On the farm we have a lot of organic waste, e.g. straw, feed residues and residues from the tomato plants. We want to take care of these residues and turn them into good soil in a compost. Composting requires good knowledge to be successful and we have brought in professional resources from Sogn to learn the art. In this film we learn about the basic principles of composting (the CMC method). Mariann Hoven at Grønt kompetensenter Mære Skjetlein has a compost talk with Olav Odden and Nathaniel Mead.
Compost brings more life to the soil
Compost stimulates soil life and helps build up humus and bind more carbon in the soil. Together with green plant cover all year round and good grazing systems, adding compost will be a very good measure to take care of the soil and get more carbon in the soil.
What is compost?
Compost is made up of nutrient-rich material such as feed scraps mixed with straw from the barn, vegetable waste or other organic material from the field, food waste and more.
Manure is a mixture of straw and manure. This organic waste can be mixed with bark or twigs from garden waste and edge zones. If you mix in twigs and bark from hardwoods together with ferment, you can get a well-transformed manure that is much easier to handle and put back into the field. A transformation occurs and we compost the manure by adding more oxygen and C-rich material from the twigs and bark.
Why compost?
Composting preserves nutrients and ensures nutrient recycling, while also sequestering more carbon. The decomposition of organic material is faster and composting also contributes to more life in the soil in the form of microorganisms and soil animals.
Composting with oxygen
Several agricultural schools and municipalities are engaged in row composting, where rows of organic waste are turned over and over. The goal is to mix in a lot of air so that the temperature in the rows is increased to at least 55° C and thus disease-causing microorganisms are eliminated. In the compost rows, 25-30% twigs and bark from hardwoods are mixed in with the organic material.
Composting without oxygen
When using this composting method, you add layers of tallow and plant residues together with twigs, bark and C-rich material without turning or turning the compost. This compost becomes anaerobic, that is, without access to air. You close the compost and add a thin layer of manure on top. This creates conditions for bacteria that carry out photosynthesis and ensures that the nutrients are bound in the compost. Many farmers also use composting methods where they add ferment with lactic acid bacteria to ensure good conversion in either the manure cellar or in the compost. This leads to better preservation of the nutrients.
Positive contribution from composted tallow and manure
Using more compost and manure is proving to be important for taking care of our topsoil. Using compost and manure ensures that organic material is returned to the soil and is crucial for building up humus and preventing erosion. The soil also becomes more drought-resistant and produces good crops.
Examples of what can be composted
Almost all organic material can be composted. What is composted depends on what you produce on the farm! For example, you can compost manure, silage residues and vegetable waste.
A good compost consists of nutrient-rich material such as tallow, manure or silage residues, structural material such as twigs and bark. Water is added when the compost is too dry. Dry material such as straw is added when the compost becomes too wet. Composting tallow from cattle and sheep gives a more stable temperature. Composting manure from hens or chickens leads to a rapid increase in temperature. Composting horse manure contains a lot of wood chips and is slow.
