Tim,
You need additional nitrogen source feed to make sawdust attractive to worms where a C/N ratio of around 20:1 is used. Dry leaves and paper are also high in carbon but they will help air flow. If manure grass and food scraps are added to the sawdust and mixed well the worms would keep it stirred up as the move through seeking the preferred feed. I have a commercial size worm farm but do not use much sawdust. A few loads from a stable that contained horse manure took quite a while to break down. Any organic material will decompose over time but a balanced mixture gives the best quality compost and aeration and moisture help the bacteria and micro organisms grow rapidly. Thanks for the links. They will make preparation of mixtures much easier. Graeme -------Original Message------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 01/05/05 01:08:35 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [Biofuel] Compost with sawdust and LOF-- mushroom media Hello all, I too have an abundant supply of sawdust available to me since my brother-in-law owns a sawmill conveniently located on the land next to mine. I have done some experimentation with the sawdust both in applying it to sample areas of my garden and in one of my compost bins. I found that in the test area of the garden it really helped to hold the moisture in but in an area where I tested higher amounts it almost acted as a wick drawing the moisture away from the soil In my compost bin I used a small amount (.05% by weight) with a healthy mix of green feedstock (grass etc.) and other brown feedstock (leaves etc.) and it broke down fairly well. However I would think that using large amounts of sawdust would be prone to compaction and necessitate "constant" aeration. The fact that the compost pile is not generating much heat and emitting an ammonia smell would probably warrant the consideration of using worms to break down the sawdust in a cool compost pile rather than attempting to use a hot compost pile. In addition, the worms will aerate the pile. I'm not sure how well they would do with just sawdust so the addition newspaper strips and table scraps would benefit the worms. Having said that, I will plan to set up a vermiculture pile using primarily the sawdust in the spring to see how it works. (Insert comments here, Please). Due to the compaction of the sawdust, yet large quantities available for free, I am compelled to utilize the resource so I do include very small amount in my compost piles but will utilize more in my methane digester that will be coming on line in the spring as well. I started an activator batch in a small digester in the fall and it should be ready to load into the production digester in a few months. I hope to be posting images to a website then as well to document the experiment. The other use for the sawdust is simply compressing them into briquettes and burning them in the shop stove for heat. Yet there is still a mountain of sawdust at the mill. The links below have a couple of compost mix calculators that may be of some use to list members. And the last link is just some useful information on composting in general. http://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19/calc/manure/manure.jsp This has sawdust as possible ingredient. http://www.georgiahikes.com/lib/compost_calc.htm This does not include sawdust Here is another good source of information on composting. http://compostguide.com/ Hope this helps, Best wishes, Tim _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
