):
of sevent worse. I know, there's a much more scientific
way to put it, but it's seventy batter than carbon
dioxide as far as greenhouse gases go, more potent, how
about that? Okay, So you don't want methane. If you
have to choose between methane and carbon dioxide, you want

(04:23):
to go with carbon dioxide. And it just so happens
that if you compost food waste, mostly carbon dioxide is produced.
Methane is not. So if you're diverting this food waste
from landfill, there's a whole bunch of different stuff you're doing.
Number one, you're saving all that the space for actual trash,
So you're extending the life of your land sir. You're

(04:44):
keeping all that methane from being produced. And as if
it couldn't get any better, you are creating an amazing
fertilizer that you can use to grow. You could grow
a tree out of a shoe, for eyes are so
good the old shoe tree. Uh yeah, it's Um, we've

(05:06):
danced around this a lot. We we well, you just
referenced star and I don't like to tutor on horns
a lot, but that Landfills episode was great landfills And
don't forget the plasma incinerator one. Yeah, basically any of
our waste management ones are Yeah, what else? I think
grilla gardening we touched on this, sum and um, a

(05:27):
couple of others. We've mentioned composting and to the extent
where I thought we had done one on composting, but
we had not until about five and a half minutes ago. Um,
And that's a guess. So if you're rite and say
it like it was eight minutes, chuck, you're grounded. So,
like you mentioned, we didn't. I don't think these numbers

(05:47):
are accurate anymore. But we generate. Let's just say a
lot of millions of tons, hundreds of millions of tons
of trash, and about twenty five of that is recovered
through recycling, which includes composting, which is good. But that number,
if it was se would be amazing. Does that include composting?

(06:09):
That that recycling number? Yeah, okay, yeah, fifties seventy would
be great? Why not let's shoot for ninety. Well, supposedly,
Seattle itself um has a goal of something like six
of all of its trash being recycled by the end
of the year. Of course they do, because Seattle does
it right, and they actually have compulsory mandatory composting. Now,

(06:32):
like you have to compost if you live in the
city of Seattle. Why don't I live there? I don't know,
I don't know. I asked myself that a lot. You know.
Emily and I went for our two shows ago on
that lovely spring weekend. It was gorgeous and we we
stayed extra in Seattle, and after we were like, we're
moving here. That's it. It's a great town. I've said
it before on the show Dogs and Bars. That was

(06:55):
all it took, uh Dog bar tenders. But again, and
I'll explain poker again, it's easy to fall in love
a Seattle on a perfect weekend in April. Yeah, I
hear it. Range there a lot though I'd still live there.
That's a great place. And you know what, you may
see us again this year's Seattle tease tease. You're such

(07:17):
a tease, all right, So composting is great for a
thousand reasons. But one, uh, first and foremost is that
it's it's not hard to do and it's not expensive
to do if you just want to be uh. And
there are many different levels of composting, from big city
programs to the home farmer that takes it super seriously,

(07:39):
to just if you just want to lessen the impact
a little bit on your landfill, your local landfill, feel
like you're doing the right thing, and get a little
bit of nutrient rich goodness fertilizer to use. You can
have it just a little, small, little composting operation going
on at your house. Yeah, this is all. This is
all you need organic waste. And we don't even mean

(08:01):
something that's like organic. We mean like organic, meaning it's
composed mostly a carbon. It was once alive at one point, right. Yeah,
and I made a poopy noise, which you can't use poops. No,
that's night soil. It's the opposite of what I should
have done. Uh. What's a banana sound? That's a banana souniol. Ah.

(08:25):
You need soil, you need water, need air or oxygen. Right,
So the organic waste is the stuff you're gonna have
broken down, which in this case, in the case of
a compost pile is food the soil, well partially sure,
but no, no, it's food for the things that in
the soil, right, it's an energy source and nutrient source

(08:46):
for what's in the soil. So you add soil. When
you're adding soil, you're basically adding starter culture to the compost.
What you're doing is grabbing microbes from say, in your yard,
and putting them on the compost pile and say dinners
on boys. Yes, but you don't want to poop in it.
You need a little bit of water, like you said,

(09:07):
to keep it moist, but you don't want to keep
it over wet because microbes like slightly moist soil. And
then air because again again this is really really important.
You can let your compost pile um degrade anaerobically, but
it's gonna produce methane, which is bad for the for
the environment, a for your neighbors, bad for your neighbor's,

(09:28):
bad for you. It's gonna stink, it might blow up,
who knows. You don't want to smoke near a what's
called a passive compost pile, so you want to just
introduce oxygen and all this sounds very complicated. It's not
it's hitting it with your hose. It's um and by
that I mean spraying water on it with your hose.
Just realized you can with your host too. Um. It's

(09:49):
like turning it over right the pitchfork to add oxygen.
It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's really easy. Um.
So what you're gonna end up with the end, like
we said, is is really fertilizer. But it's a it's
called humus. I don't call it hummus. No, that's different.
Has has two ms, right, Uh, this is just one M.

(10:09):
And um. Those little micro organisms in there, they're gonna
break this stuff down. They're gonna eat it, they're gonna
poop it out, and they're gonna multiply, and there's gonna
be we'll we'll talk about the critters a little more later,
but they're gonna be different critters along the way that
eat those gritters than gritters that eat those gritters. And
it's gonna get really hot up in there. It might steam,
then it's gonna cool back down. It's gonna get smaller,

(10:31):
and it's just like this little micro environment. It is
really really neat. There's actually a food web in there.
There's a lot of physics and chemistry that's going on.
It's it is very neat. I'm fascinated by it too.
But the upshot of composting is that you're taking something
and it's being broken down into its constituent parts so

(10:54):
that it can be reused by plants and the whole
circle of life can start over again. Yeah, you're sort
of just accelerating the natural process of like rot, you're
optimizing it. Yeah, Like you mentioned a passive composter, which
is to say, you know, lazy hippies, you could you

(11:14):
could just throw all that junk out of your window
if you wanted, in a big pile and throw your
some grass clippings on and throw throw your your fall
leaves on there. Just leave it there, and that thing
will eventually compost itself. Well again, it'll produce methane. You'll
blow up, or you can turn you know, you can

(11:34):
turn it every now and then and maybe avoid that.
But no, I think that makes it an active pile. Well, uh,
slightly active pile then, I don't mean like every other
day just to avoid methane. Maybe, but that would still
technically be an active pile, would be a poorly managed,
active pile, slightly active, poorly managed. So I'm serious, that's

(11:59):
what they call it. I know, Okay, I'm just we'd
like to make up our own names for things. I
didn't know you were going to cease that and in
year nine. Sorry, we'll call that the dooby pile. Okay,
now it's called active management. I just wanted to make
sure that we got it on the record. So, uh
the big goal here is to reduce your waste. They

(12:20):
say in this article. Ultimately we'll save you tax money
because your landfill won't. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah,
I mean, don't count on seeing any any tax breaks
coming anytime soon. But that that got William F. Buckley's
attention probably, so, uh so, how do you how do
you do this? Let's say you want to start composting.
There's a one, two, three, five step process to get

(12:44):
this thing going. Okay, well, let's talk about them. The
first thing you want to do is just pick out
the place you want to do it, all right, because
it's you know, it's a bit of a mess. It's
it doesn't have to be necessarily, but it depending on
your neighbors. They might be like, well, great, I'm glad
you started an unsightly pile of kitchen rubbish in food

(13:06):
waste I can see from my deck. Thanks a lot
for that. So that's something you want to keep in consideration. Apparently,
even if you do have a very well managed active pile. Um,
what would you call that. I'm not making it funny
name anyway, I've ruined it. Um, It's still it's still

(13:27):
may stink here there. So you want to kind of
away from the house, but not so far away that
if you're feeling lazy, you're not gonna go out and
tend to it on a daily or every other day
lead basis. Yeah, and if you have that much land
that you have a compost pile a mile from your house,
good for you. Yes, you got some acreage. Uh, there

(13:50):
might be some local rules, either from your h o
A heaven forbid if you have to belong to one
of those, or maybe just your municipality might have of
rules and regulations. Yeah, so check with them first. That's
what everyone does before they started compost pile. They go
down to city hall and say, what tell men the
rules and regulations surrounding composting in my yard? And I

(14:11):
think the first thing everyone does is start throwing their
eggshells out the window. Sure, that's how it always starts.
It's like I'm tired of these things being in my trash. Uh.
They recommend down wind because, like you said, it might
stink a bit. Uh. Sun it's good in a way,
but you don't want it baking in the sun all
day no, because it will dry it out. Remember, you
want it to be kind of moist, and the sunlight

(14:34):
can actually dry it out, so you want Apparently the
best place to put it is under a deciduous tree.
Good spot. Yeah, because in the in the wintertime there's
no leaves on the tree, so the sun is gonna
keep it warm when it's cold. But during summer it's
going to be shaded by the tree so it won't
dry out. It's just perfect. It is deciduous tree equals love. Uh.

(14:57):
Wind is good to provide little air, but you don't
want it low and scattering the stuff all over the
place drying it out again. No good. What else drainage?
Don't start one in that old baby pool that you
don't want to throw out, especially if your baby's in there. Uh. Yeah,
you want good drainage, like generally you build either build
a bin. We'll talk about this stuff actually right now.

(15:20):
But it's off the ground, it's on legs. Yeah, although
you can't have a pile. But um, you know generally
you want to you want to build a bin or
buy a bin, and those things sit off the ground,
right because of drainage, that's part of it for sure. Yeah. Um,

(15:40):
you also want dirt rather than say like a concrete
pad or something like that. Yeah, don't come post in
your driver. It's not a good idea. Um. As far
as structures go, you can, like you said, you can
go buy one. They're not very expensive from what I understand, right, Yeah,
it depends on the size. You can also say go
buy some cinder block and build something like that. Um.

(16:02):
But basically you can cut compost structures into two. There's
a single bin and there's a three bin system. So
in the single bin system, you put new stuff on top,
new banan appeals. This is what I think of when
I think composting. You know, Um, you put new stuff

(16:23):
on top, and then you take a pitchfork or shovel
or something like that and you work you work it
in to the compost and at the bottom of this structure,
say it's open when you're walking up to it, that
the finished compost will accumulate at the bottom. And the
reason it accumulates at the bottom because it's of a finer,

(16:43):
finer grain um and that's it single bin new stuff
at the top, stuff that's in the process in the middle,
stuff that's finished in the bottom, and it will just
naturally kind of separate like that. And when we're talking
structure like that, if you want to build one, you know,
build a way frame and it's like got chicken wire
walls and a chicken wire bottom, and that gives you

(17:05):
the air. And if you've got something that collected underneath,
it's gonna fall, you know, when it's small enough, Uh,
some other stuff might fall. You may need to add
it back in. But with the three bend system, you've got,
well you've got three bends, you've got the starter stuff,
you've got the once it starts to break down a
little stuff, and then you have the more finished product

(17:25):
and you have to actively manage that system. Yeah, that
system sounds unnecessarily difficult, kind of like it. Oh you're
a three bing guy. Well, we're about to get into
this for real. We've been um, lazily composting for a while,
but um, we're we're doing our whole backyard, like we're
getting rid of our grass. Basically, what are you gonna

(17:48):
do compost mulch in beds and plants and herbs and
cacti in and all that. Uh no cacti that we
do have a palm tree. We've that forever though. Um, yeah,
just getting rid of the grass basically because it takes
up so much water. Just it's just it's not good

(18:09):
grass to begin with. And I'm not the best about
cutting it. Lawnmowers are terrible enough. You never let a
quarter inch of water accumulating exactly, Yeah, just into you know,
it'll it'll look nicer. So part of this in this
company that's doing it is it's not just a landscaping
company there there. They are a bunch of hippies. So

(18:32):
they're they're designing it in such a way that that
feeds itself. And part of that is composting anyway, A
long long way of saying, we're gonna start like for
real composting very shortly, and you're going with the three
bin structure. I don't know, I think I'm gonna build
it it's well, it's the structure Emily tells me to build.

(18:53):
It's the easiest way to say it. Yeah, but if
you buy one, like you were saying, Um, there's all
different kinds, just you know, look look it up online
or go to a hardware store, and you know, many
of them will look like a big barrel on legs
and it literally turns like has a crank on it
where you can turn this thing in circles. It's old timing,

(19:14):
so you don't have to use a pitchfork at all. Right,
you don't have to muss your hands or your hair.
It's like a bingo, yeah, spinner, but with banana pill.
Have you ever played bingo, like legit bingo in a
room with hundreds of people, not hundreds, well more than
like you and you me, yes, like a bingo parlor?

(19:34):
Is that what they're called. I've actually gone to um
a couple of like uh senior retirement homes and helped
out with bingo And that's a pretty pretty cool experience actually,
because do you run the bingo? It's qualified to run
the bingo, right, just walk around and point out if

(19:55):
somebody missed one that they you know, it was called
that kind of thing. But did you want to talk
about taking it seriously? Oh my god. And then you
have to be a certified bingo master to run the show. Yeah,
and they'll like tell you to hurry up and like
shout if you're if you're not like loud enough for
fast enough, for going too fast. Like. So the point

(20:15):
is not to have fun now, the point is to win. Wow.
What do they win their prizes? Yeah? Nothing much usually,
I mean, but you can, I think, like you can
play bingo and casinos for thousands and thousands of dollars
usually at old folks humes. They don't, you know, sure
there's not thousands of dollar prizes like honey bunds ugarettes,

(20:35):
right exactly. All right, Well let's take a break here
after we have talked structure and uh, we'll talk a
little bit about what you want what kind of junk
you want to throw in that pile? All right, chuck,

(21:07):
So we're talking what you want to throw on the pile. Right,
you got your ben either a triple three banger cat
your site or single. You got your site. You bribed
your neighbor to look the other way, right, your neighbor exactly,
You bought a goat, oh man talking about green living.
My neighbor has goats now, like five of them. Are
they loud? No? Oh that's great. Everyone's while to hear them.

(21:30):
But it's a joy to hear. So it's like it's
not like a rooster. Do you wake up and look
out and say morning satan. No, Well, goats one of
my favorites, so it's kind of nice to have them around.
But baby goats or adult goes, No, they're big ones.
I mean she got them to maintain the property because
she was started cutting. I guess she didn't want a
zero escape it, so she bought goats. Anyway, it's it's awesome.

(21:54):
Uh kitchen waist, Josh, that's what you want to throw
in there? Well, yeah, that's the first one. That's the
one that everybody says. That's why you compost, right, And yeah,
banana peels everybody knows that. But did you also know
you can compost apple cores in orange rins. You can
also eat apple cores. Yeah? You you believe there is

(22:15):
no such thing as a core, right, that's because there's
not um seeing people who leave their apple cores left over.
They can compost those things. Those are the easy ones.
You can also do coffee grounds. Yeah, that's a good one.
Paper filters through that filter and all in there. Okay,
So let's just say I a maybe a whole pizza
to myself. I've got a couple of napkins wadded up.

(22:37):
What do I do with those? Chuck? Uh? I think
you can throw those napkins in there, Josh, Yeah, isn't
that crazy? It is crazy. Newspaper Yeah, corn cobs if
you still read a newspaper, if you get your news
on the internet, throw your laptop in there. Watermelon rins, yeah, seeds,

(22:59):
leaves uh, you know the butt end of the asparagus
that no one cooks, but that junk in there. Um.
You can also do yard waste too, sure, right, So
you've got grass clippings, which we'll talk about in a second.
We got a couple of warnings as far as grass
clippings goes, not too much. Um. But like, let's say
you're raking leaves or something like that, throw some leaves

(23:21):
on their good crunchy brown ones. And you can also
throw like, um, trimmings from your like shrubs if you
trim your woody shrubs. Um. The key here is this, chuck.
You want to cut all this stuff up in small bits. Yeah,
don't throw a whole corn cob in there. You can

(23:42):
know your compost pole. Just throw it right back out. Yeah,
it'll just spit it right back out right. It's very funny.
It'll make a burping noise. Uh. They say to shred
the corn cob. I don't have a corn cobs shredder.
I don't either. Um, I've never thought about that. I
wouldn't waste like my blender blade on chopping up corn cops.
I think the point is breaking into little pieces. Sure,

(24:05):
you can breaking into little pieces though, yeah, you probably
a corn coup up. Yeah, and you can also like
you can take all this stuff and chop at anything.
You can put in smaller pieces the better because, as
we'll see, what you're really doing is you're not just
breaking it up. You have to look at it like
what you're doing is increasing the surface area so more
microbes can work on it at once. Yeah. Like, if

(24:28):
if you have I know you hate broccoli, but I
hate broccoli. You cut the little florets off, and you've
got that big green broccoli stalk. Uh, cut that thing
up as small as you can and set it on
fire you have patience for and throw that junk in there. Yeah,
basically channel your inner anal chef. You remember him, the

(24:50):
anal Chef? Yeah, is that a real thing? Yeah? And
Saturday a Live Bill Hartman. No, I don't retain of chef. Okay,
I forgot the retinive part that. Yeah, I remember qual
of fire. It's like, I don't get that joke. Mommy,
remember the anal retentive chef? Yeah? I do remember that. Now.
He'd like start to if he was dicing like green
peppers and one of them was bigger than the rest,

(25:12):
he'd just be like, Okay, well you want to take
those chunks and you want to put him into a
paper towel, and then you want to fold that up,
and then you put that into some aluminum fole and
you fold that up, and you put that in a
paper bag and you roll it up and then you
staple it and then you throw it away. Boy man,
what that was? Oh it still makes me sad. So
you mentioned newspaper earlier. Um, if you live near the

(25:35):
ocean and you've got your hands on some seaweed or
some kelp, you can rinse that stuff off. So you
don't want all that salt content in there. But it's
really good and nutrient rich if you rent that off
and put it in your compost pile. And it's also
good for you to eat too. I know I saw
him nuts, but just eat that stuff. What do you

(25:56):
mean so good for you? Yeah? Sawdust? Do you know
any that? No, But like I'm building my compost, then
I can put that saldust back in it. How about that? Yeah?
Pretty neat circle of life. Baby? What should not you
compost night soil? Which is poopy soil? Cat You don't

(26:20):
go take a big dumpost dumps? You want to know
that's not good. UM disease garden plants, that's a big one.
Some of this stuff though, as we'll find, it doesn't
quite make sense. But it's just good to air on
the side of um. Garbage in, garbage out, except with compost.

(26:41):
If you put garbage garbage in, then it's going to
be really bad. If you put good, healthy garbage in,
it's going to come out is quite good. So you
don't want to put any disease plants in there. UM
invasive weeds or another one too. Yeah, but it says
you can also put weeds in there, so I guess
you just need to figure out which one are the
bad ones. Yeah, so this specifically calls out buttercups, morning glory,

(27:07):
and quack grass. I'm quite sure that there's plenty of
seeds that wouldn't survive the composting process, but apparently these two.
So stay away from the quack grass. That was I
think that was the big mantra woodstock. It's a gateway drug.
Don't have the yellow sunshine or the quack grass. It
was the brown the brown as which I mean, who

(27:30):
wants brown acid? You know? And what about uh you're
talking abou kitchen stuff? What about meat and dairy? Okay,
that's that's controversial. It is because Emily had taken classes
and they were like, no, don't use any of that.
That's like a animal cells and and fats in particular,
they putrefy, they don't decompose, and future faction makes some

(27:55):
stinky stuff and I think it can also generate a
lot of disease bearing pathogen. So I was surprised to
see this article say yeah, put it in there. Well,
and they kind of said this article if you if
you're really heavily managing this thing, you can do it
but I don't know. I've just heard, don't They said,
turn it into a slurry, which I don't want to

(28:15):
see freud and Riches blender at home with corn cob
leavings on it. But um, he said, whip it up
into a slurry, and as long as it's a good, hot,
actively managed pile, it'll it won't be a problem. I'm
gonna go ahead and say, I don't think you should
do that. Okay, I don't know what to do with

(28:36):
the animal leavings, but I don't think you should compost it.
All right, Uh, it might make sense to you to say, hey,
I have an outdoor fire pit. I bet that would
be great in my composter. Incorrect, although this specifically says
charcoal ashes. I think that's any kind of charred ashes. Yeah,

(29:00):
like burnt wood is called charcoal. So are you sure?
Because I know what I know what you just said
was true. But supposedly the entire Amazon Basin and I
learned this from the Greatest Book of All Time by
Charles C. Mann, The entire Amazon Basin was a managed forest,
um that the indigenous people's down there had made completely

(29:25):
fertile and fikoned by instead of slash and burn. They
were using slash and char techniques, and there was way
more carbon locked into the charred tree stumps and there
was the ashes, so it became more fertile. So I
have a question about that one. You know, I'm gonna
back off of my determined stance because I don't know

(29:47):
it would make sense if it was coal like it
it was like charcoal briquettes because they have cement and
all sorts of chemicals and jump on them. But if
it's charred wood or wood ash, I wonder, all right, well,
some boy, do you let us know Charles Man, tell us, uh,
the pesticide treated plants. You you know, you know my
stands on pesticides period, don't use them. But if you do,

(30:09):
definitely don't put that stuff in there. Because your whole
thing here is you want to you want to more
or less organic compost pile right in the end, and
so one of the things that people love about composted
is it actually is organic. And we're going to explain how.
I didn't know this until um we did this research,
but we'll explain how because we're going to go through
the process that your compost pile undergoes. Right after this, Alright,

(30:54):
I did something we rarely do, which is looks something
up as we're podcasting, because it just sounded lazy to
be like, oh, we don't know this one. Um. Gardens
alive dot com says, um, wood ashes are so strongly
alkaline that it doesn't take a lot to upset the
balance in the pile and stop the processing. You can

(31:15):
add a very small amount of wood ash from like
your fireplace or woodburning stove. Um, but apparently not much
so I think, you know, like you're kind of right,
and then it's it's not completely for boating, but it
sounds like too much is not a good thing. I
think that's what Freud was just saying, like, don't even
mess with it. Put in animal fats instead. Well, and

(31:39):
that's what the person from gardens alive was saying this,
like it's so little that it's not really going to
make a difference. And if you're trying to get rid
of it in a different way, she's like, it's not
really gonna matter. But the but it raises a great question, Chuck,
why in the name of all things holy would it
matter what the alkalinity is of your compost pile and
I'll tell you why. Because it's a chemistry experiment. It

(32:02):
is it's a it's a chemistry experiment, it's also a
biological experiment. You have a microcosm growing there, and there's
actually really easy things you can do to optimize this
and basically create a Zanna do paradise for the the
microbes and primary and secondary and tertiary um consumers of

(32:23):
this stuff that you're putting in there to break down
so that they just have the greatest life that any
invertebrate or microbe ever had. All right, should we talk
chemistry a bit then come back to just uh the
management and stuff. All right, what you're really talking about
here for an ideal composting scene, you need a disco ball,

(32:44):
and you need a proper uh C in ratio, which
is carbon to nitrogen ratio. And depending on how walky
you want to get, if you want to start measuring things,
you can do that. But from what I gather, just
eye and do a lot to a little about thirty
to one carbon to nitrogen and and eyeball it. When

(33:08):
the rule of thumb is this, if it's green and
um recently deceased and by green like a nice banana
peel would qualify as this. Right, if it's pliable and
green or you know, again recently deceased, it is um

(33:28):
high in nitrogen. Right, if it's brown and dried, it's
high in carbon. So you want to actually when you're
adding the compost, you want to just kind of layer
this stuff in about those ratios thirty to one, And
there's actually tables, like if you're a big time into this,
there are tables out there that tell you just about
exactly the carbon and nitrogen ratio in each individual thing.

(33:53):
But what we said earlier, you want to avoid grass clippings.
This is why, because they're too high in nitrogen. And
what happens when you have too much nitrogen it's bad, right,
It makes your pile stinky. Yeah, that's is that where
the methane starts creeping in. That actually leads to ammonia gas. Right.

(34:14):
But you also don't want too much carbon either, chuck,
because so you carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is like the
building block and it's an energy source for these microbes.
Nitrogen is um essential to their growth and their metabolic
activity as well. But when they have this in these concentrations,
that's when they flourish. Yeah. And the other problem with

(34:35):
carbon two is just just it breaks down so slowly. Um. Well,
it depends on the source. Yeah that's true. But generally
a lot of the carbon sources like newspaper and corn
cobs and stuff like that, it's just a much slower process,
right right, So like they have um much tougher uh
structural support in their cells. If structural integrity exactly. Um,

(34:58):
they need to have a good dang it rhymes. If
it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down. Um.
I thought you were heading towards that. I was just
kind of like on the edge of my seat, like
a bit screen. Maybe maybe there is one that we
don't know, or maybe someone can write one like a
creative listener. I would love to hear it. I'll bet

(35:20):
we get a bunch of those, all right, oxygen if
you're talking uh, if we're talking ratios, and again, you
can walk out as much as possible. But the good
news is about your compost piles that it's not like
it needs to be like the oxygen that you need
walking around to breathe, which is in the atmosphere. Yeah,
that's what we have going on. It can get by

(35:42):
these aerobic microbes as low as five percent. Yeah, that's
cutting it close. That's getting close. They say, try to
hover somewhere around ten or up. And how do you
measure that? You don't? You just airate your pile and
it's fine by either turning it or you can do
hold PVC. And I guess that brings U kind of
to the management part. Um. You don't just sit there

(36:06):
unless you want to have a totally passive pile. And
who wants that? You have to manage this thing, either
every day or every other day. Turn it, like we're saying,
either with the little crank if you've got a handy
little barrel unit, or with a pitchfork or they call
it a composting fork in here. That's pretty fancy. Probably
the same thing. And it's the same thing as a pitchfork,

(36:27):
except like fifty dollars more. Uh, you want to water
it some, but again, um, do you want to give
watering advice? You don't want it for me. You don't
want it to be soaking wet. No, you want to
be moist damp. People hate that word, so we'll see
damp um. And again I mentioned the perforated PVC pipes

(36:49):
that can help. Uh. It says you can avoid turning
it by having those pipes. I would still turn it.
I would too, just to mix it up right. Yeah,
but putting PBC pipes throughout your pile would make it
really if cult to turn. So well, you can pull
them out, I guess you could, you know, but getting
them back in is a real pain. You can stick
him back in. Another way to get to introduce oxygen

(37:10):
is earthworms. Oh man, this is where I go crazy.
Oh yeah, we have a lot of worms on our property.
And just because there's a lot of worms in Georgia. Um,
we did a great episode on earthworms, remember, yeah, And
every time I find them, Um, I picked them up,
I show them to Emily and she immediately says, throw

(37:30):
it in the garden, you know. And that's because we
weren't composting heavily. Now it's gonna be throw them in
the compost pile. But these guys are great because they
naturally It made you a lot of things. But one
of the things they do is naturally aerate by just
tunneling through that stuff. Yeah. So earthworms and then worms
in general are probably the most important non microscopic resident

(37:53):
in your compost pile. Yeah, because they do so much.
So worms and especially earthworms and most types of nematodes um.
They actually go in and like eat a lot of
the stuff that's in the compost pile, a lot of
the food waste, right or organic waste, and in doing
so they break it down, and as they break it down,

(38:14):
they make it easier for the microbes to digest themselves.
Should we start with the microbes? Okay, So again this
compost pile, when you add food waste to the pile
and add soil, you're introducing energy source to energy consumer. Okay.
And at the base of this is the is microbial

(38:36):
life bacteria mostly but um. The bacteria go to town,
they start eating this stuff, and the smaller it is,
the more service area there is, the more the bacteria
can eat. And they actually take the nutrients out of
this and use it for cellular respiration, which is why
they need oxygen, because they take oxygen and combine them
with the carbon and they create a t P which

(38:58):
they use as an energy source to power their cells
and live and frolic and play, and in doing so
they create carbon dioxide. That's right. So um as they're
doing this, they're they're actually breaking the stuff down from
what you'd recognized as a banan appeal closer and closer
to that finished humus project product. So you've got bacteria

(39:19):
and they're a big part of it. And depending on
the phase that the compost pile is in, uh, the
there will be different kinds of bacteria in your compost pile. Yeah,
and it's not you know, just bacteria. There's a fun
guy doing lots of work. Um. We mentioned neba toads there.
You're gonna eventually get mites in there, and slugs. You've

(39:42):
already thrown your worms in, some millipedes doing some action
with all this cute little legs. And overall these are
known as primary consumers. Uh some are are there are
all of them primary consumers while they're listed okay by
this person who made this fancy chart. So then above that, chuck,
you get the secondary consumers and those are right, those

(40:05):
are the um those are the predators of the primary consumers, right,
and then you have tertiary consumers. They're the predators of
the secondary consumers. And so you put all this together
and what you have is a food web. If microbes
breaking the stuff down, worms and stuff doing the same
thing in some ways. Um, and then other predators, different

(40:26):
graduated levels of predators preying on the smaller animals to
keep their population in check and to keep everything in
a perfect balance so that it's as efficient as possible.
And eventually a great white shark comes along. What gets me,
eats the whole pile thanks to a shark. Nato. What
gets me though, um the best. The best part of

(40:46):
all this to me is that if you look at
the lifespan of a compost pile from brand new to
finished humus to humus, it's a it forms a bell.
It's as the temperature gradient goes right, Yeah, it's really
kind of cool. So the first stage is the mesophilic stage.
Temperatures get up to I think forty degrees celsius. I

(41:10):
can't remember what that is in fahrenheight. Yeah, we'll go
with celsius. Okay, Um, so it's warmish. And then as
the cellular respiration mounts and builds, a more more bacteria
born and start eating and carry this cellular respiration out.
The byproducts are c O two and heat, and heat

(41:31):
starts to accumulate in the compost pile so much so
that it gets up to something like UM fifty to
sixty degrees celsius, which is like a hundred to a
hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit, and it's hot. At this point,
your organisms are gonna change. You're gonna have thermophilic. These
are a little heat loving critters, and they move in
because it's nice and warm. There snowbirds, their desert dwellers,

(41:53):
and they like it when it's warm. Um. But here's
the thing is you want to like you want you
don't want to get too hot, so you want to
continue to airate and keep that temperature and check. What
you want is that natural bell to happen on its
own right. So the mesophilic Um bacteria die off or
they go kind of dormant as it enters the thermophilic phase,

(42:16):
and then after the thermophilic phase ends. The reason it
ends is because they've eaten up all of the stuff
that's there to eat and only the hard stuffs left over.
And so the thermophiles go away and some of the
mesophiles come back and new stuff comes in like um
acts in of my seats, actin of my seats, which

(42:38):
are kind of like a weird fungi bacteria cross and
they break down like the really hard woody shrubby stuff.
Um and they finish it off. And this third phase
is called the curing phase, right, And at the end
of all of it, you have this great nutrient rich
hummus humus. But in the middle of that, when it

(42:59):
gets really hot, Yeah, it gets so hot, chuck that
pathogens that can make you sick, that can make animals sick,
that can make plants sick, are actually killed off in
the face. Which is why when you get your hands
on compost on humus, it's organic. It's been basically treated
naturally to rid itself of parasites, pathogens, all sorts of

(43:21):
bad stuff. And all that's left is the nutrients that
have been broken down in the process that a plant
can use very easily. And again the circle of life
starts over again. Yeah, and you know I mentioned sun
earlier can dry it out, but if if it gets
over sixty five celsius, it's gonna kill off so many
microbes it's gonna really slow down your process. Uh. So

(43:43):
that's another reason you turn it is to kind of
keep and again don't have it direct sunlight, but it's
gonna keep that temperature where it does its thing naturally.
Where you don't want to, you know, put a heat
lamp on it. I just want to keep it moist,
turn it over and let it do its thing, and
you might come out there on a chilly morning there
might be steam coming off of that sucker and dude,

(44:06):
that's when you just like you go hot dog dog.
You go inside and you eat a banana. Yeah, and
you throw it on the on the pile. All right,
So when is it all over? Man? I just love
this is why I love earth science. Yeah, it's really
amazing because it's like it requires a little bit of
human management. But then you kind of just step away
and say, do your thing. It's really neat. Uh when

(44:28):
is it over? Well, you can tell. There's a few
ways of being able to tell. Um the temperature starts
to go down. If it's below a hundred degrees fahrenheit,
it's out of the thermophilic phase and it's now into
the mesophilic phase. This says that it's probably done. I disagree.
I think you probably wanted even cooler than that, because

(44:48):
the longer you let it cure the more um diverse,
the microbes inside are gonna be the better. The soil
that you use to amend it with is going to
be sure. Temperatures one uh, one of it is just
eyeball it. And if it's if it's about decomposed, like
if you still see clearly a banana peal, then it's

(45:10):
not done right. You don't want to recognize this stuff
is food at this point, um or an eggshell or whatever. Um?
And is it is it smaller? Is if it's been
reduced by and it's dark brown or black and crumbly
and it looks kind of like soil, then you're you're
cooking with gas. That's my dad used to say. Um,

(45:34):
the texture, did you say, smooth, crumbly? Yeah? What about
the smell, Well, it shouldn't um, it shouldn't stink bad
at this point. No, it should smell earthy. And actually
one of my favorites the actin of my sites, the
actin of my seats. Okay, they are the reason that
soil and dirt has its smell. It's those guys, Yeah,

(45:57):
they give it. It's earthy smell. That cool. Yeah, And
I think we didn't mention you know that it's doing
well along the way if it stopped smelling like it
doesn't just stink the whole time, right, And it's not
gonna smell earthy. The soil that you add will smell earthy.
But when you grab a handful of humus, it should
just fall through your fingers. It should be the closer

(46:17):
to black, the better. And it should smell like every
everything associated with earth should smell like. It's like the
word earth. That's what it should smell like. Like, you'll
understand what earth smells like. Yeah, they said pete moss.
If you if none of this makes sense, go to
your local hardware store or lawn and garden center and
smell the pete moss exactly. Um. So, now that it's done,

(46:40):
you've got your wonderfully natural fertilizer. Use it, Put it,
spread it out in your garden, spread it out around
your trees, through it in your yard, spread it around
your naked body, and run around your yard if you
want to. Um, it's got a doobie pile, make you
or quack grass. Yeah, stay away from that stuff. Um.

(47:05):
It's basically like the easiest way to put it without
getting too scientific, is it's gonna make everything better. It's
gonna increase soil microbes, it's gonna increase nutrients and enhance them.
It's gonna improve the pH and chemistry of your soil,
your yards structure. And again, like what you've just done
is taken stuff and had it broken down into its components,

(47:28):
unlocked it for your plants to use. So your plants
are gonna say thank you brother. Pretty amazing. Uh. Some
people create a lot of it and sell it, but
you know, mainly people do this to just use around
their house. Yeah, and increasingly towns are starting to do
curb side composting. Pickup food waste, pickup where you got trash, recycling,

(47:49):
been food waste, been anipelesnipples Right, that's it, all right,
go forth and composts. If you want to know more
about composting, you can type that it in the search
part house to work dot com. Cornell actually also has
a really great site about composting if you want to
know more about the science of it. You were very excited.
I love that. Um And since I said Cornell, it's

(48:11):
time for listening mails, I'm gonna call this child Life
Specialists made a couple of these road and remember we
talked about this in the Pain scalops and we kind
of surminds what it was, and we turns out we
were right. And by the way, we heard from paramedics
doctors quite a few people about the worst pain. Yeah,

(48:33):
you don't want a long bone fracture. Yeah, almost of
them said of broken femur is like the worst pain
you can experience. And should we say why? Yeah, go ahead,
So several reasons. Right, we are right because apparently it's
a very sensitive area, but also because without that structure,
your muscles start um spasm ing, which just rocks the

(48:55):
whole thing back and forth even more. And then then
like fragmented bone hitting nerve and like all kinds of badness.
So steer clear of that, all right. So, uh, we
heard from from two I'm gonna read the one, but
I'm gonna shout them both out. Hey, guys, very excited
to hear you mentioned child life specialists during a recent
episode on Pain Scales. As a childlife specialist myself, I

(49:18):
thought we'd take the opportunity to tell you a little
bit about our profession. You are right, Chuck, a childlife
specialists is uh, we help kids deal with being hospitalized
that's really the essence of our job. We support children
and families throughout stressful situations such as hospitalizations, using our
knowledge of child development and play to facilitate coping. Child

(49:39):
Life specialists UM provide children with developmentally appropriate education about
diagnoses and treatments, preparation and support for procedures and opportunities
for normalization and play. UM. What a great job. Seriously,
I can't think of too many jobs that are more
rewarding than that. Seriously. We also provide support for siblings

(50:00):
and provide legacy building and memory making and end of
life situations. Our profession is very rewarding. Josh, you are right.
She predicted that you would say that, and I love
going to work every day. To become a c l
S you must have a bachelor's or master's degree in
child development or a related field, complete a six hundred

(50:20):
and forty our Childlife Internship, and past a national certification exam.
You can visit UH www dot child life dot org
to learn more about it. UH thanks for what you
guys do. You've made all my road trips interesting and
thanks for spreading the word about child life. Maybe you
can do entire episode on our profession in the future,

(50:43):
she said, and that is Natalie Valentine. And also a
big shout out to Amanda Butler from Auburn University who
does that there. Thanks for writing in Ladies, it sounds
like just a really, really great job. Thanks to you
both for that, and thanks for every buddy who has
anything to do with making kids who are hospitalized feel better. UM,

(51:05):
hats off to you. If you want to get in
touch with us, you can tweet to us at s
y s K podcast or Josh m Clark. You can
hang out with us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You
can send us an email to stuff Podcast how stuff
Works dot com and has always joined us at our
home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com

(51:32):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com