Residues from -cides and antibiotics can wreak havoc on your compost; testing it is vital
Sometimes two people use the same word but have very different pictures in their minds as to what that word actually means. This is more common than we realize — in farming, as in all of life, nuance matters, and the words we use sometimes need to be defined so we can clarify what we are saying or hearing.
One of these terms is “compost.” There are folks who think that if it’s compost, it’s good. There are others who feel like there’s good and bad compost. And then there are even a few who have noticed or learned that there are many different types of “good,” and it depends on our context — not just the methods employed or even the completeness of the soil food web in that compost.
Most thermophilic “hot” composts are high in pH (typically pH 8.0) and oxidized. This is just how the reaction works: as a flame generates heat as wood is oxidized, so the compost pile releases energy and heat when we get the carbon:nitrogen ratios right. Oxidation, after all, is the loss of energy, so we are adding in oxygen while we lose energy. That means we are going to turn the organic nitrogen in the pile into nitrates — NO3 (and we see this quite clearly when we test).
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