You truly are the king of composting. I took a 3 foot pile of wood chips, added horse manure, watered it, and let my chickens pick out the undigested grains from the manure. The chickens scattered the compost so every day I piled it back up and put fermented feed on top. Each tossing of compost revealed sprouts that the chickens LOVED, and something that looked like fungal action. The thermometer got to 130, even through the recent Texas freeze. I also added all my left over food and poured dish water cleaned with Dawn detergent to help contain fire ants. It was easy to keep a close watch on those PESKY ants so I'd add diamatceous earth on the pile when I'd see them. The pile went from chunky wood chips to dark, really beautiful compost in 3 months. Today I'll be sifting it for my plants and I've already started another pile of chips for my chickens to enjoy.
Everyone laughed when I bought my chipper but now I have flower and vegetables with no weeds and make tons of compost. Wood chips break down pretty fast when wet
@@kade426 i have simliar experience, but really i just started. also im buying "wood chips" or actually the bark chips plus the mull stuff from some big company here in sweden, and im not prophecying but perhaps in a year or two, the results might be pretty good , even in the sight of the garden owner, if Jesus wills
Don't know if you even look at the comments anymore. But your work is a wealth of knowledge. I am trying my hand at composting, and seeing what you and others are doing is a great help. By the way, my pile failed. But i am not giving up.
It is true that Dr. Johnson's first bioreactor used 1/3 wood chips. It's also true that he stopped using wood chips after that, and recommends that anyone including woodchips in a diverse mix size them to
This is why your channel stands out for me - well-considered experiments, real insights and staying the distance ! Those results look pretty amazing given the material you started with! Happy bioreactor anniversary🥳
i can say the same, but i must say that i really miss the 30 (instead of 3) experiments. but im a lazy man really. also, as im a city dweller, its most likely the best that i trust the experience of the farm guys, or at least more than my own thinking..
I accidentally discovered a similar but different result. My neighbor had a tree trimmer come over and trimmed his trees. I told him that they could dump the wood chips (mulch) on my property (in a pile). I did nothing to it except occasionally put ant poison on it to kill the fire-ants. About six months into the year, I did have someone repile it into a higher pile. After about a year, I used a tractor to move the "mulch" to where I wanted to mulch. To my surprise, this pile of wood chips had completely composed to basically soil. It was a very good lesson learned and now I ask for tree trimming companies to put their mulch on my site. Again, I did nothing to the pile other than to re-pile it about six months into the year. After 1 year, it was the most perfect composted "medium" I could imagine. Black gold!
I have fire ants in my compost, but I wouldn't put poison in there to kill them. I'm using the compost for vegetables/fruits. I just let them be, they break down some of the food and add frass to the mix.
Just this afternoon, dug out about 10 cubic yard heap of woodchip. Just been heaped in the field and left 4 years. Scraped the top 'skin' off as it needs more time probably about 1/4 of total. this goes to another heap of fresh stuff to give it a kick start of bacteria, fungal and insect life. Dug out and riddled the rest of the heap. Ran over 2 screens, 1/2 " and 1/4. About 15 % chunks over 1/2" [recycled] and of the remainder, about half was 1/4 to 1/2" and half below 1/4". Iovely dark material. I'll use the small stuff in cuttings and potting up and the larger, will be used to mulch beds. No fuss method no turning, but was kept weed free, on and around the pile. Great results but you have to be patient and you need plenty of space to spare.
Thanks for the update Diego. I've built two compost reactors based on your method using a single vent core. Mine vary a bit in that I don't use a vent during the thermophilic phase, instead turning it every other day. It helps me get more even heat to kill weed seeds. I'm planning on sifting out coarse wood chips after 6 months or a year and using them to kick off new compost piles. More work, but it helps me get more organic matter into my garden quicker when starting from scratch.
Exactly. That's the thing about the Johnson Su Bioreactor - it's not about the speed of getting a useable product - it's about quality, diversity of biology etc.
I agree with many of the other commenters that you did a terrific job of putting this all together, waiting and then giving an honest assessment. I believe I will make a modified version of the bioreactor (not changing the mechanics of it--just the materials somewhat.) Not sure what I want to include for materials...but I do know I will not sacrifice my worms at this time. They do terrifically in their own little village and I will add their tea and/or castings to the Johnson Su compost as used. I do like the idea of uninterrupted compost for one year...that just makes sense to me. Thanks for the unveiling---it was great! Jesus bless.
I'm in southern california zone 10 with 3 bioreactors going now, one in your new design and 2 of the traditional johnson-su. With access to unlimited wood chips here I consider it a practical way to store and decompose them. I haven't opened up any of my reactors yet and the oldest one (9 months) has shrunk by two feet. Looking at your results I am a bit surprised. I would have expected a lot more decomposition after a year. Two years ago I spread six to eight inches of wood chips in my back yard and those have decomposed substantially without any irrigation or maintenance.
Wow I would be ecstatic with the center. My wife found me a little sign which says only “compost happens “ and I proudly display on my patio which is next to my garden
Your experience and observation is very similar to what the GF's garden is. Hers was different in that it was the cardboard and 18 inches of wood chips. The time frame is similar. She did get leaf fall so that added diversity. Not much but probably enough to matter. Location-South East Florida. Thanks again Diego.
Such a great video! I was already 90% of the way toward giving a thumbs up, but the Hollywood Handshake comment was the icing on the cake (please forgive me). Very cool to see the natural process when mostly left without human interference. Thanks for sharing!
We get them dumped by local Tree Surgeons, the conifer chips, complete with green stuff, break down really fast and generate a huge amount of heat when stacked. Even so, stacked in a pile about 1 metre high and two round then left in all weathers I'm still having to sieve out unbroken wood after 3 years
im a totally novice in garden stuff, i think. but for like three years ago, perhaps only two, i did an raised bed for the first time, or second.. and just threw sticks and shit (like grass and the like) in a pile, and a bunch of dirt on top of it until it had reached the level where i was happy about it. as far i remember, it was even huge air gaps between the sticks here and there. interesting enough, if the last sentence were true, it didnt show up in the top soil level, AS FAR I REMEMGBER. now two or three years later i dig it all up, i think, as i have digged like a meter down under the mark level..) it was just as if the most nutriounal soil i would expect to get if bought in the market. sure, it was some sticks left there pretty large, but probably not over ten of them, in 2m2 of area. i have not done any test or the like, finished at least. but i did put a great amount of it in my test of growing jerusalem artichokes.
I think the fabric choice was probably too open, preventing fungal activity to act on the outer layers. Perhaps line with sheets of corrugated cardboard box material to retain moisture better. Oh & the best thing I've found for adding moisture to compost is "recycled beer" or whatever your favourite drink is...
For compost bays made from pallets, I place cardboard around the sides while filling it up as a buffer. Keeps moisture and heat in and composts the material all the way to the sides. After a year the cardboard is half broken down and gets thrown into the next pile with sides from fresh cardboard.
The key to this bioreactor is that it is aerobic. It is designed so that no part of the pile is farther from air than 12 inches. Adding cardboard on outside will not let the microorganisms breathe, leading to an anaerobic and probably smelly pile. See my comment from 4/30/2021
@@julieheath6335 This "reactor" looks way larger than 24" to me. If you have room for it, just make several piles of the same diameter on the ground. They will be lower for sure, you can't stack the chips that high without something to retain them like this thing but it's free and easy.
Thank you Sir. Loads of very special information. I have a money making opportunities using this system. I live in Eastern North Carolina so plenty of material to enjoy the cold composting and final product. Godspeed
You should see what happens to a pile of woodchips here in Florida. We have good warm weather, more moisture and humidity, but best of all we have an enormous population of MILLIPEDES, from the roly polies to multiple varieties of 2-3 inch long and pencil diameter wood eaters. They are the wood chip fiends and eat them like no worm could ever think about, even with very low moisture.
Thanks for posting this. I’ve seen some of your other bioreactor videos, but I didn’t consider this practical for my situation. Yesterday, a neighbor was getting a tree removed and I asked the tree guys for the chips. Now I have way more chips than I have a need for. So once I know what I have left over, I’ll give a bioreactor a try.
Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links to a more detailed video of how Dr David Johnson designed this system to work. Also what are the benefits of the method (mind-blowing).
A lot of the material in that bioreactor is finished compost. I made a compost trommel with a quarter-inch screen. I would process all of that compost with my trommel. I would return all the unfinished material to the bioreactor. The finished material is light and fluffy seedbed-quality compost that's guaranteed to be herbicide-free. You could probably combine the unfinished material from two bioreactors into one and start a new batch in the now-empty reactor.
I would have just screened it to get the good stuff and threw the unfinished material into a new batch, if I was you. This would seed the next batch with the right bacteria and fungi while allowing you to use the compost without too many large particles. But, I can assure you, my real intentions were to just add the whole bioreactor contents to my garden. The unfinished bits would bring beneficial microbes and i don’t think they’d steal very much nitrogen in their decomposition. I, myself, added old wood chips directly to a new raised bed as filler material and that soil grew some really great stuff. It was thoroughly mixed throughout and didn’t affect planting or growing.
Mix in some cow or horse manure, fresh green clippings or grass, and layer cake it. Wood chips, manure, grass clippings, repeat. Let sit and turn over the pile every few days to allow in oxygen. You might get your compost in a month. It should be hot compost this way which will kill the worms in the centre or they will just go elsewhere until it finishes decomposing.
Oooh this was exciting. I was waiting for this. I designed mine based on your videos out of leaves. It was a popsicle for three months or so, but I definitely notice that it breaks down faster than traditional leaf mold. So who knows? The process is fun anyway.
Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links to a more detailed video of how Dr David Johnson designed this system to work. Also what are the benefits of the method (mind-blowing).
Plus by adding a diverse cover crop ontop of the Johnson su pile after the cover is established you could look down your air channels and see the roots colonize the pile I think it would be so cool to see!!
Hi Diego, I have thought about something even crazier, like topping off the wood chips with say 1 ft or more of soil and planting say sorghum sudangrass on top to get the biology going and having the extra benefit of covering the top with live, growing plants instead of tarp/landscape fabric. Plus it would look awesome, like the hair of Bart Simpson.
We in the southeastern 🇺🇸 know that in our climate it would be broken down fully in a year. I put a 12" deep wood mulch and it was GONE in 9 months. Now that is mulch from a tree service so leaves and branches. But yep. Broken down in fall from a spring layer. It also has to do with only having 2 seasons. Rainy season and humid season. We have enough water here to cover California easy. It's not unusual to see 9 inches a week at times. And a hurricane can bring 20-30" in 2-3 days.
If you turn it - it'll only take a few months. And if you harvested the cooked compost and recomposted the uncooked portion and actually turned it it would only take another few months. I've got 3 Stages of my own 2 - 30" wide bins ready to go (ready to harvest and ready to be sifted) 2 - 30" bins cooking needing to be turned and 2 - 30" bins of fresh cut grass and fall leaves also cooking and ready to be turned in a couple of weeks. My compost area looks like an assembly line. This 2022 season I've already harvested sifted and spread 4 compost bins worth onto my lawn. The Johnsons bioreactor I guess its for those who don't want to turn. I hated turning but you can't argue with results so I use smaller compost bins (roughly 30" wide and 40" high) without the weed barrier and turn it every 2 to 4 weeks. I'm located in the Pacific Northwest on a half an acre lot with a sizable lawn and its taken me years to get here. And I get it. The Johnson bioreactor allows you to make compost without turning but after a year it doesn't look too different from my compost cooking for a few weeks and turning it more often. But thank you very much for putting this video up. I've been waiting for someone to reveal the results for the non-turn compost method and letting it cook for a whole year for an unveiling. I'm not impressed.
Looks as if is could have done with a stir now and then, and perhaps more attention to keeping the mix wet around the edges. I think I would use the dark stuff in the middle and only add back the paler stuff.
I had three loads of wood chips I added two barrels of horse manure and once every 3 or 4 weeks completely dismantled the pile mix it completely with a front-end loader and Paul it back up I could have never done this by hand thank goodness for machinery
David suggests using some complete compost as an inoculant whilst wetting the parent material. Would be interesting to see if that helps with the decomposition, especially on relatively resistant material like woodchip.
I totally get making use of what you've got. Analogous to you, I have an overabundance of pine needles in my area. And like wood chips, they take forever to break down completely. Unless you live in a jungle, most people have an overabundance of browns relative to greens. So what do you do? Most source manures. I live in an urban area, so that's a challenge. Coffee grounds, however, are readily available year round. If you really want to supercharge your wood chip bioreactors, use coffee grounds. You can collect literally hundreds of pounds from local coffee shops if you ask them to save them for you. In fact, many people say that a 50/50 combination of coffee grounds and sawdust makes amazing compost. I haven't tried it myself because I don't have an easy way of sourcing sawdust, but I think wood chips and coffee grounds would achieve similar results. For me, it's coffee grounds and pine needles.
Thanks so much for the video,Diego. I live in a tropical country and my material takes ages to compost. You would think it would be faster,but the wood chips here are loaded with oils and i need to give a hot pre-composting before actually composting. Be nice,be kind and do not walk on those beds,dude bro ;) haha!
Thank you for sharing what you have going on with your bio-reactors 👍. I have two leave filled Johnson Su reactors rolling along in LA at my folks house. Hope to get home this upcoming November to unload the reactors and reload them.
I have very large pile of coarse wood chips sitting outside my house in Pennsylvania. We get very cold winters. I occasionally turn pile over with front end loader. So after a year and a half, I'd say it's about a third to a half broken down. To get broken down into all compost consistency I'd guess another year and a half. So three years total.
I got a dozen chickens and ducks. And they turned a massive pile of chips over the past 8 months. Now you can't even tell there was a mound and all of it is broken down.
When doing regular hot composting, the temperature outside doesn't matter if your pile is at least 1 cubic yard in size. That ensures plenty of insulation for the boiling hot temperatures at the core of the pile no matter what the ambient temperature is. Instead of waiting longer, my recommendation would be to instead set up your pile, water it until it's as wet as a wrung out sponge and then take its core temperature after a week (or stick your hand all the way down as far as you can without burning yourself. If you feel heat, that's a good sign your pile is heating up. If you don't feel heat you'll have to figure out what's wrong... Do you need more or less water? Is your pile too small? Do you have a good mix of greens (fresh, recently live) and browns (thoroughly dead)? If you feel at least moderate heat, then turn the pile. Repeat the above weekly for 3 months and you'll have a fresh, super result. Unless you're willing to wait forever, time won't fix composting problems. If you know what it takes to get the heat up, you can be done in 3 months. Guaranteed.
Hey Diego cool to see how much it did breakdown. If you're doing just wood chips you should try layering in some oyster grain spawn. I bet it would speed it up tremendously. And you could eat em
I like the sieve idea. The fines that come out may be finished compost and if you don't need mulch then the coarse screenings can go into the next bin to provide inoculation and plenty of airspace.
I find it interesting how there's a "sudden" change of color between the center mass and the outside, you'd think it would be more of a gradient. I'm sure you could measure the width of the outside layer and then take temperature measurements on the very surface, as well as on the border between the outside layer and the center mass, and then get some kind of a equation that tells how much insulation you get per inch. And then the lowest temperature that allows for the biological activity that creates compost. Anyway, the way Paul Gautschi does it is to let the wood chips compost for a year, so they get that dark color, and then apply it as a mulch on top of no-dig garden plots. That way they will provide a cover for the plants, and break down as you apply layers on top of it. So you get the benefit of yet another purpose of using the material.
That's twelve months of sheet compost wasted right there. Could have been suppressing weeds and retaining moisture for the last year while breaking down and feeding microorganisms in the soil below.
Maybe a little late to the party here, (and I'll have to go look for an update on how this project is going), but a couple thoughts from just watching this now. 1. I think a less permeable weed barrier would be a lot better to build the reactor, especially in a dry climate. It looks like the chips near the outside just dried out early on and stayed dry. Finding a way to trap that moisture, or keeping the outside wet would probably speed things up. 2. I probably would have taken the whole pile down and set it up from scratch. Your set up obviously works more efficiently in the middle of the reactor, so redistributing the material would probably help to have a more evenly composted product after the second year. Either way, I always love learning from folks like you who are out there doing experiments like this and figuring stuff out.
You could try adding some brewers yeast when wetting the pile, or the left over spent mash from any local breweries you might have in your area. I've heard that various enzymes can help with fungal breakdown of wood piles. Worth looking into anyway ;)
WoW! Awesome idea! I would use a plastic sheet instead of that black mat to favor humidity because that's the reason why the outer layer is still intact. Great job anyway!
All around you dont have enough of water Maybe the sun dry the side or wind I dont no For me your compost is ready I will take the black compost mix with manure, sand and soil and up directly in the garden The woodship going to keep the moisture like my leafs
It's really hard to get the outside to stay wet. It dries out really fast. Adding more water over saturates the inside while not doing much to the outside.
If you used a hydroponic fertilizer to adjust the N:C ration, the biologic activity would increase. Farmers do this to help crop stover give more nutrients to the next crop.
My latest thinking: I’m leaning towards doing a convention bacteria composting first. Then building rows of hugels layered with fungal-heavy compost tea. Then the fungus is not disturbed and there is long term wood chips all the way up to small logs for long term fungal dominant processes. And less waiting; grow crops while the fungal breakdown occurs over the next 5-10 years?
Wow. Hard to believe it has already been 12 months. I just wonder if the results would be quicker if the pile is rotated and mixed with a nitrogen source. Very interesting to see the results though. Thanks for sticking with it Diego. Can't wait to see year two and that side-by-side picture lol. Later my friend.
Quick compost isn't the point of the BEAM system. This is fungal dominant and a complete microbiome of organisms. Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links.
@@julieheath6335 Yeah you are right. I forgot about that part. That was the whole basis for the Johnson-Su was the fungal part and not bacterial aspect. I guess it’s just a slow process. I will check out your comment though.
I’ve heard of putting a cover crop on a Johnson su pile it made so much sense to me your covering the top saving water your activating microbes and fungi do to having a living root in the compost your building up root and top ground bio mass which would keep feeding the worms as well as adding more carbon to the pile the list goes on and on my question to anyone that’s tried this what cover crops would work ?
Dr. Johnson emphasizes that particle size needs to be less than 3/8 inch for bioreactor feedstocks. Not surprised to see coarse wood chips not being broken down at 1 year.
Neither was I. His instructions are guidelines to get you started. You have to work with the materials that you have. Not everyone has perfectly sized material.
When are you opening it up for the second time? (The process may have been accelerated and matured quicker if it were built with ventilation columns as David Johnson had explained designed.)
Do you think adding some bio-char in the mix would greatly improve the final product or help just a little? Raw bio-char going in would be activated bio-char coming out. Just a thought.
JS compost at first reminded me of Jean Pain’s ramial chipped wood compost. So I started building mine with, Macadamia, and other leaves, some sheep manure, lawn clippings, and the chipped green wood. no more than 3” diameter before chipping. it’s an odd time to start it so might have to sit for 18 months.
I hit 60C today. (140F) Question; what is ideal particle size for woodchips and leaves. my chipper takes a “thin” chip. about 1/8” fingernail size. all branches were cut and chipped green. soaked (water comes out green) leaves dry brown, very little dried sheep manure, top lightly covered with shade netting keeping moisture in but still breathing. really cooking now.
I'm surprised you plan to wrap it up again and leave it be. Now is a perfect time to turn, mix and reset the whole pile. It will speed up the breakdown considerably.
For a bioreactor, you're relying on fungal colonies to break down the wood, and they benefit from a static environment, where it's not turned and not added to. Turning it only benefits the kinds of things that don't break down wood very well.
There was some mixing when I moved the contents from one reactor to the other, but the goal was to keep the pile relatively unturned to stay in line with what was started, but yes, turning it would likely speed it up.
I would add leaves as well. Where I put leaves over woodchips in my yard, the fungal action is dramatically different from where I just have woodchips.
I don't know that Ph tests would show much, they should remain neutral as long as there is aerobic bacteria working. If the pile turns acidic or sour, that's likely an indication aearation is insufficient and you have anaerobic bacteria working. If you want to measure the likely activity of the bacteria (how hard they're working), I'd recommend taking a temperature at the core where activity would be highest. I'd be impressed if the core got as hot as just below boiling water which is how hot a regular hot compost pile would get... But to sustain that kind of hot activity, a regular compost pile has to be turned regularly and often.
An idea you could consider for a composting experiment is to inoculate your wood chips with a saprophytic fungi, for example, oysters, to speed things up considerably
@@thomasa5619 well considering I have about 3 cu feet of mushroom blocks that were not depleted but had a green mold in them that will be going in mine, we may find out!
@@speedbuggy16v haha, I have a few packets of agar coming so I can try to clone supermarket mushrooms for shits and giggles And the sanitiser I’ll be using is high proof alcohol I brewed and distilled myself, in a still I made myself
If that was here in North Queensland tropics, it would have shrunk to half the size in a year. Even wooden houses and wooden fence posts don't last long with the rain and termites
How about making some IMO spray or some JMS to introduce more fungal and bacterial life into the pile? Possibly some LABS? Compost loves eggs and fish too.
Perhaps I'm missing something. Would it take more than two years to turn wood chips into compost in your climate without the bioreactor? How much time is the bioreactor saving for the effort in building it?
If it were me, I too would let it go longer (the longer the better), but I definitely would be adding LAB and either LIMO3 or LIMO4 to it on a fairly regular basis during the year given the lack of moisture that Southern CA is typical of during any given year.
Can LAB digest cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin? I am all for adding more things IF they help, but I don't know that any science says that they will help.
If you have tons of woodchips pour in some pleutorus ostreatus micellium, have some crops of edible mushrooms for one or two years and recycle this micellium (it should be not woodchips anymore) and pour it in a regular compost pile.
You can easily add bloodmeal to that pile to speed it up due to the high nitrogen bloodmeal has but other than that it looks amazing cant wait to see it finished
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You truly are the king of composting.
I took a 3 foot pile of wood chips, added horse manure, watered it, and let my chickens pick out the undigested grains from the manure. The chickens scattered the compost so every day I piled it back up and put fermented feed on top. Each tossing of compost revealed sprouts that the chickens LOVED, and something that looked like fungal action. The thermometer got to 130, even through the recent Texas freeze.
I also added all my left over food and poured dish water cleaned with Dawn detergent to help contain fire ants. It was easy to keep a close watch on those PESKY ants so I'd add diamatceous earth on the pile when I'd see them.
The pile went from chunky wood chips to dark, really beautiful compost in 3 months. Today I'll be sifting it for my plants and I've already started another pile of chips for my chickens to enjoy.
Me too! I added old moldy hay, leaves and cow manure. I helped the chickens with my tractor. I have 3 huge piles in a year.
Next time add your grass clippings to it and any leaf litter too etc. All the best mate.
i don't really buy that you got finished compost from wood chips in 3 months, too fast.
@@ChurchInAshes Watch Edible Acres.
Wow, do you make videos?
Excellent work and analysis! I should be happy with that result after one year of pure woodchip. Have two reactors on the go.
Thanks Charles!
Everyone laughed when I bought my chipper but now I have flower and vegetables with no weeds and make tons of compost. Wood chips break down pretty fast when wet
Woww,
Thats great Charles! Ill be looking forward to see your results as well!
@@kade426 i have simliar experience, but really i just started. also im buying "wood chips" or actually the bark chips plus the mull stuff from some big company here in sweden, and im not prophecying but perhaps in a year or two, the results might be pretty good , even in the sight of the garden owner, if Jesus wills
Don't know if you even look at the comments anymore. But your work is a wealth of knowledge. I am trying my hand at composting, and seeing what you and others are doing is a great help. By the way, my pile failed. But i am not giving up.
It is true that Dr. Johnson's first bioreactor used 1/3 wood chips. It's also true that he stopped using wood chips after that, and recommends that anyone including woodchips in a diverse mix size them to
This is why your channel stands out for me - well-considered experiments, real insights and staying the distance ! Those results look pretty amazing given the material you started with! Happy bioreactor anniversary🥳
Thank you very much!
i can say the same, but i must say that i really miss the 30 (instead of 3) experiments. but im a lazy man really.
also, as im a city dweller, its most likely the best that i trust the experience of the farm guys, or at least more than my own thinking..
Well said C
I accidentally discovered a similar but different result.
My neighbor had a tree trimmer come over and trimmed his trees.
I told him that they could dump the wood chips (mulch) on my property (in a pile).
I did nothing to it except occasionally put ant poison on it to kill the fire-ants.
About six months into the year, I did have someone repile it into a higher pile.
After about a year, I used a tractor to move the "mulch" to where I wanted to mulch.
To my surprise, this pile of wood chips had completely composed to basically soil.
It was a very good lesson learned and now I ask for tree trimming companies to put their mulch on my site.
Again, I did nothing to the pile other than to re-pile it about six months into the year.
After 1 year, it was the most perfect composted "medium" I could imagine.
Black gold!
I should mention, I am here in central Florida, and we get a lot of summer rains.
Trees were primarily oaks and pines.
I have fire ants in my compost, but I wouldn't put poison in there to kill them. I'm using the compost for vegetables/fruits. I just let them be, they break down some of the food and add frass to the mix.
I found if you layer in some food compost, which helps draw in the worms, really speeds up the process of wood chip breakdown.
Just this afternoon, dug out about 10 cubic yard heap of woodchip. Just been heaped in the field and left 4 years. Scraped the top 'skin' off as it needs more time probably about 1/4 of total. this goes to another heap of fresh stuff to give it a kick start of bacteria, fungal and insect life. Dug out and riddled the rest of the heap. Ran over 2 screens, 1/2 " and 1/4. About 15 % chunks over 1/2" [recycled] and of the remainder, about half was 1/4 to 1/2" and half below 1/4". Iovely dark material. I'll use the small stuff in cuttings and potting up and the larger, will be used to mulch beds. No fuss method no turning, but was kept weed free, on and around the pile. Great results but you have to be patient and you need plenty of space to spare.
It has been 12 months already ? Wow.
I need to get myself together...
Thanks for your content Diego.
to be fair it's been an extremely rough 12 months for almost everyone in the world... don't beat yourself up too hard :)
Thank you for the kind words. Really appreciate it 💜
Great comment!!!
Thanks for the update Diego. I've built two compost reactors based on your method using a single vent core. Mine vary a bit in that I don't use a vent during the thermophilic phase, instead turning it every other day. It helps me get more even heat to kill weed seeds. I'm planning on sifting out coarse wood chips after 6 months or a year and using them to kick off new compost piles. More work, but it helps me get more organic matter into my garden quicker when starting from scratch.
After 3 year's my pile is finally ready to roll
you need green and brown materials along with turning the pile. I'm glad he mentioned it near the end @05:06
Keep in mind that brown and green went into the pile, but the brown remains. This is a non-turning method.
Thank you so much for the time and effort you put forth! Way to "do the work" for all of us to benefit!
Still looking good! That is the compost of cause.
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Would have liked a closer look at the material from the middle and detail of worm numbers. Perhaps a look at the biology under a microscope too.
Exactly. That's the thing about the Johnson Su Bioreactor - it's not about the speed of getting a useable product - it's about quality, diversity of biology etc.
I want to see the “Diego Footer’s device for people who can’t compost good”!!!!!!!! How’s that one?
I agree with many of the other commenters that you did a terrific job of putting this all together, waiting and then giving an honest assessment.
I believe I will make a modified version of the bioreactor (not changing the mechanics of it--just the materials somewhat.) Not sure what I want to include for materials...but I do know I will not sacrifice my worms at this time. They do terrifically in their own little village and I will add their tea and/or castings to the Johnson Su compost as used.
I do like the idea of uninterrupted compost for one year...that just makes sense to me. Thanks for the unveiling---it was great! Jesus bless.
Great video series Diego! Very few people have such in depth videos on composting and soil science as you do.
I'm in southern california zone 10 with 3 bioreactors going now, one in your new design and 2 of the traditional johnson-su. With access to unlimited wood chips here I consider it a practical way to store and decompose them.
I haven't opened up any of my reactors yet and the oldest one (9 months) has shrunk by two feet. Looking at your results I am a bit surprised. I would have expected a lot more decomposition after a year. Two years ago I spread six to eight inches of wood chips in my back yard and those have decomposed substantially without any irrigation or maintenance.
Wow I would be ecstatic with the center. My wife found me a little sign which says only “compost happens “ and I proudly display on my patio which is next to my garden
I can really appreciate the realistic results this video shows. Composting isn't like waving a magic wand.
I think that's great results based on no turning or other manual maintenance!
Your experience and observation is very similar to what the GF's garden is. Hers was different in that it was the cardboard and 18 inches of wood chips. The time frame is similar. She did get leaf fall so that added diversity. Not much but probably enough to matter. Location-South East Florida.
Thanks again Diego.
Such a great video! I was already 90% of the way toward giving a thumbs up, but the Hollywood Handshake comment was the icing on the cake (please forgive me). Very cool to see the natural process when mostly left without human interference. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Diego!
Thank you for setting my expectations
I like the idea of just giving a pile of wood chips a few good waterings, and wait.
We get them dumped by local Tree Surgeons, the conifer chips, complete with green stuff, break down really fast and generate a huge amount of heat when stacked. Even so, stacked in a pile about 1 metre high and two round then left in all weathers I'm still having to sieve out unbroken wood after 3 years
im a totally novice in garden stuff, i think. but for like three years ago, perhaps only two, i did an raised bed for the first time, or second.. and just threw sticks and shit (like grass and the like) in a pile, and a bunch of dirt on top of it until it had reached the level where i was happy about it. as far i remember, it was even huge air gaps between the sticks here and there. interesting enough, if the last sentence were true, it didnt show up in the top soil level, AS FAR I REMEMGBER. now two or three years later i dig it all up, i think, as i have digged like a meter down under the mark level..) it was just as if the most nutriounal soil i would expect to get if bought in the market. sure, it was some sticks left there pretty large, but probably not over ten of them, in 2m2 of area. i have not done any test or the like, finished at least. but i did put a great amount of it in my test of growing jerusalem artichokes.
I think the fabric choice was probably too open, preventing fungal activity to act on the outer layers.
Perhaps line with sheets of corrugated cardboard box material to retain moisture better.
Oh & the best thing I've found for adding moisture to compost is "recycled beer" or whatever your favourite drink is...
For compost bays made from pallets, I place cardboard around the sides while filling it up as a buffer. Keeps moisture and heat in and composts the material all the way to the sides. After a year the cardboard is half broken down and gets thrown into the next pile with sides from fresh cardboard.
The key to this bioreactor is that it is aerobic. It is designed so that no part of the pile is farther from air than 12 inches. Adding cardboard on outside will not let the microorganisms breathe, leading to an anaerobic and probably smelly pile. See my comment from 4/30/2021
Just put enough holes in the cardboard
@@julieheath6335 This "reactor" looks way larger than 24" to me.
If you have room for it, just make several piles of the same diameter on the ground. They will be lower for sure, you can't stack the chips that high without something to retain them like this thing but it's free and easy.
Careful what pallet wood you use.
@@paladinsmith7050 true, in the EU I only use those marked with HT (heat treated).
Thank you Sir. Loads of very special information. I have a money making opportunities using this system. I live in Eastern North Carolina so plenty of material to enjoy the cold composting and final product. Godspeed
Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links to the research and much more specific and nuanced instruction.
Outstanding ! The inside looked pretty good but still needs some time. Thank you for sharing.
Just throw a couple of loads of grass clippings in there and flip it 2-3 times a month, wood chips break down faster than you think.
True
The outside kind of shows you how much mulch you need in your climate to insulate and keep moist
Good point!
You should see what happens to a pile of woodchips here in Florida. We have good warm weather, more moisture and humidity, but best of all we have an enormous population of MILLIPEDES, from the roly polies to multiple varieties of 2-3 inch long and pencil diameter wood eaters. They are the wood chip fiends and eat them like no worm could ever think about, even with very low moisture.
Thanks for posting this. I’ve seen some of your other bioreactor videos, but I didn’t consider this practical for my situation. Yesterday, a neighbor was getting a tree removed and I asked the tree guys for the chips. Now I have way more chips than I have a need for. So once I know what I have left over, I’ll give a bioreactor a try.
Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links to a more detailed video of how Dr David Johnson designed this system to work. Also what are the benefits of the method (mind-blowing).
Almost a year! Looking forward to seeing the cake!
A lot of the material in that bioreactor is finished compost. I made a compost trommel with a quarter-inch screen. I would process all of that compost with my trommel. I would return all the unfinished material to the bioreactor. The finished material is light and fluffy seedbed-quality compost that's guaranteed to be herbicide-free. You could probably combine the unfinished material from two bioreactors into one and start a new batch in the now-empty reactor.
Good idea. I like the idea of sifting and re-composting the course. I dumped it all back in to let it sit more.
I would have just screened it to get the good stuff and threw the unfinished material into a new batch, if I was you. This would seed the next batch with the right bacteria and fungi while allowing you to use the compost without too many large particles. But, I can assure you, my real intentions were to just add the whole bioreactor contents to my garden. The unfinished bits would bring beneficial microbes and i don’t think they’d steal very much nitrogen in their decomposition.
I, myself, added old wood chips directly to a new raised bed as filler material and that soil grew some really great stuff. It was thoroughly mixed throughout and didn’t affect planting or growing.
Mix in some cow or horse manure, fresh green clippings or grass, and layer cake it. Wood chips, manure, grass clippings, repeat. Let sit and turn over the pile every few days to allow in oxygen. You might get your compost in a month. It should be hot compost this way which will kill the worms in the centre or they will just go elsewhere until it finishes decomposing.
Beautiful!
Quality before speed.
Oooh this was exciting. I was waiting for this. I designed mine based on your videos out of leaves. It was a popsicle for three months or so, but I definitely notice that it breaks down faster than traditional leaf mold. So who knows? The process is fun anyway.
Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links to a more detailed video of how Dr David Johnson designed this system to work. Also what are the benefits of the method (mind-blowing).
Plus by adding a diverse cover crop ontop of the Johnson su pile after the cover is established you could look down your air channels and see the roots colonize the pile I think it would be so cool to see!!
Hi Diego, I have thought about something even crazier, like topping off the wood chips with say 1 ft or more of soil and planting say sorghum sudangrass on top to get the biology going and having the extra benefit of covering the top with live, growing plants instead of tarp/landscape fabric. Plus it would look awesome, like the hair of Bart Simpson.
It's an interesting idea. Others have suggested that. I could try it.
yay, Bioreactor meets Hugelculture :D
You may need to play with the watering a bit
ThankQ
We in the southeastern 🇺🇸 know that in our climate it would be broken down fully in a year. I put a 12" deep wood mulch and it was GONE in 9 months. Now that is mulch from a tree service so leaves and branches. But yep. Broken down in fall from a spring layer. It also has to do with only having 2 seasons. Rainy season and humid season. We have enough water here to cover California easy. It's not unusual to see 9 inches a week at times. And a hurricane can bring 20-30" in 2-3 days.
Thanks
If you turn it - it'll only take a few months. And if you harvested the cooked compost and recomposted the uncooked portion and actually turned it it would only take another few months. I've got 3 Stages of my own 2 - 30" wide bins ready to go (ready to harvest and ready to be sifted) 2 - 30" bins cooking needing to be turned and 2 - 30" bins of fresh cut grass and fall leaves also cooking and ready to be turned in a couple of weeks. My compost area looks like an assembly line. This 2022 season I've already harvested sifted and spread 4 compost bins worth onto my lawn.
The Johnsons bioreactor I guess its for those who don't want to turn. I hated turning but you can't argue with results so I use smaller compost bins (roughly 30" wide and 40" high) without the weed barrier and turn it every 2 to 4 weeks. I'm located in the Pacific Northwest on a half an acre lot with a sizable lawn and its taken me years to get here.
And I get it. The Johnson bioreactor allows you to make compost without turning but after a year it doesn't look too different from my compost cooking for a few weeks and turning it more often. But thank you very much for putting this video up. I've been waiting for someone to reveal the results for the non-turn compost method and letting it cook for a whole year for an unveiling. I'm not impressed.
Looks as if is could have done with a stir now and then, and perhaps more attention to keeping the mix wet around the edges. I think I would use the dark stuff in the middle and only add back the paler stuff.
When he wrapped open the outer shell, there is a black gold inside very near!
I think your experiment is great I've had really great success in turning my wood chips to compost success
I had three loads of wood chips I added two barrels of horse manure and once every 3 or 4 weeks completely dismantled the pile mix it completely with a front-end loader and Paul it back up I could have never done this by hand thank goodness for machinery
David suggests using some complete compost as an inoculant whilst wetting the parent material. Would be interesting to see if that helps with the decomposition, especially on relatively resistant material like woodchip.
I totally get making use of what you've got. Analogous to you, I have an overabundance of pine needles in my area. And like wood chips, they take forever to break down completely. Unless you live in a jungle, most people have an overabundance of browns relative to greens. So what do you do?
Most source manures. I live in an urban area, so that's a challenge. Coffee grounds, however, are readily available year round. If you really want to supercharge your wood chip bioreactors, use coffee grounds. You can collect literally hundreds of pounds from local coffee shops if you ask them to save them for you. In fact, many people say that a 50/50 combination of coffee grounds and sawdust makes amazing compost. I haven't tried it myself because I don't have an easy way of sourcing sawdust, but I think wood chips and coffee grounds would achieve similar results. For me, it's coffee grounds and pine needles.
would love to see how much fungi is there under a microscope! Great video Diego!
Thanks for the video. I’ll stick to regular composting. I don’t see the advantage to waiting three times as long. But to each his own.
Thanks so much for the video,Diego. I live in a tropical country and my material takes ages to compost. You would think it would be faster,but the wood chips here are loaded with oils and i need to give a hot pre-composting before actually composting.
Be nice,be kind and do not walk on those beds,dude bro ;) haha!
Thank you for sharing what you have going on with your bio-reactors 👍. I have two leave filled Johnson Su reactors rolling along in LA at my folks house. Hope to get home this upcoming November to unload the reactors and reload them.
I have very large pile of coarse wood chips sitting outside my house in Pennsylvania. We get very cold winters. I occasionally turn pile over with front end loader. So after a year and a half, I'd say it's about a third to a half broken down. To get broken down into all compost consistency I'd guess another year and a half. So three years total.
I got a dozen chickens and ducks. And they turned a massive pile of chips over the past 8 months. Now you can't even tell there was a mound and all of it is broken down.
When doing regular hot composting, the temperature outside doesn't matter if your pile is at least 1 cubic yard in size. That ensures plenty of insulation for the boiling hot temperatures at the core of the pile no matter what the ambient temperature is.
Instead of waiting longer, my recommendation would be to instead set up your pile, water it until it's as wet as a wrung out sponge and then take its core temperature after a week (or stick your hand all the way down as far as you can without burning yourself. If you feel heat, that's a good sign your pile is heating up. If you don't feel heat you'll have to figure out what's wrong... Do you need more or less water? Is your pile too small? Do you have a good mix of greens (fresh, recently live) and browns (thoroughly dead)?
If you feel at least moderate heat, then turn the pile.
Repeat the above weekly for 3 months and you'll have a fresh, super result.
Unless you're willing to wait forever, time won't fix composting problems.
If you know what it takes to get the heat up, you can be done in 3 months.
Guaranteed.
Hey Diego cool to see how much it did breakdown. If you're doing just wood chips you should try layering in some oyster grain spawn. I bet it would speed it up tremendously. And you could eat em
2 years is crazy!!
It takes a long time to break down wood.
@@DiegoFooter it sure does.. I try my best to break it down as much as possible
Spat my coffee out over Paul Hollywood handshake ;-)
I'd run that through a half inch sieve and use the rejects as mulch around trees.
Good idea, but no shortage of mulch here. :)
I like the sieve idea. The fines that come out may be finished compost and if you don't need mulch then the coarse screenings can go into the next bin to provide inoculation and plenty of airspace.
I find it interesting how there's a "sudden" change of color between the center mass and the outside, you'd think it would be more of a gradient. I'm sure you could measure the width of the outside layer and then take temperature measurements on the very surface, as well as on the border between the outside layer and the center mass, and then get some kind of a equation that tells how much insulation you get per inch. And then the lowest temperature that allows for the biological activity that creates compost.
Anyway, the way Paul Gautschi does it is to let the wood chips compost for a year, so they get that dark color, and then apply it as a mulch on top of no-dig garden plots. That way they will provide a cover for the plants, and break down as you apply layers on top of it. So you get the benefit of yet another purpose of using the material.
Waiting is the hardest part
I think I'd only go with that method if I had minimal space , otherwise just dump it on the ground and wait! 😎
Dumping it in a pile means the Center goes anaerobic. This method ensures the whole pile stays passively aerated.
@@ElectricWheelz thanks😎
See my comment of 4/30/21 for details about this. It's worth the effort.
@@ElectricWheelz once a week I poke holes in my pile with a piece of rebar. Works well, way simpler.
Turning the pile occasionally helps too.
That's twelve months of sheet compost wasted right there. Could have been suppressing weeds and retaining moisture for the last year while breaking down and feeding microorganisms in the soil below.
Maybe a little late to the party here, (and I'll have to go look for an update on how this project is going), but a couple thoughts from just watching this now.
1. I think a less permeable weed barrier would be a lot better to build the reactor, especially in a dry climate. It looks like the chips near the outside just dried out early on and stayed dry. Finding a way to trap that moisture, or keeping the outside wet would probably speed things up.
2. I probably would have taken the whole pile down and set it up from scratch. Your set up obviously works more efficiently in the middle of the reactor, so redistributing the material would probably help to have a more evenly composted product after the second year.
Either way, I always love learning from folks like you who are out there doing experiments like this and figuring stuff out.
You could try adding some brewers yeast when wetting the pile, or the left over spent mash from any local breweries you might have in your area. I've heard that various enzymes can help with fungal breakdown of wood piles. Worth looking into anyway ;)
Good idea.
I am trying the beer, coke, ammonia concoction to help start the breakdown process. Hope it works, newbie here.
Wood chips to biochar seems time effective and even permanent.
this is like christmas right now
WoW! Awesome idea! I would use a plastic sheet instead of that black mat to favor humidity because that's the reason why the outer layer is still intact. Great job anyway!
It needs air
Plastic is the double edged sword - holds in moisture, but keeps air out. Pick your poison.
has the pile collapsed? are the holes still there? would re-buiilding it make it more effective? Lots of work, but more effective, maybe?
Holes are still there. I ended up just putting everything back into the reactor, no pipes on the reload.
@@DiegoFooter curious to learn how it "behaves" after
That really does look like a cake! 😂
All around you dont have enough of water
Maybe the sun dry the side or wind I dont no
For me your compost is ready I will take the black compost mix with manure, sand and soil and up directly in the garden
The woodship going to keep the moisture like my leafs
It's really hard to get the outside to stay wet. It dries out really fast. Adding more water over saturates the inside while not doing much to the outside.
If you used a hydroponic fertilizer to adjust the N:C ration, the biologic activity would increase. Farmers do this to help crop stover give more nutrients to the next crop.
My latest thinking: I’m leaning towards doing a convention bacteria composting first. Then building rows of hugels layered with fungal-heavy compost tea. Then the fungus is not disturbed and there is long term wood chips all the way up to small logs for long term fungal dominant processes. And less waiting; grow crops while the fungal breakdown occurs over the next 5-10 years?
Wow. Hard to believe it has already been 12 months. I just wonder if the results would be quicker if the pile is rotated and mixed with a nitrogen source. Very interesting to see the results though. Thanks for sticking with it Diego. Can't wait to see year two and that side-by-side picture lol. Later my friend.
Quick compost isn't the point of the BEAM system. This is fungal dominant and a complete microbiome of organisms. Take a look at my comment of 4/30/21 for links.
@@julieheath6335 Yeah you are right. I forgot about that part. That was the whole basis for the Johnson-Su was the fungal part and not bacterial aspect. I guess it’s just a slow process. I will check out your comment though.
I’ve heard of putting a cover crop on a Johnson su pile it made so much sense to me your covering the top saving water your activating microbes and fungi do to having a living root in the compost your building up root and top ground bio mass which would keep feeding the worms as well as adding more carbon to the pile the list goes on and on my question to anyone that’s tried this what cover crops would work ?
Dr. Johnson emphasizes that particle size needs to be less than 3/8 inch for bioreactor feedstocks. Not surprised to see coarse wood chips not being broken down at 1 year.
Neither was I. His instructions are guidelines to get you started. You have to work with the materials that you have. Not everyone has perfectly sized material.
When are you opening it up for the second time? (The process may have been accelerated and matured quicker if it were built with ventilation columns as David Johnson had explained designed.)
Do you think adding some bio-char in the mix would greatly improve the final product or help just a little? Raw bio-char going in would be activated bio-char coming out. Just a thought.
I think you could add it, but I am on the fence about how much it would "improve" the final product.
JS compost at first reminded me of Jean Pain’s ramial chipped wood compost.
So I started building mine with, Macadamia, and other leaves, some sheep manure, lawn clippings, and the chipped green wood. no more than 3” diameter before chipping. it’s an odd time to start it so might have to sit for 18 months.
I hit 60C today. (140F)
Question; what is ideal particle size for woodchips and leaves.
my chipper takes a “thin” chip. about 1/8”
fingernail size. all branches were cut and chipped green.
soaked (water comes out green)
leaves dry brown, very little dried sheep manure,
top lightly covered with shade netting keeping moisture in but still breathing.
really cooking now.
I'm surprised you plan to wrap it up again and leave it be. Now is a perfect time to turn, mix and reset the whole pile. It will speed up the breakdown considerably.
For a bioreactor, you're relying on fungal colonies to break down the wood, and they benefit from a static environment, where it's not turned and not added to. Turning it only benefits the kinds of things that don't break down wood very well.
There was some mixing when I moved the contents from one reactor to the other, but the goal was to keep the pile relatively unturned to stay in line with what was started, but yes, turning it would likely speed it up.
If you wanted a complex micro-bio source to make a compost tea, it's ready.
Would be interested to see how the shredded palm is doing. I have literally tons of palm available
Have a video on that coming.
I have found seeding the pile with old active compost shortens the time by about half
Yes, it helps inoculate the new contents.
Sweet brother 🤟I’m working on mine let you know the results.
I would add leaves as well. Where I put leaves over woodchips in my yard, the fungal action is dramatically different from where I just have woodchips.
We tried green gobbler septic saver…..👍🏽
…and do the work. I love it!
Will you take PH tests of just starting, during, and finished of the wood chip pile? Would be interesting to know.
I don't know that Ph tests would show much, they should remain neutral as long as there is aerobic bacteria working. If the pile turns acidic or sour, that's likely an indication aearation is insufficient and you have anaerobic bacteria working.
If you want to measure the likely activity of the bacteria (how hard they're working), I'd recommend taking a temperature at the core where activity would be highest. I'd be impressed if the core got as hot as just below boiling water which is how hot a regular hot compost pile would get... But to sustain that kind of hot activity, a regular compost pile has to be turned regularly and often.
An idea you could consider for a composting experiment is to inoculate your wood chips with a saprophytic fungi, for example, oysters, to speed things up considerably
It's on the bucket list.
I wonder if being deliberately inoculated like that would cause it to out compete and overwhelm everything else
@@thomasa5619 well considering I have about 3 cu feet of mushroom blocks that were not depleted but had a green mold in them that will be going in mine, we may find out!
@@DiegoFooter If you want some liquid culture let me know, I need to get another batch going anyway.
@@speedbuggy16v haha, I have a few packets of agar coming so I can try to clone supermarket mushrooms for shits and giggles
And the sanitiser I’ll be using is high proof alcohol I brewed and distilled myself, in a still I made myself
Needs turning a few times surely? Mix the outside and inside? And the outside looks too dry? Add some previously composted stuff to seed it?
I would use that material on top of beds right off. If you can get hold of horse manure and mix in, wonders will happen. Good luck.
Honestly I would use that as tree mulch, it would be perfect
If that was here in North Queensland tropics, it would have shrunk to half the size in a year. Even wooden houses and wooden fence posts don't last long with the rain and termites
How about making some IMO spray or some JMS to introduce more fungal and bacterial life into the pile? Possibly some LABS? Compost loves eggs and fish too.
Perhaps I'm missing something. Would it take more than two years to turn wood chips into compost in your climate without the bioreactor? How much time is the bioreactor saving for the effort in building it?
If it were me, I too would let it go longer (the longer the better), but I definitely would be adding LAB and either LIMO3 or LIMO4 to it on a fairly regular basis during the year given the lack of moisture that Southern CA is typical of during any given year.
Can LAB digest cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin? I am all for adding more things IF they help, but I don't know that any science says that they will help.
If you have tons of woodchips pour in some pleutorus ostreatus micellium, have some crops of edible mushrooms for one or two years and recycle this micellium (it should be not woodchips anymore) and pour it in a regular compost pile.
You can easily add bloodmeal to that pile to speed it up due to the high nitrogen bloodmeal has but other than that it looks amazing cant wait to see it finished