I often think we need different terms than green and brown.
In the world of composting, green has nothing to do with color and stands for soft, moist, nitrogen rich. Manure is very "green" to a composter, not a "brown." Brown stands for hard, dry, carbon rich. Pine trees/needles at any season are a "brown." They are also oil rich (why they go up in flames like a torch) and do not break down easily.
Greens outdoors are harder to find in the winter, but I cook all winter, so always have kitchen scraps... Coffee grounds are another good example of a "green" that looks brown and the Starbucks type places have them year round.
-
rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
-
Organicanarchy
- Newly Registered
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Tue Sep 27, 2016 12:01 pm
Other carbon sources around the house : egg cartons. I reuse them for eggs and they can be used to start seeds, but when they get old and stained, they are a good addition to compost.
It is important if you want to get hot compost to balance the greens and browns. Newspapers, cartons, and such are very high carbon so you don't want a lot of that. Plant stems, bark chips and things that are less processed will have a lower C:N ratio. You want the final pile to be 25:1 (C:N) ratio otherwise it will cold compost and not be thermophillic. Good sources of N are greens but you can use fresh manures (cow, sheep, goats, swine, rabbit, but not carnivores) Horses are wormed and the wormers may persist but it can be used but should be composted because it has a lot of weed seeds. Fertilizer is a good way to boost the nitrogen content of the pile and heat it up. The bacteria don't really care about the source if it is synthetic or not but if you want to stay more organic blood meal, feather meal, crabmeal, alfalfa meal (horse food pellets), fish emulsion or fish meal, cottonseed meal, and soybean meal are the better sources of nitrogen.
People don't really understand organic.
Organic gardens should feed the soil so the soil can in turn feed the plants. Inputs must balance outputs to be sustainable. If it takes more inputs than what the soil can provide to grow a crop then it is not organic because you are essentially feeding the crop and not the soil.
When making a compost pile you are creating an environment to grow the soil organisms. Those organisms need a balance of nitrogen, carbon, air and water in order to grow.
You cannot make a pile only out of carbon, and if you make a pile only of nitrogen you will get a slimy, smelly mess. If you cut a tree and chip it branches and leaves you will end up with a pretty balanced pile of greens and browns but it is from a single source. It is better to have trees of different kinds chipped and mixed in a pile so you will have a balanced source of nutrients. Better yet to have at least 5 different sources of greens and browns. The more the better.
I found making a pile slowly works but ends up being a cold pile since it does not develop the height fast enough to cook and nitrogen is quickly lost from a pile. So, it is better for me to stockpile browns and then when I have enough greens, I build the pile in a day. I get a hotter pile that finishes faster. I layer about 8 inches of brown and then 8 inches of greens and I water that down. Throw a shovel full of soil to provide the starter organisms and repeat the layers. About a foot up, I put in the air shaft and keep filling around it. I end up with a brown layer on top.
I do this pile at my community garden especially when someone has dumped illegal waste in front of my plot. At home, I don't have a lot of browns or room so I prefer vermicomposting. It is much easier since they only need to be fed once a week and I use newspaper for bedding.
It is important if you want to get hot compost to balance the greens and browns. Newspapers, cartons, and such are very high carbon so you don't want a lot of that. Plant stems, bark chips and things that are less processed will have a lower C:N ratio. You want the final pile to be 25:1 (C:N) ratio otherwise it will cold compost and not be thermophillic. Good sources of N are greens but you can use fresh manures (cow, sheep, goats, swine, rabbit, but not carnivores) Horses are wormed and the wormers may persist but it can be used but should be composted because it has a lot of weed seeds. Fertilizer is a good way to boost the nitrogen content of the pile and heat it up. The bacteria don't really care about the source if it is synthetic or not but if you want to stay more organic blood meal, feather meal, crabmeal, alfalfa meal (horse food pellets), fish emulsion or fish meal, cottonseed meal, and soybean meal are the better sources of nitrogen.
People don't really understand organic.
Organic gardens should feed the soil so the soil can in turn feed the plants. Inputs must balance outputs to be sustainable. If it takes more inputs than what the soil can provide to grow a crop then it is not organic because you are essentially feeding the crop and not the soil.
When making a compost pile you are creating an environment to grow the soil organisms. Those organisms need a balance of nitrogen, carbon, air and water in order to grow.
You cannot make a pile only out of carbon, and if you make a pile only of nitrogen you will get a slimy, smelly mess. If you cut a tree and chip it branches and leaves you will end up with a pretty balanced pile of greens and browns but it is from a single source. It is better to have trees of different kinds chipped and mixed in a pile so you will have a balanced source of nutrients. Better yet to have at least 5 different sources of greens and browns. The more the better.
I found making a pile slowly works but ends up being a cold pile since it does not develop the height fast enough to cook and nitrogen is quickly lost from a pile. So, it is better for me to stockpile browns and then when I have enough greens, I build the pile in a day. I get a hotter pile that finishes faster. I layer about 8 inches of brown and then 8 inches of greens and I water that down. Throw a shovel full of soil to provide the starter organisms and repeat the layers. About a foot up, I put in the air shaft and keep filling around it. I end up with a brown layer on top.
I do this pile at my community garden especially when someone has dumped illegal waste in front of my plot. At home, I don't have a lot of browns or room so I prefer vermicomposting. It is much easier since they only need to be fed once a week and I use newspaper for bedding.
-
toxcrusadr
- Greener Thumb
- Posts: 970
- Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2010 4:50 pm
- Location: MO
Strap yourself in for more than you wanted to know about paper pulp bleaching. I was surprised to read the post above that said the purpose of paper bleaching is to remove lignin.
It turns out this is correct - part of the time. There are two kinds of pulping processes for wood, mechanical and chemical. Chemically produced pulp (aka 'kraft' pulp) has relatively little lignin and bleaching can remove it. The mechanical process leaves a LOT of lignin in the pulp, too much to remove by bleaching. So basically they try to destroy only the stuff that turns color, and certain bleaching techniques work best for that. I got this all from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaching_of_wood_pulp
Chlorine (either chlorine gas or hypochlorite, household bleach) was a problem because it would form organochlorines like dioxins when it reacted with the organic matter in the pulp (tiny traces form and it was never that much of a problem in the paper itself, but it would end up in the waste stream from the pulping plant; the stuff never goes away and can accumulate in the food chain). Most bleaching now is chlorine-free using oxygen, peroxide, ozone, sodium sulfite (which is the stuff they bleach fruit with so it doesn't get brown while drying), sodium hydroxide (lye) etc. All of these are much safer in terms of byproducts.
And the original statement was true, there is nothing left in the paper itself - either bleaching agents or byproducts - that will harm the compost pile. Think of it this way: if you can wipe your mouth with it, surely it's safe to feed to the compost critters for them to decompose.
It turns out this is correct - part of the time. There are two kinds of pulping processes for wood, mechanical and chemical. Chemically produced pulp (aka 'kraft' pulp) has relatively little lignin and bleaching can remove it. The mechanical process leaves a LOT of lignin in the pulp, too much to remove by bleaching. So basically they try to destroy only the stuff that turns color, and certain bleaching techniques work best for that. I got this all from Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaching_of_wood_pulp
Chlorine (either chlorine gas or hypochlorite, household bleach) was a problem because it would form organochlorines like dioxins when it reacted with the organic matter in the pulp (tiny traces form and it was never that much of a problem in the paper itself, but it would end up in the waste stream from the pulping plant; the stuff never goes away and can accumulate in the food chain). Most bleaching now is chlorine-free using oxygen, peroxide, ozone, sodium sulfite (which is the stuff they bleach fruit with so it doesn't get brown while drying), sodium hydroxide (lye) etc. All of these are much safer in terms of byproducts.
And the original statement was true, there is nothing left in the paper itself - either bleaching agents or byproducts - that will harm the compost pile. Think of it this way: if you can wipe your mouth with it, surely it's safe to feed to the compost critters for them to decompose.