Managing Moisture in Compost

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A compost heap that’s too wet or too dry is a recipe for either a sloppy mess, or a compost heap that won’t break down at all. Tony O’Neill explains how to manage compost heap moisture. Connect With Tony O'Neill: Tony O’Neill is the founder of Simplify Gardening, a blog, YouTube channel, and the author of the upcoming book Composting Masterclass: Feed The Soil Not Your Plants. Buy this book on: Amazon UK Bookstore US Bookstore AUS Bookstore Simplify Gardening YouTube Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your entire first order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Our Blog YouTube (Including our Epic Homesteading and Jacques in the Garden channels) Instagram (Including Epic Homesteading, Jacques, and Chris) TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Try to make compost in the past, and it has become a sloppy, sloppy, smelly mess, then
0:20.0	we've got you.
0:21.0	Today's episode is Tony O'Neill.
0:22.7	He's on the podcast.
0:23.7	The founder of Simplify Gardening, his upcoming book, Composting Masterclass, will be out
0:28.5	pretty soon, so the link will be in the description for that.
0:31.4	Tony, we tease a little bit yesterday about how, yes, the 31 carbon to nitrogen ratio
0:37.0	is pretty crucial, but things will break down as long as the moisture is managed correctly
0:41.4	and honestly, this seems to be one of the biggest problems with someone making compost.
0:45.9	Yeah, I totally agree.
0:46.9	I'd argue that this is probably the single most important thing to get right when making
0:50.8	compost.
0:51.8	Get this wrong, and like you said, you've either got compost that will never break down
0:56.9	or more likely a huge smelly mess, which no one wants in a garden, and there's nothing
1:02.5	worse.
1:03.8	When you consider where people tend to cite compost bins, it's usually near a neighbor's
1:08.4	wall or something like that, and the last thing you want is a neighbor's shouting at you
1:12.2	because you've created this smelly mess when you just want a compost for your garden.
1:18.2	Now, all life requires water, and your compost is a living ecosystem, so when you consider
1:25.6	that this home for trillions of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, roterfers, nematodes, it stands
1:31.4	to a reason that they all need water, and water is how most of the bacteria actually get
1:38.2	around the compost heap and become mobile because they're so small that they can't just
	...

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