EP210- The Compost Coach Kate Flood On Turning Scraps Into soils Treasure. Expert Composting Techniques

Unlock the secrets to turning your kitchen scraps into garden gold as we welcome Kate Flood, Australia's composting maestro, to the show. Get ready to be equipped with the know-how for crafting the perfect compost blend, as Kate lifts the lid on the essential ingredients and processes that lead to lush, thriving gardens. Whether you're wrestling with a tiny balcony space or looking after a large garden, we've got composting tips and tricks tailored just for you.

This episode is a one-stop-shop for gardeners of all stripes seeking to boost their soil health and plant vitality. Listen to Kate as she breaks down hot composting and why your patience during the curing phase rewards you with truly rich compost. We also take a peek at the fascinating world of fungi and how a handful of wood chips can supercharge your compost pile's ecosystem. Plus, for apartment dwellers, there's a deep dive into the wonders of Bokashi bins – your solution to indoor composting without the mess.

But we don't stop there; our conversation ventures into the transformative power of fermented waste in your garden. We also delve into  biochar, the dark diamond of soil amendments and what it can do for your garden as well as the planet. By the time you're done with this episode, you'll be itching to grab your shovel and start fermenting, composting, and reaping the rewards of a vibrant, healthy garden alongside Kate's expert guidance.

You can buy Kate's book here
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compost-Coach-compost-regenerative-wherever/dp/1922616451/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1E250JSG189YW&keywords=the+compost+coach+by+kate+flood&qid=1705674578&sprefix=the+compos%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1

If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
Email:  info@mastermygarden.com   

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Until next week  
Happy gardening  
John 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 210 of Master MacGarden Podcast. Now, this week's episode I'm very excited about I'm going to Australia for the first time. So we've done lots of, I suppose, guest interviews going across the Atlantic to the US and in other places as well France and so on but we've never I've never spoken to anybody from Australia on the podcast and I'm delighted to be joined this week by Kate Flood, who's the compost coach and she has a new book out all about composting and home composting and it's very much aimed at the home gardener and I suppose we all understand, or vaguely understand, the great benefits that we get from compost and producing our own. But there's so many ways of doing it and I know that people get a little bit overwhelmed with the brown matter and the green matter and carbon and nitrogen and all the rest of it. So this is exactly what Kate does and this is exactly what her new book does is, I suppose, explain this in layman's terms. So, kate, you're very, very welcome to Master MacGarden Podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Thanks, john. It's great to be here. It's great to have a little bit of your time to talk about my favorite topic, which is compost and regenerative gardening. It's something that, for me, is the mainstay of all good organic gardening, starting from the soil up.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Yeah, for sure. We've spoken about that in the podcast so many times about the soil and how important it is and that it's the cornerstone of everything else that you'll do within the garden, and I think there is slowly but surely increased awareness around how important that is, and compost pays a huge role in that. But you're very, very specialist in compost, so tell us about how you got into compost or where this broad base of knowledge has come from, originated from.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Well, I refer to myself as a bin fluencer because I use social media like Instagram and TikTok to educate people about the importance of composting, and it's been an interesting point to get here. So I am a trained teacher, high school teacher, and I specialize in, I think maybe an island you might call it home, like a home.

Speaker 2: 2:32

And so I was teaching. My last job, which I was at for about 10 years, was teaching teenagers how to cook, and a huge part of that for me is teaching them about sustainability and, you know, thinking creatively about the whole parts of the plant when you're cooking for yourself, not only to save money but also to reduce your waste. But something that I found so distressing was the fact that at the end of every lesson, any scraps or any food that the kids didn't eat and it was a big school in a city, sydney all of it went into landfill bin, into rubbish. And I would plead with the school, who had great leadership, to allow me to set up compost systems and they had to. Let me set up a veggie garden, but they were really hesitant to go down the route of composting on site because of an issue with rodents that had a mismanaged compost in the past. That became a rat bill and they didn't want to do it again. So I, as the food tech teacher, kept on taking lots of these scraps home in my own composting systems, but it was just too much for me to manage and I really would. I often felt like quite despairing about the fact that I was giving these young people skills to cook, but this compost and really responsibly managing your waste is a life skill that everyone needs to know about.

Speaker 2: 4:00

And so then COVID hit, and COVID was a reckoning for lots of people's careers. I had a new baby at home, plus two other older children, and I was on mat leave and I just really felt like my hands were tied in terms of the impact that I could have on the planet, because I'm quite a strong activist. And so I turned to social media, which I'd never had Instagram as a teacher, because it's so much of the issues that I had with students with because of social media. It's bullying online. But I actually read. Do you know the writer? She's a writer for the Guardian, alice Fowler. I read one of her articles talking about her favorite gardening Instagrammers and I had no idea that people used Instagram for things like gardening.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I just, you know, I only had an experience with how teenagers used it and I looked up some of them and they were, you know, fantastic making short form videos and, you know, using it in a really educational way. So I ditched my toes in and, you know, my role as a bimplancer has emerged from that and that's how I got my book deal as well. So it's all kind of quite surprising and actually some of those students who have now graduated, when they see some of the antics that I get up online, they're like we're not surprised, miss Flood.

Speaker 2: 5:17

you know you always are crazy food tech teacher so you know it's kept really to my authentic self and just sort of have fun with it. But I can see that it's a really important platform for education and for getting people excited about composting in their own backyards.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Yeah for sure. And like, obviously you're in Australia and there's, you know, there's people, I'm sure, following you from all over the world and composting, and I suppose the act of composting, the process, is the same all over the world. There is variances in that here in Ireland we probably have way too much green and maybe not as much brown as you guys might have in Australia because of our damp climate, but typically you're looking at the same process no matter where you do it around the world. And I suppose what you've touched on there in relation to the school and the home ec class and I suppose the canteen, school canteens, college canteens and the food waste that's coming out of there, it really is. It's something that everybody needs to be looking at and needs to be campaigning for, because the amount of waste going out of your schools, colleges, hospitals and, in most cases, nothing being done with it except going to that area, that really needs to change and, as I said, that's a huge part of what you're doing. So that's how you got into it.

Speaker 1: 6:40

There's probably millions of questions on composting. Let's go back to the very basics of composting. First we talk about the various ways the compost bins, the tumblers, the hot composting the wormaries and all the rest We'll talk about that in a minute. But let's just go to the very basic element first, where we're looking for the mixture of what's going in and what you can compost.

Speaker 2: 7:06

So you're talking about the fact that compost is universal, and it's true, and that makes my teaching about it quite simple, because, instead of teaching food tech now, I'm teaching a compost recipe. And it's an easy recipe because there's only four ingredients. So, irrespective of where you're making compost, you need to add these four ingredients to create a balanced heat that has the right bacteria and the right microbes in it, because, like so much of the transformation that happens in life, so you know, yeast in sourd, in bread, or lactobacillus when you're making sauerkraut you're needing to encourage the right microbes into the mixing compost, and that sounds a bit technical, but all you need to add are these four things. So you need to first of all think about your greens, so in compost language, we call it that nitrogen rich material. So that's our food waste, grass, clippings, green hedge trimmings, seaweed. They're not always coloured green, though, so that's where it gets a little bit tricky. So I like to talk about them as nitrogen ingredients, because they can also be things like manure and coffee grounds, which are coloured brown, but they're full of nitrogen.

Speaker 2: 8:25

So the microbes in compost need that source of nitrogen to reproduce, and then they need to have a balance of brown materials. So they're things that are rich in carbon. So they're usually the dead dry brown matter. So things like fallen autumn leaves when they've dried off and become brown, aged wood chips, shredded paper. It could be even spent plants that you leave to fully dry out and become brittle. So the nitrogen is stable. So if you leave a plant out in the sun the nitrogen will leach away and off gas and then you'll be left with a carbon rich shell. So this dry brown matter needs to be balanced with that wet grain juicy stuff and that provides the right balance of ingredients for compost microbes to get into the mix.

Speaker 2: 9:20

But they also need two more things. So, like all life on earth, they need access to water. So food waste is about 90% water. So if you add a lot of food waste in winter, you probably don't need to add more water. But in the height of summer maybe not in Ireland, but definitely in Australia we need to add water to our compost piles because if it dries off then the biology in the mix will die.

Speaker 2: 9:44

And finally, we're wanting to encourage aerobic microbes, and that basically is a fancy word for oxygen. So we're wanting to have microbes in there that have to have oxygen to survive, like us as well, and we can incorporate air into our piles in a number of different ways. The easiest way is turning your compost, so forking it over, using corkscrew compost aerator to mix the ingredients and to add in those pockets of air, if that's a bit labour intensive or heavy. What you can also do is adding chunky wood chips. They create an open pore space in the compost so that your green material doesn't slump and compact down and press out the air. So adding chunky carbon like wood chips or sticks helps create those airy pockets and that means the right bacteria is going to be in the mix so your compost won't stink and also you'll have a much better quality compost in terms of the available nitrogen in it in the end and also all of those micronutrients as well.

Speaker 1: 10:50

So that's a super easy recipe. So you're looking at green and brown material or nitrogen and brown material, as you call them, and you're looking for sort of 50-50 mix of that, and then you're just ensuring that your pile has constant moisture and you're adding air by turning or by using the corkscrew mixers to get air down through the compost.

Speaker 2: 11:16

Yeah, that's right In terms of the ratio. Going with a 50-50 carbon to nitrogen is generally a good rule of thumb, but it kind of depends on what you're adding. So I'm a real proponent for Bokashi compost, which is a totally different style of composting and originated in Japan in the 80s, and you ferment your food waste. You don't add any carbon rich materials into it. But the reason why I really like it is I ferment batches of my food waste so that they're kind of shelf stable and they're really active and full of lots of anaerobic. So this is oxygen-free microbes in this mix, because you're pushing out the air. But the reason why I like it it allows me to make hot compost in smaller batches. So I make a couple of buckets of Bokashi which I've fermented. You close a lid after your buckets full for a couple of weeks and then when it's time for me to make hot compost, I'm going to add that into the mix and this is like a huge supercharge of available nitrogen because those microbes they come in a specially selected brand mixture, which people refer to as EM stands for effective microorganisms actually consume some of the food waste and make the nitrogen available to the microbes in my hot compost which are aerobic oxygen rich. When I'm adding something like Bokashi or something also high in nitrogen, like manure or coffee grounds, then I'm actually wanting to add a bit more carbon.

Speaker 2: 12:50

This the compost language as well. We call it the CN ratio. So that's the. Everything has a CN ratio, so that's the percentage of carbon available to nitrogen, in particular, plant matter and animal matter as well.

Speaker 2: 13:04

So I described this compost language in my book, simply because this is where I feel like people get really muddled up, because they're, you know, you kind of feel like I need to get a calculator out and start like weighing stuff and doing maths, and actually that is a formula that you can use to work this out. But you know I'm not expecting anyone to go out and do that. So I have some tables and some really simple analogies so you can get that mix correct, and but in the most simple form. John, if you're just thinking about equal volumes of grain to brown, that's a really great place to start, because so often when people make compost, they just add their grains, food waste, grass, clippings, their animal manure, and all of that has too much nitrogen and you'll end up with a stinky, slimy pile of compost. So if you add in 50-50 browns and grains you're going to be on to a really winning ticket.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Brilliant. So when it comes to Bokashi bins, so we might just talk about the various types of composting as well. So we've talked about kind of the ratio and you've briefly mentioned Bokashi bins and they've become hugely popular here in Ireland and but what you're saying is that you're using your Bokashi as a first stage of your hot composting. So maybe, before we get into that, maybe explain Bokashi bins, explain hot compost bins, explain your standard compost bin or your tumbler, and that might give people I suppose you know what they might feel is the ideal composter for their setup.

Speaker 2: 14:39

Yeah, and look, that's something that I really spend a lot of time in my book discussing, because I wanted it to be a guidebook that people could pick up and go oh, I can compost in an apartment because I can use a Bokashi bin or an indoor worm farm. Or I've got this big farm or rural property. Yeah, I'm going to make some hot compost on it. So there's lots of different ways to you know, cat, when it comes to compost, there's lots of different ways to make it, and I go through all of those different pieces of kit I call it and more in my book because I think that diversity is really exciting as a gardener, because there's each different way of making compost provides different benefits to your garden. So for most people with a standard sized backyard who are wanting to dabble into actually really using all of their food waste and the organic matter that they produce in their house and returning those nutrients to the soil so you can have fantastic healthy soil food and grow nutrient rich plants, the best thing to start with is in close compost bin, something like a Dalek style bin. So Dalek Dr who. You know they're the black tubs that sit on the surface of the soil. The reason why I like those is we're wanting to work with the biology in the soil and get that up into the mix of our compost and by sitting the organic matter on the soil it's a win-win. You know that's direct access into your food, waste and carbon rich materials. So when you're doing slow, cool composting, I call it, you're going to be adding to it at Hawk slowly. It might take you several months to fill up your compost bin. That's totally fine as long as each time you add organic matter you're adding those browns and greens together. And the great thing about slow compost is when compost is made with cool temperatures the finished result will be much higher in fungi, which all of our soil needs fungi because our plants have a relationship with fungi in the soil to access nutrients and also, if it's cool, there's less off-gassing of nitrogen. So it's going to be like a big hit for your plants as well. And with that slow, cool composting it may take several months to make you fill up a bin. You stir it every now and again to introduce oxygen and after six to 12 months you should have some great finished compost to add onto your guarded bed. The opposite of that is hot compost. So it's a very different method to make it. You can't add to it slowly, you have to be.

Speaker 2: 17:15

I described in my book being a compost cook, because you need to. Actually, your mizon plus is getting all of this organic matter ready in one go. You need to have in traditional hot compost piles 1,000 litres of organic matter, so that's about a cubic metre, and you need to gather it all up. So maybe you're going to the beach and collecting seaweed. Maybe you're going to your local cafes and asking for coffee grounds. Maybe you're asking your neighbour for some of their cow poo. You've raked up lots of autumn leaves. You've got a bale of straw to add to the mix, so you've got all of that at once and you're going to build it in one day and you're going to add quite a lot of water to the layers as you're building those green and brown layers and then, within usually about 36 hours, you're going to come back and eat it.

Speaker 2: 18:07

If your compost nerd like me put your compost thermometer into it, which is a long probe, or you can stick your hand in, and you should feel some really serious heat. So what you're wanting to do is encourage the activity of thermophilic microbes, and they're the bacteria that consume the organic matter and, as a by-product, create heat. They'll create temperatures, ideally in a hot compost pile, between 55 to 60 degrees Celsius, and the reason why they're so useful with this bacteria is at that temperature you can add disease plants, you can add meat, you can add. Where I live in the country, I often pick up roadkill and I add that into my hot compost as well. It's full of nitrogen, but all of the pathogens are going to be killed off because of those hot temperatures. You're going to create compost much faster as well, but, as I said, the heat does actually disperse some of that nitrogen and you always need to cure it.

Speaker 2: 19:08

So curing your compost, or maturing your compost, as Charles Dowding likes to say Charles features in my book and I use the term curing, he uses the term maturing is a really important step for hot compost, because you can't think about speed the whole time. You're just thinking about speed. Then you're going to be missing out on a really essential step, which is, once all the organic matter's finished breaking down and your hot compost is cooled, you need to leave it to cure for about 12 weeks and at those cool, low temperatures, worms will re-into the mix, because worms are not going to be in a hot compost pile that's 55 to 60 degrees Celsius. They'll perish, so worms will come back in and all those other compost critters and you'll end up with compost that's much better for your garden. Final method did you want me to flesh out Bacchasi a little bit?

Speaker 1: 19:56

because it's a really interesting method.

Speaker 2: 19:59

So Bacchasi is a great option for people that don't have a backyard. As I said, it originated in Japan in the 80s. It's a small scale composting system that you make in a fully enclosed bin. So, unlike those two methods slow and hot compost Bacchasi uses different bacteria which you have to get in a starter. So it's like it's a wheat brand material that's inoculated with the right bacteria. They're anaerobic, which means oxygen-free bacteria. The main one is bacteria that produces lactic acids. So in effect you're fermenting your food waste. So you add your bucket of food waste a little sprinkle of the EM brand material and keep on layering it like that, squishing it down to squish all of the air out, and once your Bacchasi bins filled all the way to the top, you leave the lid closed for a minimum of two weeks and your food waste after that period would have fully fermented, and I love to use that in a hot compost.

Speaker 2: 21:01

If you don't have the space, then adding it into a soil factory is a really useful way to process it. If you don't have a garden, which is basically a large plastic tub, you add some healthy garden soil from a mate's backyard into it and then you pour your Bacchasi in and then you cover it with a bit more soil and that will be beautiful compost. In summer it's pretty quick to make compost in a soil factory like that. In winter it's a bit slower. Traditionally in Japan they would process it their fermented food waste by digging a hole and burying it directly into the soil, and it's a really great system because you don't need to be thinking about the balance of carbon and nitrogen. It's just nitrogen that you're adding in there. So it's kind of as much. As maybe it sounds technical to some of the listeners, it's actually quite a simple process and I explain all of the steps really clearly in my book.

Speaker 1: 21:50

Yeah, for sure. It's really interesting. There's a few interesting things coming up there. So I've seen you mentioned earlier on some of the Instagram influencers and I've seen a few of them talking about hot composting and they showed a picture of what's going into the composter and then X amount of weeks later, this is lovely compost, fit for your soil, and I often wondered was that like? The process is quick to create what looks like a compost, but I never did fully think that that was at the right stage for for adding to the garden. So you're saying curing.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Charred essential maturing.

Speaker 1: 22:28

So what is that? Yes frame about 12 weeks or so.

Speaker 2: 22:32

So it depends on what you've been adding in there. If you've been adding in meat or manure, then you need to cure your compost for at least 12 weeks, and that so to make it really clear. Your compost, with hot compost, may look like brown humus E Soil within six weeks. Let's say yeah. But if you use it on your garden that quickly, it actually can create, it actually can contain Phototoxic chemicals which are bad for your plants. So you need to even what.

Speaker 2: 23:04

Once it looks like compost, once it's fully cooled down, you need to leave it, preferably with on the soil. So Access. Your hot compost pile is directly on the soil so that all of the life in the soil Worms and beetles and critters can get access to it, and also fungi. So fungi is something that people don't think about that much with compost Because you know people just assume heaps of mushrooms are going to be popping up, but actually a lot of the processes with fungi happen. We at a microscopic level, with what we can't see what's going on. Occasionally might see mushrooms popping up and that's a great sign, but a lot of it happens with without us actually seeing it.

Speaker 2: 23:46

But that creates compost that's stable and Compost that has all of the nutrients in it that a plant available. If you leave use it too soon, it's actually going to do a disservice to your soil. So the great thing about curing is it's a hands-off process. The only thing that you, as a gardener have to do Is keep that pile moist. If your pile dries out during the curing process, the curing clock stops. So you need to keep it moist and you need to have access to the soil. But that's it. You know, just need to sit there and do its thing.

Speaker 1: 24:18

Yes, so that's, that's hot composting. It's an interesting one because, as I say, lots of people say that you can make compost in a few weeks, and so now what we're really saying is that hot composting very good way of quickly Processing, you know, things like bones, meat that might have pathogens in them, and but you're still the overall process. You're still looking at a minimum of kind of 20 weeks when you take both stages. Yes, even longer.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Well, look, you can make depending on how quick. The bigger your pile, the more heat you're going to generate. The more often you turn it, the quicker it's going to process. But at a minimum I'd say you can make hot compost in the height of summer and you've got all the ingredients ready in about three months. So that's including Sorry just three three months of the curing, depending on what you've added in, but you need to it's. It's really essential to be not forgetting about that step. You know people just focus on on quick things and you know if we're not getting compost out of the bag, we're actually allowing the all of the bacteria and the microbes to do this important work for us. So leaving your compost to cure for those three months is really important.

Speaker 2: 25:30

You may have had something that looks like soil Done within.

Speaker 2: 25:34

You know, some of my big piles have kind of looked like compost within about a month, but I know that I need to leave it longer, and when you've left it longer as well, what happens is I add a lot of wood chips into my hot compost pile, because that means I don't have to turn it as much.

Speaker 2: 25:50

Hot compost is a hands-on process, though, so, unlike your ad hoc cool compost. You do need to turn it quite regularly, so you need to roll up your sleeves and get ready to do some work. But I found that with my hot compost after about a month it may kind of look like soil but there's going to be lots of wood in it. I always use age wood chips. But during that that curing process of three months, that's a really important time because all of the fungi that's in there actually helps break down the lingen in wood and the cellulose, and as wood breaks down it returns any of the nitrogen that it stole from the pile. So that's why you end up having compost. That's much better for your soil for lots of different reasons Brilliant.

Speaker 1: 26:32

To go back to Bacchus then for a second. So, as I say, bacchus are coming quite popular here and there's a very good guy, olly Green, a better plants, who's promoting them quite heavily here at the moment and Questions on that. So the liquid that comes out I've seen people using that as a fertilizer for the soil quite quickly. How is that? Is that a good quality, you know ingredient to be added to your soil or is it too early? Or what's what you're thinking on the liquid part of it?

Speaker 2: 27:04

So what you're, what you're producing within a Bacchus bucket, is the fermented food waste plus. In colloquial terms, we call it Bacchus juice. Don't sit down with your morning coffee and have a glass of it. You'll be sorely disappointed and sick, but basically what happens is, as the anaerobic microbe start breaking down the food waste during that fermentation process, there's going to be Some of that Bacchus juice that actually comes into the bottom of your Bacchus bucket and it's important to regularly empty it because that is Often the smelliest part of your mix if you drain your Bacchus bucket regularly, then your fermented food waste does have a quite a strong odor, but it's kind of smelled like people's, whereas the Bacchus juice can be the stinky part of it if you let it pull there.

Speaker 2: 27:51

But the cashew juice is useful, but it's not the best part of it. So it there will be available nitrogen in it and there will be some of the bacteria alive in it if you use it quickly. It's not shelf stable though, john, so if you drain it out and leave it out for a couple of days, all of that biology in there would have died. So you need to drain it and use it within 24 hours and you need to dilute it really significantly. Forget the exact dilution rates, but I've got them all in my book, but it's about a tablespoon to nine litres of water, so it's really you know you really have to water it down.

Speaker 2: 28:28

I have found, though, in terms of my own application of it on my plants, I can see that it is helping Give available nitrogen and that bacteria to the soil and I can see an increase in plant growth. But if you let it sit there too long it's going to be stinky and not great to use. Another good thing to do with it is if you have drains that are a little bit smelly or a little bit blocked with hair or grease, you can actually pour your Bacashi juice straight down those drains and that EM, the effective microbes, will eat through the buildup of hair and fat and oils in your drain, and so you don't have to use something really harsh like Drano and it's septic safe as well. If you want to give that a go, do it last thing at night, so that you actually have a couple of hours of the AM working before you flush lots of water through it. But I've found with some of our drains that I've got three kids. If there's lots of hair in there, I do find that that's a really effective thing to do as well.

Speaker 2: 29:30

So there's definitely no point wasting it, but it's not the best thing, equally with worm farms. People are sowing to worm wee, and worm wee really is quite an unstable product because worms don't wee worms only poo. So the best thing about worm farms is the worm castings that's a fancy word for their poo. The worm wee is just that lactate that drains through the castings and it's not processed in the gut of the worm, so it can be quite a variable quality. So yeah, with these liquid forms of fertilizer like I'm saying that in inverted commas because really they're soil conditioners, they're not acting as fertilizers in a traditional sense.

Speaker 2: 30:14

But there are some really exciting things that you can do making compost teas and, for beginner gardeners, even just getting a handful of your cured compost and putting that in a bucket of dechlorinated water. If you don't have tank water or river water, then you can get some town water and leave it in a bucket to off gas, the chlorine, for about 24 hours and then add a handful of your compost to that and that just allows you to stretch the love furter so you can sprinkle that over your veggie patch and a handful goes a much longer way. When you've watered down. Or in my book I talk about aerated teas as well. There's lots of nerdy things that you can get into, so it's really just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 1: 30:54

Yeah, compost teas, that was something I was gonna talk about, but they are hugely beneficial because you're using and I know Dr Leningham talks about them a lot and how it can be used on a large scale. So you're taking that biology that's created in a quality compost, mixing it with water and then you're able to spread that biology across your whole garden, basically, and you're getting the benefit from that small amount.

Speaker 2: 31:23

So she always talks about aerated compost tea. So my example of just basically making a soil drench by adding your handful of compost into de-chlorinated water is not a traditional compost tea. To make an aerated compost tea, you need to have a proper bubbler so people often use bubblers that you can get with fish tanks and you need to actually pump oxygen jets into the water so that you're keeping the right biology in there. So we've been talking about anaerobic microbes, that's, the oxygen-free guys In Bacashi.

Speaker 2: 31:57

They're good, but in the compost pile they're bad, and in your compost tea you don't want them to proliferate. You want the good aerobic microbes to proliferate, and so what you're doing is you're creating this right environment for the right bacteria to breed up so that you can spread the love a lot further in your garden, which means for people that feel like they can't make enough compost and I know that it's definitely the case for us here, where you were living in Sydney in a 200 square meter backyard Actually, that was our house and garden was on 200 square meters and now we've moved rurally and we live on one hectare, so 10,000 square meters, and I'm self-appointed compost queen but I'm sort of going all right, don't do that compost. But making compost teas helps with that because you can spread that biology so much further from very little starter.

Speaker 1: 32:51

Yeah. Final question on Bocacci After you've taken off the liquids on a regular basis and after a few weeks you're left with the material inside in the drum and you're adding that to your hot compost bin. But in traditional Bocacci that's being buried in the ground and the process finishes under the ground. I wondered about that. So is that still potentially a rodent? Can that be a rodent attractant at that stage being buried in the ground?

Speaker 2: 33:26

Look, I have found that we've got some very clever rats in the big ones.

Speaker 2: 33:32

I know I've got a few because we've got lots of chickens, but I've found that they're really disinterested in fermented food waste. Other wildlife might be interested, but I find rats and mice. Once your food waste is fermented, they're actually disliked. So with Bocacci, because you are fermenting it, it becomes acidic. But the great thing about it is because if you're thinking, oh, I've got acidic soil, no, that's not the right type of compost for me. Once you add it to your soil the pH of that fermented food waste increases and it's been shown to actually come back up to neutral once it's fully broken down. But I think it's the acidity of it that rodents don't like.

Speaker 2: 34:17

In my hot compost pile as well, if I've added a lot of meat into Bocacci, I try and bury it in the middle, but rodents are not going to come anywhere near a pile. That's 55 to 60 degrees Celsius anyway. So I've found it's really effective for keeping rodents out of your food waste. If you are concerned about other wildlife, dig it up. What I suggest is, if you're wanting to do the traditional way of processing Bocacci, dig a hole in the ground, bury your Bocacci bucket and put a piece of wire with a couple of bricks or rocks on top of the hole and then, because it is fermented, it breaks down really quickly as well. So within a few weeks it will be broken down, and that won't be attractive to any animals at all.

Speaker 1: 34:59

Brilliant. Just it's not really part of composting, but I know you talk about it and I'm sure you talk about it in your book as biochar. Are you using that in your garden? Are you creating your own? What do you see as the benefits of it? Again, we spoke about it on the podcast. I personally use a very good quality Irish produced one in my garden and definitely see benefits, so maybe give us a little bit of an overview.

Speaker 2: 35:26

Yeah, absolutely. It's in my final chapter, which my editor was editing chapter by chapter, and it got to chapter eight, which is called the Soil, and I talk about all of these different amendments that you can add to your soil, and biochar is probably the one that I'm most excited about. And so this final chapter I think she was expecting it to be as long as all the other ones and it's sort of a big juicy chapter with lots of information and lots of tutorials and I explain how to make things like biochar, because it's such an important string to our bow in terms of our battle to save our planet because of the increasing temperature and what it does. It actually sequesters carbon back into our soil, so that makes our soil a lot better for our plant growth, but also, in terms of returning carbon into our soil, it's better for climate change. I make my own. So I make it in two ways In winter, when I've got my wood fire stove going, which, I must admit, we live in a pretty cold part of New South Wales but I don't like to burn it that much, but I feel like if I'm making biochar at the same time, then that's helping balance the emissions of burning, of burning timber. So I've got a small biochar kiln that I put into my wood fire stove and that's a purpose built kiln and basically to make bio or quickly explain what biochar is.

Speaker 2: 36:49

So biochar is a very stable form of carbon. With compost there's a percentage of carbon in it, but the life in your soil consumes compost. You know compost is soil food, so you need to add it every season. But biochar is much more stable. It stays in your soil. For they've been shown potentially for thousands of years. So some of the best soil in the world is in the Amazon basin and it's called terra preta and they we now know that the Amazonians amended their soil with biochar and we can still see to this day from thousands of years ago that it's some of the best soil in the world. And the reason why it's so biochar is so exciting is so we're thinking about this hard form of it's kind of like it looks a bit like charcoal but it has different qualities. But it's basically like this empty apartment block and we charge biochar with nitrogen and that allows the right bacteria to enter the biochar as well, and then when you add that to your soil instead of something that you have to add every single season. The nitrogen and the right bacteria are there to feed your plants for many, many years.

Speaker 2: 38:04

So I make it in a small kiln, but I also make it in the ground so you can instead of you can buy quite big biochar kilns, but they're really expensive you can just dig a hole and make it at least a meter wide and make it into a conical shape. So it goes down like a cone, because what you're wanting to do is burn organic matter, things like timber. I make biochar the bones and shells as well at a very high temperature with a small amount of oxygen, because if you burn things hot with a lot of oxygen you're going to end up with ash You're wanting to have. So the way you make it it's in my last chapter, because it's kind of for the expert composter it's not a beginner thing to make, but it's basically you're layering your fire with plant prunings and timber and other organic matter and you're limiting the amount of oxygen in the mix and then you'll end up with all this beautiful looking charcoal.

Speaker 2: 39:02

It's different to charcoal though, because it actually charcoal is quite alkaline, whereas biochar is still relatively alkaline, but it's closer to neutral than charcoal is and it has different qualities because it has these things called macro pores, which are those big holes within it that can be filled up with nitrogen and the right bacteria. It's a really exciting thing to make, and for me as well. We do eat meat and I love making biochar out of my bones. I feel like a witch while I'm making it, especially once you've got all of these charred bones, because they still look like bones after the process. They're not burnt away to nothing, but then you have to use a mortar and pestle and break them all down and then charge them up with nitrogen and then you can use them in your garden. So it is a magical process.

Speaker 1: 39:54

Yeah, brilliant, we're starting to round off, but, just out of curiosity, human waste is I don't know. There's a feature in your book, but it certainly features or has featured on your Instagram page and it's one that always, I suppose, creates curiosity and it's one that's obviously people are a bit afraid of, but there's huge how would you say it for gardening in general. There's huge untapped potential in it.

Speaker 2: 40:29

Absolutely Well. We're mammals that poo very nutrient rich species, and also our urine is full of nitrogen, and I feel like it's composting poo is a bit taboo, but if you want to dabble in it, then doing a wee on your compost pile is just adding some free nitrogen into the mix. And there's myths about women's urine not not working. That's a total myth. You know, if you're a man or woman, that your urine works just as well. Medication, though, is something. So if you're on medication antibiotics or different medication that will come through in your urine. So only use it if you're healthy and not on particular medications.

Speaker 2: 41:13

But it's something that we all produce. And the amazing thing about urine if we're just wanting to go down that way, it actually has enough NPKs, that's, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, so they're the three components that are in all fertilizers, and our urine actually has enough NPK to sustain a home garden. So the fact that we're flushing weeds away is so wasteful when we could be processing it in our own backyard, adding it with. So we're thinking about. You know it's maybe depending on how much water you've been drinking, it might be colored yellow, but it's still counted as a green in our, in our compost mix, so we need to balance it with carbon, but it's a really good compost activator because there's lots of available nitrogen in it.

Speaker 1: 41:59

Yeah, for sure, and that is in the book.

Speaker 2: 42:02

It is in the book. Yeah, I talk about composting weas and poos and also so one thing in my book which I was really excited about this fourth picture articles. So one of them is with Charles Dowding and he talks about how, at homemakers, he composts. I'm pretty sure he talks about just we. He doesn't go down the poo route, but I know that they do.

Speaker 2: 42:24

If you are wanting to compost your own feces, you need to make sure you're doing it correctly, because there can be pathogens in there, and only using that compost on once it's fully broken down. It can be used on fruit trees, but not on things like leafy greens or tomatoes. You need to be just using it on things with established root beds. But so, yeah, there's these four feature articles. Charles is in it, alessandro Spicey-Woustache he is in it, so talking about how to compost in an urban setting. So he lives in what he's moved recently, but he is an Italian guy who lives in London and he's got a really small but really pumping backyard and so he does lots of interesting regenerative gardening practices in a small skidding. And then Costa, for any Australians listening, who's an Australian gardening guru, who's great, talks about how to be a community composter and Hannah Maloney is a really interesting permaculture gardener here in Australia. She talks about how compost fits in in her permaculture garden.

Speaker 2: 43:25

So yeah, there's lots of different ways that lots of other people compost. So it's a guidebook that you can pick up. I'm amazed when I've met people now that have said they've read it cover to cover. I never really envisioned people reading it like that. I felt like people would pick it up and go I want to learn about worms now, or, you know, I want to learn about humania. But yeah, people are reading it cover to cover and it's been amazing to get to this point and yeah, it's super cool.

Speaker 1: 43:52

Congratulations on the book and tell people where they can find it.

Speaker 2: 43:55

I know it's on Amazon, so yes, so I always love supporting small, independent bookshops, and my publisher has an outpost in the UK so you can. If you request it from an independent bookshop, they'll be able to get it in for you, but you can get it from big players like Amazon as well, and I think it could be a perfect present for yourself and if you've got a grain thumb, then you'll end up having a brown thumb as well One time you've read it or for anyone else who's a gardener in your life. Yeah, it's been a really great process writing it and seeing the feedback that I'm getting, so, yeah, it's nice to be at the center of it.

Speaker 1: 44:37

Yeah, for sure it looks like a very because composting is relatively simple, but it's something that people really do struggle with the ratio here in Ireland because we typically have a lot of green grass and a lot of the time we don't have a huge amount to balance it with. So I think people struggle a little bit with the ratios and that sort of thing. So it looks like.

Speaker 2: 45:01

Yeah well, I've got a whole section on carbon to nitrogen ratios, but just on that, can I say to your listeners, so you're in autumn at the moment, or have you just entered the winter?

Speaker 1: 45:12

We're in the winter now. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:14

You're in winter now, so it's early winter. They probably still are beautiful fallen brown leaves on the ground, and I've got a whole chapter on how to use leaves in your regenerative garden because they are so so useful for so many different things, like leaf mold or Korean natural farming leaf mold tea. You can use them as carbon in your compost as well. They're also really good just to leave on the soil because lots of insects overwinter in them. But if you've got an excessive leaves that have fallen on a hard surface, rake them up and keep them throughout the year, because they're a free source of carbon that you can add with all of that really lush Irish grass that you're all growing all year round.

Speaker 1: 45:57

And so it's been a really interesting chat. Compost is something that well. Look, we could talk about it for another two hours, but I'm quite conscious that you're sitting in your car and it's like I see in the background. It's after getting dark, so it's time to get inside at this stage. I think it's been a really interesting chat. Congratulations on the book and best of luck with it. I hope it goes really well over the next few months. Definitely looks like and sounds like a book that's really worth having for any home gardener. And Kate, thank you very, very much for coming on. Master, my Garden podcast.

Speaker 2: 46:31

My pleasure, john. Thank you for having me, and I feel like I'm not sure if I've said the name of my book, but it is called the Compost Coach Compost Coach. So I hope I can coach your listeners into making kick-ass compost at their place.

Speaker 1: 46:44

Yeah for sure. So, yeah, that's been this week's episode. Huge thanks to Kate for coming on the Compost Coach, which is available through all your local bookshops or on Amazon for anyone listening and earned. It's on amazoncouk. As I say, it sounds like and looks like a really practical guide to all the different types of composting. So when someone considers composting, we know the benefits of it. We maybe get bogged down a little bit on the ratios and here in Ireland we struggle a bit with the too much greenery, and then we look at you know, we look in a compost bins, are we looking at tumblers, are we looking at hot bins, are we looking at pocashi? And I suppose the book will give you the ins and outs of all of those in a very, very simple and easy to follow format. So the Compost Coach available wherever you get your books, as I say, amazoncouk. And that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening.