M Hey, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's select, I picked our episode on composting. You'll hear Chuck and Me get super jazzed about earth science, gardening, invertebrates, all of our favorite things. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it inspires you to start composting, or at least start pocket mulching. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, the man Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and I think I neglected to say last you did. Guest producer Noel is with us. That's right. So if you listen to the Shroud of Turn episode and you're like, man, that sounds great. Yeah, that was anual. Thanks Noel. Uh this show today, I've been replaying my one of my favorite Simpsons jokes ever over my head. I laughed already just hearing. It was from the one of the Halloween episodes when um they did the Nightmare on Elm Street Riff. There's old old ones Um where groundskeeper Willie was Freddy Krueger and he turned into a I think like a shredder or a tractor or something and ran over people or something and said, uh, when you when you had done, when I'm done, that they're going to need to do a comb post bordered them. Oh wow, that is a bad joke. Yeah, it was really good, one of the I mean, the Simpsons didn't get too funny, but that was that was a good one. Well, anything goes on a treehouse of horror, you know, agreed, So you know, um, there's a bunch of cities that have kind of gotten woke to the idea that we should be recyce cleaner, composting our food. Did you know that? Sure? I saw a stat said something like of food gets wasted. But I got suspicious because I also saw that of the um stuff that goes to municipal landfills or trash is food waste, which doesn't necessarily mean it's wasted food, because I don't think you would count like a banana peal as food waste as wasted food because the box. They're not counting food packaging food no, but I think they're counting everything that has to do with food that could conceivably be eaten as wasted food, which is not the same as food waste. The point is the legitimate stat that I saw just about everywhere is that if you took all the garbage that the United States throws away into a landfill, that is food waste. And I'm sure some of it is the whole cake, some complete more on through a whole cake away for no good reason. Well that's actually a pretty good reason. But you know what I'm saying, um of all that trash is food. The problem is you might say, well, who cares trash? It decomposes. That's great, that's true. It does decompose. But in the landfills that the United States uses, we make sure they're anaerobic. Oxygen doesn't get down there, so a whole different decomposition process takes place. And in a landfill, in anaerobic decomposition, methane is produced. And methane is bad news. Methane is something on the order of seventy worse. I know, there's a much more scientific way to put it, but it's seventy batter than carbon dioxide as far as greenhouse gases go, more potent, how about that? Okay, so you don't want methane. If you have to choose between methane and carbon dioxide, you want to go with car monoxide. And it just so happens that if you compost food waste, mostly carbon dioxide is produced methanes not so if you're diverting this food waste from the landfill. There's a whole bunch of different stuff you're doing. Number One, you're saving all that the space for actual trash, So you're extending the life of your land, sir. You're keeping all that methane from being produced. And as if it couldn't get any better, you are creating an amazing fertilizer that you can use to grow. You could grow a tree out of a shoe. This fertilizer is so good the old shoe tree. Sure, uh, yeah, it's um. We've danced around this a lot. We well, you just referenced are and I don't like the tutor on horns a lot, but that landfills episode was great landfills And don't forget the plasma incinerator one. Yeah, basically any of our waste management ones are yeah what else where think grilla gardening. We touched on this sum and um a couple of others. We've mentioned composting and to the extent where I thought we had done one on composting, but we had not until about five and a half minutes ago, UM. And that's a guess. So if you're right in say it like it was eight minutes, chuck, you're grounded. So, like you mentioned, we didn't. I don't think these numbers are accurate anymore. But we generate let's just say, a lot of millions of tons, hundreds of millions of tons of trash, and about twenty five of that is recovered through recycling, which includes composting, which is good. But that number, if it was seventy, would be amazing. Does that include composting? That that recycling number? Yeah, okay, yeah, fib seventy would be great? Ye, why not let's shoot for ninety. Well, supposedly Seattle itself, UM has a goal of something like six seventy of all of its trash being recycled by the end of the year. Of course they do, because Seattle does it right, and they actually have compulsory mandatory composting now, like you have to compost if you live in the city of Seattle. I don't know I live there, I don't know, I don't know. I asked myself that a lot you know, Emily and I went for our two shows ago on that lovely spring weekend was gorgeous, and we we stayed extra in Seattle and after we were like, we're moving here. That's it. It's a great town. I've said it before on the show Dogs and Bars. That was all it took, uh, Dog bar tenders, but again dog explain poker. Uh again, it's easy to fall in love a Seattle on a perfect weekend in April. Yeah, I hear it rains there a lot, though I'd still live there. It's a great place. And you know what, you may see us again this year's Seattle tease tease. It's such a tease, all right. So composting is great for a thousand reasons, but one, uh, first and foremost is that it's it's not hard to do and it's not expensive to do if you just want to be uh. And there are many different levels of composting, from big city programs to the home farmer that takes it super seriously, to just if you just want to lessen the impact a little bit on your landfill, your local landfill, feel like you're doing the right thing and get a little bit of nutrient rich goodness fertilizer to use. You can have it just a little, small, little composting operation going on at your house. Yeah, this is all. This is all you need organic waste. And we don't even mean something that's like organic. We mean like organic, meaning it's composed mostly a carbon. It was once alive at one point, right, Yeah, and I made a poopy noise, which you can't use poops. So no, that's night soil. It's the opposite of what I should have done. Uh, what's a banana sound? That's a bananas on. You need soil, you need water, need air or oxygen. Right, So the organic waste is the stuff you're gonna have broken down, which in this case, in the case of a compost pile, is food the soil well partially sure, but no, no, it's food for the things that in the soil. Right, it's an energy source and nutrient source for what's in the soil. So you add soil. When you're adding soil, you're basically adding starter culture to the compost. What you're doing is grabbing microbes from say, in your yard and putting them on the compost pile and say dinners on boys. Yes, but you don't want to poop in it. You need a little bit of water, like you said, to keep it moist, but you don't want to keep it over wet because microbes like slightly moist soil and then air because again again this is really really important. You can let your compost pile um degrade anaerobically, but it's gonna douce methane, which is bad for the for the environment, bad for your neighbors, bad for your neighbors, bad for you. It's gonna stink, it might blow up, who knows. You don't want to smoke near a what's called a passive compost pile. So you want to just introduce oxygen and all this sounds very complicated, it's not. It's hitting it with your hose. It's um and by that I mean spraying water on it with your hose. Just realized you can with your host to um. It's like turning it over right the pitchfork to add oxygen. It's as simple as that. Yeah, it's really easy. UM. So what you're gonna end up with the end, like we said, is is really fertilizer. But it's a it's called humus. Don't call it hummus, No, that's different. Has has two limbs, right, Uh, this is just one m and um. Those little microorganisms in there, they're gonna break this stuff down. They're gonna eat it, they're gonna poop it out, and they're gonna multiply and there's gonna be we'll talk about the critters a little more later, but they're gonna be different critters along the way that eat those critters than critters to eat those critters. And it's gonna get really hot up in there. It might steam, then it's gonna cool back down. It's gonna get smaller, and it's just like this little micro environment. It is really really neat. There's actually a food web in there. There's a lot of physics and chemistry that's going on. It's it is very neat. I'm fascinated by it too. But the upshot of composting is that you're taking something and it's being broken down into its constituent parts so that it can be reused by plants and the whole circle of life can start over again. Yeah, you're sort of just accelerating the natural process of like rot, you're optimizing it. Yeah, Like you mentioned a passive composter, which is to say, you know, lazy hippies, you could you could just throw all that junk out of your window if you wanted, in a big pile and throw your some grass clippings on and throw throw your your fall leaves on there. Just leave it there, and that thing will eventually compost itself. Well again, it'll produce methane, you'll blow up, or you can turn you know, you can turn it every now and then and maybe avoid that. But no, I think that makes it an active pile. Well, uh, slightly active pile then. I don't mean like every other day just to avoid methane maybe, but that would still technically be an active pile, would be a poorly managed active pile. Slightly active, poorly managed. So I'm serious, that's what they call it. I know, Okay, I just we'd like to make up our own names for things. I didn't know you were going to cease that and oh it was in year nine. I gotta sorry. We'll call that the dooby pile. Okay, you know it's called active management. I just wanted to make sure that we got it on the record. So, uh, the big goal here is to reduce your waste, they say in this article ultimately will save you tax money because you're landfill, won't I thought that was hilarious. Yeah, I mean, don't count on seeing any any tax breaks coming anytime soon. But you like that got William F. Buckley's attention. Probably, So, so how do you how do you do this? Let's say you want to start composting. There's a one, two, three, five step process to get this thing going. Okay, well, let's talk about them. The first thing you want to do is just pick out the place you want to do it, all right, because it's you know, it's a bit of a mess. It's it doesn't have to be necessarily, but it depending on your neighbors, they might be like, well, great, I'm glad you started an unsightly pile of kitchen rubbish in food waste that I can see from my deck. Thanks a lot for that. So that's something you want to keep in consideration. Apparently, even if you do have a very well managed active pile. Um, what would you call that? I'm not making it funny name anymore. Then we're jokes. I've ruined it. Um, it's still it's still may stink here there. So you want to kind of away from the house, but not so far away that if you're feeling lazy, you're not gonna go out and tend to it on a daily or every other day le basis. Yeah. And if you have that much land that you have a compost pile a mile from your house, good for you. You got some acreage. Uh. There might be some local rules, either from your h o A heaven forbid if you have to belong to one of those, or maybe just your municipality might have rules and regulations. Yeah, to check with them first. That's what everyone does. Be for they started compost Piley, go down to city hall and say what tell me even the rules and regulations surrounding composting in my yard? And I think the first thing everyone does is start throwing their eggshells out the window. That's how it always starts. It's like I'm tired of these things being in my trash than Uh. They recommend down when because like you said, it might stink a bit. Uh. Sun it's good in a way, but you don't want it baking in the sun all day, no, because it will dry it out. Remember, you want it to be kind of moist, and the sunlight can actually dry it out, so you want Apparently the best place to put it is under a deciduous tree. Good spot. Yeah, because in the in the winter time there's no leaves on the tree, so the sun is gonna keep it warm when it's cold. But during summer it's going to be shaded by the tree, so it won't dry out. It's just perfect. It is deciduous tree equals love. Uh. Wind is good to provide a little air, but you don't want it blowing scattering the stuff all over the place, drying it out again. No good? What else drainage? Don't start one in that old baby pool that you don't want to throw out, especially if your baby's in there. Uh. Yeah, you want good drainage. Like generally you build either build a bin. We'll talk about this stuff actually right now. But it's off the ground. Sure, it's on legs. Yeah, although you can't have a pile, but um, you know generally you want to you want to build a bin or buy a bin, right, and those things sit off the ground right because of drainage. That's part of it for sure. Yeah. Um. You also want dirt rather than say like a concrete pad or something like that. Yeah, I don't come post in your driver, Right, it's not a good idea. Um. As far as structures go, you can, like you said, you can go buy one. They're not very expensive from what I understand, right, it depends on the size. You can also say go buy some cinder blocks and build something like that. Sure, um, But basically you can cut compost structures into two. There's a single bin and there's a three bin system. So in the single bin system, you put new stuff on top new binan appeals. This is what I think of when I think composting. You know, banana peles um. You put new stuff on top, and then you take a pitchfork or shovel or something like that and you work, you work it in to the compost. And at the bottom of this structure, say it's open when you're walking up to it, the the finished compost will accumulate at the bottom. And the reason it accumulates at the bottom because it's of a finer, finer grain um And that's it. Single bin new stuff at the top, easy peasy, stuff that's in process in the middle, stuff that's finished in the bottom, and it will just naturally kind of separate like that. Yeah, And when we're talking structure like that, if you want to build one, you know, build a wood frame and it's like got chicken wire walls and a chicken wire bottom, and that gives you the air. And if you've got something that collected underneath, it's gonna fall, you know when it's small enough. Uh, some other stuff might fall. You may need to add it back in. But with the three bend system, you've got, well you've got three bends, you've got the starter stuff, you've got the once it starts to break down a little stuff, and then you have the finished product. And you have to actively manage that system. Yeah, that system sounds unnecessarily difficult, kind of like it. Oh you're a three bing guy. Well, we're about to get into this for real. We've been um lazily composting for a while, but um, we're doing our whole backyard, Like we're getting rid of our grass. Basically, what are you gonna do compost mulch in beds and plants and herbs and cacti in and all that. Uh no cacti, but we do have a palm tree. We've had that forever though. Um, yeah, just getting rid of the grass. Basically because it takes up so much water. Just it's just it's not good grass to begin with, and I'm not the best about cutting it. Lawmars are terrible. Plus you don't water enough. You never let a quarter inch of water accumulating exactly. Yeah, just and you know it'll it'll look nicer. So part of this in this company that's doing it is it's not just a landscaping company there. There are a bunch of hippies. So they're they're designing it in such a way that that feeds itself. And part of that is composting anyway, long long way of saying, we're gonna start, like for real composting very shortly. And you're going with the three bin structure. I don't know, I think I'm gonna build it. It's well, it's the structure Emily tells me to build. It's the easiest way to say it. Yeah. But if you buy one, like you were saying, um, there's all different kinds just you know, look look it up online or go to a hardware store, and you know many of them will look like a big barrel on legs and it literally turns like has a crank on it. To where you can turn this thing in circles so you don't have to use a pitchfork at all. You don't have to muss your hands or your hair. It's like a bingo, yes, spinner, but with banana pi. Have you ever played bingo, like legit bingo in a room h with hundreds of people, not hundreds, well more than like you and you me, yes, like a bingo parlor? Is that what they're called. I've actually gone to um a couple of like uh senior retirement homes and helped out with bingo and that's a pretty pretty cool experience actually, because do you run the bingo? It's kind unqualified to run the bingo? Right, just walk around and point out if somebody missed one that they you know that was called that kind of thing, but did you want to talk about taking it seriously? Oh my god? And then you have to be a certified bingo master to run the show. Yeah, and they'll like tell you to hurry up and like shout if you're if you're not like loud enough for fast enough, for going too fast. Like so the point is not to have fun, you know, The point is to win. What do they win? The prizes. Yeah, nothing much usually, I mean, but you can I think like you can play bingo and casinos for thousands and thousands of dollars usually at old folks humes. They don't, you know, sure there's not thousands of dollar prizes like honey buns and cigarettes, right right exactly? All right, Well let's take a break here after we have talked structure and uh, we'll talk a little bit about what you want what kind of junk you want to throw in that pile? All right, chuck, So we're talking what you want to throw on the pile. Right, you got your bin either a triple three banger cat, your site or single. You got your site. You bribed your neighbor to look the other way, right exactly. You bought a goat. Oh man, talking about green living. My neighbor has goats, now, like five of them. Are they a loud No? Oh, that's great. Everyone's a while to hear them. But it's a joy to hear. So it's not like it's not like a rooster. Do you wake up and look out and say morning satan. No, Well, goats one of my favorites, so it's kind of nice to have them around the baby goats or adult coat. No, they're big ones. I mean she got them to maintain the property because she was started cutting. I guess she didn't want a zero escape it, so she bought goats. Anyway, it's it's awesome. Uh, kitchen waiste Josh, that's what you want to throw in there? Well? Yeah, that's the first one. That's the one that everybody says. That's why you compost, right, Yeah, and yeah, banana peals everybody knows that. But did you also know you can compost apple cores in orange rines? You can also eat apple cores. Yeah. You you believe there is no such thing as a core, right that because there's not um seeing people who leave their apple course left over. They can compost those things. Those are the easy ones. You can also do coffee grounds. Yeah, that's a good one. Paper filters through that filter and all in there. Okay, so let's just say a maybe a whole pizza to myself. I've got a couple of napkins wadded up. What do I do with those? Chuck? Uh? I think you can throw those napkins in there, Josh, isn't that crazy? It is crazy? Newspaper? Yeah, corn cobs. If you still read a newspaper, if you get your news on the internet, throw your laptop in there. Watermelon rhymes, yeah, seeds, leaves, Uh, you know the butt end of the asparagus that no one cooks, but that junk in there. Um. You can also do yard waste too, sure. Right, So you've got grass clippings, which we'll talk about in a second. We've got a couple of warnings as far as grass clippings goes, not too much. Um, but like, let's say you're raking leaves or something like that, throw some leaves on there. Yeah, good crunchy brown ones. And you can also throw like, um trimmings from your like shrubs if you trim your woody shrubs. Um. The key here is this chuck. You want to cut all this stuff up in small bits. Yeah, don't throw a whole corn cob in there. You can know your compost pile. Just throw it right back out. Yeah, it'll just spit it right back out right, very funny. It'll make a burping noise. Uh. They say to shred the corn cob. I don't have a corn cobs shredder. I don't either. Um, I've never thought about that I wouldn't waste like my blender blade on chopping up corn cops. I think the point is that's breaking into a little pieces. Sure you can break it into little pieces though, Yeah, you probably have a corn cob up. Yeah, and you can also, like you can take all this stuff and chop at anything. You can put in smaller pieces the better because as we'll see, what you're really doing is you're not just breaking it up. You have to look at it like what you're doing is increasing the surface area some more microbes can work on it at once. Yeah, Like if if you have I know you hate broccoli, but I hate broccoli, cut the little florets off and you've got that big green broccoli stalk. Uh, cut that thing up as small as you can and set it on fire you have patience for and throw that junk in there. Yeah, basically channel your inner Anal Chef. You remember him, the anal Chef? Yeah? Was that a real thing? Yeah? And Saturday a Live Bill Hartman. No, I don't anal retain of chef. Okay, I forgot the retinive part that. Yeah, I remember the qualifiers, Like I don't get that joke. Mommy, remember the anal retin of chef. Yeah, I do remember that. Now. He'd like start to if he was dicing like green peppers and one of them was bigger than the rest, he'd just be like, okay, well, you want to take those chunks and you want to put him into a paper towel, and then you want to fold that up, and then you put that into some aluminum fold. You fold that up, and you put that into paper bag and you roll up and then you staple it and then you throw it away. Boy man, what a price that was. Oh, it still makes me sad. So you mentioned newspaper earlier. Um, if you live near the ocean and you've got your hands on some seaweed or some kelp, you can rinse that stuff off so you don't want all that salt content in there. But it's really good and nutrient rich if you rent that off and put it in your compost pile. And it's also good for you to eat too. I know I sound nuts, but just eat that stuff. What do you mean? Yeah, sawdust? Do you don't eat that? No? But like I'm building my compost, ben, I can put that salve dust back in it. How about that? Yeah? Pretty neat circle of life. Baby, what should not you compost night soil, which is poopy soil? Cat you don't go take a big dump post dump post. I know you want to know. That's not good. UM disease garden plants, that's a big one. Some of this stuff though, as we'll find, it doesn't quite make sense. But it's just good to air on the side of um garbage in, garbage out, except with compost. If you put garbage garbage in, then it's going to be really bad. If you put good, healthy garbage in, it's going to come out is quite good. So you don't want to put any disease plants in there. UM Invasive weeds are another one too, Yeah, but it says you can also put weeds in there, so I guess you just need to figure out which ones are the bad ones. Yeah, So this specifically calls out buttercups, morning glory, and quack grass. I'm quite sure that there's plenty of seeds that wouldn't survive the composting process, but apparently these two. So stay away from the quack grass. That was I think that was the big mantra woodstock. It's a gateway drug don't have the yellow sunshine or the quack grass. It was the brown the browns, which I mean, who wants brown acid? You know? And what about uh, you're talking about kitchen stuff? What about meat and dairy? Okay, that's that's controversial. It is because Emily had taken classes and they were like, no, don't use any of that. That's like an animal cells and and fats in particular, they putrefy, they don't decompose, and puture faction makes some stinky stuff, and I think you can also generate a lot of disease bearing pathogens. So I was surprised to see this article say yeah, put it in there. Well, and they kind of said this article if you if you're really heavily managing this thing, you can do it. But I don't know. I've just heard don't They said turn it into a slurry, which I don't want to see freud and riches blender at home with corn cob leavings on it. But um, he's a whip it up into a slurry. And as long as it's a good, hot, actively managed pile, it'll it won't be a problem. I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't think you should do that. I don't know what to do with the animal leavings, but I don't think you should compost it. All right, Uh, it might make sense to you to say, Hey, I have an outdoor fire pit. I bet that would be great in my compost. Her incorrect, Although this specifically says charcoal ashes. I think that's any kind of charred ashes. Yeah, like burnt wood is called charcoal. So are you sure? Because I know what I know what you just said was true. But supposedly the entire Amazon Basin, and I learned this from the Greatest Book of All Time by Charles C. Mann, the entire Amazon Basin was a managed forest um that the indigenous people's down there had made completely fertile and fikoned by instead of slash and burn, they were using slash and char techniques, and there was way more carbon locked into the charred tree stumps and there was the ashes, so it became more fertile. So I have a question about that one. You know, I'm gonna back off of my determined stance because I don't know it would make sense if it was coal, like if it's like charcoal briquettes, because they have cement and all sorts of chemicals and junk in them. But if it's charred wood or would ash, I wonder. All right, well, somebody let us know, CHARLC. Man tell us the pesticide treated plants. You you know, you know my stands on pesticides period. Don't use them. But if you do, definitely don't put that stuff in there. Because your whole thing here is you want to you want to more or less organic compost pile right in the end, and so one of the things that people love about composted is it actually is organic. And we're going to explain how. I didn't know this until um we did this research, but we'll explain how because we're going to go through the process that your compost pile undergoes. Right after this. Yeah, all right, I did something we rarely do, which is looks something up as we're podcasting, because it just sounded lazy to be like, oh, we don't know this one. Um gardens alive dot com says, um wood ashes are so strongly alkaline that it doesn't take a lot to upset the balance in the pile and stop the processing. You can add a very small amount of wood ash from like your fireplace or a woodburning stove. Um, it apparently not much, so I think, you know, like you're kind of right, and then it's it's not completely for boating, right, But it sounds like too much is not a good thing. I think that's what freud And was just saying, like, don't even mess with it. Put an animal fasts instead. Well, and that's what the person from Gardens Alive was saying this, like it's so little that it's not really going to make a difference. And if you're trying to get rid of it in a different way, she's like, it's not really gonna matter. But the but it raises a great question, Chuck, why in the name of all things holy would it matter what the alkalinity is of your compost pile. And I'll tell you why. Because it's a chemistry experiment. It is it's a it's a chemistry experiment. It's also a biological experiment. You have a microcosm growing there, and there's actually really easy things you can do to optimize this and basically create a Zanna Do paradise for the the microbes and primary and secondary and tertiary um consumers of this stuff that you're putting in there to break down so that they just have the greatest life that any invertebrate or microbe ever had. All right, should we talk chemistry a bit then come back to just the management and stuff. All right, what you're really talking about here for an ideal composting scene, you need a disco ball, and you need a proper uh C in ratio, which is carbon to nitrogen ratio. And depending on how walky you want to get, if you want to start measuring things, you can do that. But from what I gather, just try and do a lot to a little about thirty to one carbon to nitrogen and and eyeball it. When the rule of thumb is this, if it's green and um recently deceased, and by green like a nice bananappeal would qualify as this right is appliable and green or you know, again recently deceased, it is um high in nitrogen. If it's brown and dried, it's high in carbon. So you want to actually when you're adding the compost, you want to just kind of layer this stuff in about those ratios thirty to one. And there's actually tables like if you're a big time into this. There are tables out there that tell you just about exactly the carbon and nitrogen ratio in each individual thing. But what we said earlier, you want to avoid grass clippings. This is why, because they're too high in nitrogen. And what happens when you have too much nitrogen it's bad, right, It makes your pile stinky. Yeah, that's is that where the methane starts creeping in that Actually it leads to ammonia gas. Right. But you also don't want too much carbon either, chuck, because so you carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is like the building block and it's an energy source for these micro Nitrogen is um essential to their growth and their metabolic activity as well. But when they have this in these concentrations, that's when they flourish. Yeah. And the other problem with carbon two is it just it breaks down so slowly. Um. Well, it depends on the source. Yeah that's true. But generally a lot of the carbon sources like newspaper and corn cobs and stuff like that, it's just a much slower process, right. Right, So like they have um much tougher uh structural support in their cells, have structural integrity exactly. Um, they need to have a good saying that rhymes. If it's yellow, let it mellow, If it's brown, flush it down. Um, I thought you were heading towards that. I was just kind of like on the edge of my seat, like if it's greens brown. Maybe maybe there is one that we don't know, or maybe someone can write one like a creative listener. I would love to hear it. I'll bet we get a bunch of those. All right, oxygen if you're talking uh, if we're talking ratios, and again, you can walk out as much as possible. But the good news is about your compost piles. It's not like it needs to be like the oxygen that you need walking around to breathe, which is in the atmosphere. Yeah, that's what we have going on. It can get by these aerobic microbes as low as five percent. Yeah, that's cutting it close. That's getting it close. They say, try to hover somewhere around ten or up. How do you measure that? You don't? You just airate your pile and it's fine by either turning it or you can do hold PVC. And I guess that brings us kind of to the management part um. You don't just sit there unless you want to have a totally passive pile, and who wants that? You have to manage this thing either every day or every other day. Turn it, like we're saying, either with the little crank if you've got a handy little barrel unit, or with a pitch fork or they call it a composting fork in here. That's pretty fancy. Probably the same thing. And it's the same thing as a pitchfork, except like fifty dollars more. Uh, you want to water it some, but again, um, do you want to give watering advice? You don't want it for me. You don't want it to be soaking wet. No, you want to be moist. Damp. People hate that word, so we'll say damp um. And again I mentioned the perforated PVC pipes that can help. Uh. It says you can avoid turning it by having those pipes. I would still turn it. I would too, just to mix it up right. Yeah, but putting PBC pipes throughout your pile would make it really difficult to turn. So well, you can pull them out, I guess you could, you know, but getting them back into real pain. You can stick him back in another way to get to introduce oxygen is earthworms. Oh man, this is where I go crazy. Oh yeah, we have a lot of worms on our property. And just because there's a lot of worms in Georgia. Yeah, um, we did a great episode on earthworms, remember, Yeah, And every time I find them, Um, I picked them up. I show them to Emily and she immediately says, throw it in the garden, you know. And that's because we weren't composting heavily. Now it's gonna be thrown in the compost pile. But these guys are great because they naturally and may do a lot of things, but one of the things they do is naturally aerate by just tunneling through that stuff. Yeah. So earthworms and then worms in general are probably the most important non microscopic resident in your compost pile. Yeah, because they do so much. So worms and especially earthworms and most types of nematodes um. They actually go in and like eat a lot of the stuff that's in the compost pile, a lot of the food waste, right or organic waste, and in doing so they break it down, and as they break it down, they make it easier for the microbes to digest themselves. Should we start with the microbes. Okay. So again this com postpile. When you add food waste to the pile and add soil, you're introducing energy source to energy consumer. Okay. And at the base of this is the is microbial life bacteria mostly but um, the bacteria go to town. They start eating this stuff, and the smaller it is, the more service area there is, the more the bacteria can eat. And they actually take the nutrients out of this and use it for cellular respiration, which is why they need oxygen, because they take oxygen and combine them with the carbon and they create a t P which they use as an energy source to power their cells and live and frolic and play, and in doing so they create carbon dioxide. That's right. So um, as they're doing this, they're they're actually breaking the stuff down from what you'd recognize as a banan appeal closer and closer to that finished humus project product. So you've got bacteria and they're a big part of it. And depending on the phase that the compost miles in, uh, the there will be different kinds of bacteria in your compost pile. Yeah, and it's not you know, just bacteria there's a fun guy doing lots of work. Um. We mentioned neba toads there. You're gonna eventually get mites in there, and slugs. You've already thrown your worms in, some millipedes doing some action, all these cute little legs, and overall these are known as primary consumers. Some are are are all of them primary consumers? While they're listed okay by this person who made this fancy chart. So then above that, chuck, you get the secondary consumers, secundo, and those are right, those are the um, those are the predators of the primary consumers, right yeah. And then you have tertiary consumers. They're the predators of the secondary consumers. And so you put all this together and what you have is a food web if microbs breaking the stuff down, worms and stuff doing the same thing in some way. Um, and then other predators, different graduated levels of predators preying on the smaller animals to keep their population in check and to keep everything in a perfect balance so that it's as efficient as possible. And eventually a great white shark comes along. What gets me eats the whole pile thanks to a shark, Nato. What gets me though, Um, the best The best part of all this to me is that if you look at the lifespan of a compost pile from brand new to finished humans to humus, it's a It forms a bell as far as the temperature gradient goes, right, Yeah, it's really kind of cool. So the first stage is the mesophilic stage. Temperatures get up to I think forty degrees celsius. I can't remember what that is in fahrenheight. Yeah, we'll go with celsius. Okay, um, so it's warmish. And then as the cellular respiration mounts and builds, a more and more bacteria born and start eating and carry this cellular respiration out. The byproducts are CEO two and heat, and heat starts to accumulate in the compost pile so much so that it gets up to something like um fifty to sixty degrees celsius, which is like a hundred to a hundred and fifty degrees fahrenheit. Yeah, and it's hot. At this point, your organisms are going to change. You're gonna have thermophilic there. These are a little heat loving critters and they move in because it's nice and warm. Their snowbirds, their desert dwellers, and they like it when it's warm. Um. But here's the thing is you want to like you want you don't want it to get too hot, so you want to continue to airate and keep that temperature and check. What you want is that natural bell to happen on its own, right, So the mesophilic um bacteria die off or they go kind of dormant as it enters the thermophilic phase. And then after the thermophilic phase ends. The reason it ends is because they've eaten up all of the stuff that's there to eat and only the hard stuffs left over. And so the thermophiles go away, and some of the mesophiles come back and new stuff comes in like um acts in of my seats actin of my seats, which are kind of like a weird fungi. Bacteria cross and they break down like the really hard woody shrubby stuff UM and they finish it off. And this third phase is called the curing phase. Right, And at the end of all of it you have this great nutrient rich hummus humus. But in the middle of that, when it gets really hot, it gets so hot, chuck that pathogens that can make you sick, that can make animals sick, that can make plants sick, are actually killed off in the face, which is why when you get your hands on compost on humus, it's organic. It's been basically treated naturally to rid itself of parasites, pathogens, all sorts of bad stuff, and all that's left off does the nutrients that have been broken down in the process that a plant can use very easily, and again the circle of life starts over again. Yeah, and you know, I mentioned sun earlier can dry it out, but if if it gets over sixty five celsius, it's gonna kill off so many microbes. It's gonna really slow down your process. Uh So that's another reason you turn it is to kind of keep and again don't have it direct sunlight, but it's going to keep that temperature where it does its thing naturally. Where you don't want to, you know, put a heat lamp on it. I just want to keep it moist, turn it over and let it do its thing, and you might come out there on a chilly morning there might be steam coming off of that sucker, and dude, that's when you just like you go hot dog. Yeah, hot diggity dog and you go inside and you eat a banana yea, and you throw it on the on the pile. All right, So when is it all over? Man? I just love this is why I love earth science. It's really amazing because it's like it requires a little bit the human management. But then you kind of just step away and say, do your thing. It's really neat. Uh when is it Overwell, you can tell. There's a few ways of being able to tell. Um. The temperature starts to go down. If it's below a hundred degrees fahrenheit, it's out of the thermophilic phase and it's now into the mesophilic phase. This says that it's probably done. I disagree. I think you probably wanted even cooler than that, because the longer you let it cure, the more um diverse the microbes inside are going to be, the better the soil that you use to amend it with is going to be sure. Temperature is one uh, one of it is just eyeball it. And if it's if it's about decomposed, like if you still see clearly a banana peal, then it's not done. Right. You don't want to recognize this stuff is food at this point, um or an eggshell or whatever? Um? And is it? Is it smaller? Is if it's been reduced by and it's dark brown or black and crumbly and it looks kind of like soil, then you're you're cooking with gas. It's my dad used to say, Um, the texture, did you say smooth or crumbly? Yeah? What about the smell, Well, it shouldn't um, it shouldn't stink bad at this point. No, it should smell earthy. And actually one of my favorites the actin of my sites, the actin of my seats. Okay, they are the reason that soil and dirt has its smell. It's those guys. They give it its earthy smell and that cool. Yeah, and I think we didn't mention you know that it's doing well along the way if it stopped smelling like it doesn't just stink the whole time, right, And it's not gonna smell earthy. The soil that you add will smell earthy. But when you grab a handful of humus, it should just fall through your fingers. It should be the closer to black, the better, and it should smell like every everything associated with earth would smell like. It's like the word earth. That's what it should smell like. Like you'll understand what earth smells like. Yeah, they said pete moss. If you if none of this makes sense, go to your local hardware store or lawn and garden center and smell the pete moss exactly. Um. So, now that it's done, you've got your wonderfully natural fertilizer. Use it, Put it, Spread it out in your garden, Spread it out around your trees, throw it in your yard, spread it around your naked body, and run around your yard if you want to. Um, it's got a doobie pile or quack grass. Yeah, stay away from that stuff. Um. It's basically like the easiest way to put it without getting too scientific, is it's gonna make everything better. It's gonna increase soil microbes. It's gonna increase nutrients and enhance them. It's gonna improve the pH and chemistry of your soil, your yards structure and again. And like, what you've just done is taken stuff and had it broken down into its components, unlocked it for your plants to use. So your plants are gonna say thank you brother. Pretty amazing. Ye. Uh, some people create a lot of it and sell it, but you know, mainly people do this to just use around their house. Yeah, and increasingly towns are starting to do curb side composting. Pickup food waste, pickup where you got trash, recycling bin food waste. Been an appeals, You've been an appeals? Right, that's it all right, go forth and composts. Yeah, if you want to know more about composting, you can type that word in the search part house to works dot com. Cornell actually also has a really great site about composting if you want to know more about the science of it. Were very excited. I love that. Um And since I said, Cornell, it's time for listening mail, I'm gonna call this child Life Specialists made a couple of these it road And remember we talked about this in the pain scale and kind of reminds what it was, and we turns out we were right. And by the way, we heard from paramedics doctors quite a few people about the worst pain. Yeah, you don't want a long bone fracture. Yeah, almost of them said a broken femur is like the worst pain you can experience. And should we say why, Yeah, go ahead, So several reasons. Right, We are right because apparently it's a very sensitive area, but also because without that structure, your muscles start um spasm ng, which just rocks the whole thing back and forth even more and then in like fragmented bone, hitting nerve and like all kinds of badness. So steer clear of that, all right. So we heard from from two. I'm gonna read the one, but I'm gonna shout them both out. Hey, guys, very excited to hear you mentioned child life Specialists during your recent episode on pain Scales. As a child life specialist myself, I thought we'd take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about our profession. You are right, Chuck, A child Life Specialists is uh. We help kids deal with being hospitalized. That's really the essence of our job. We support children and families throughout stressful situations such as hospitalizations, using our knowledge of child development and play to facilitate coping. Child Life Specialists UM provide children with developmentally appropriate education about diagnoses and treatments, preparation and support for procedures, and opportunities for normalization and play. Um. What a great job. Seriously, I can't think of too many jobs that are more rewarding than that. Seriously, we also provide support for siblings and provide legacy building and memory making and end of life situations. Our profession is very rewarding. Josh, you are right. She predicted you would say that, and I love going to work every day. To become a c l S you must have a bachelor's or master's degree in child development or a related field, complete a six hundred and forty our Childlife internship, and pass a national certification exam. You can visit uh www dot child life dot org to learn more about it. Uh thanks for what you guys do. You've made all my road trips interesting and thanks for spreading the word about child life. Maybe you can do entire episode on our profession in the future, she said, Okay, and that is Natalie Valentine. And also a big shout out to Amanda Butler from Auburn University who does that there. Thanks for writing in ladies, it sounds like just a really, really great job. Yeah, thanks to you both for that, and thanks for everybody who has anything to do with making kids who are hospitalized feel better. Um, hats off to you. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffy Shado dot com and check out our social links, and you can also send us a good old fashioned email, Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom with some good old country goodness, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H