The Origins of Compost | Dr. Elaine Ingham

The Origins of Compost with world-renowned soil and compost expert Dr. Elaine Ingham - Get the backstory on ALL Compost from one of the original researchers in the field!!

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[DJNicke]

Dr. Elaine is such a visionary! Bless her and her decades of hard work! Thank you for this video.

[rojilander]

When crunched ...I always find time for Elaine 🥳

[claybourdo]

Thank You for these videos Matt! I truly feel ecstatic watching any content with Dr. Elaine Ingham.

[graemedevine]

One of the best and shortest explanations of soil biology I've ever seen, thank you.

[gabrieln]

This is cool, thank you for sharing! Dr. Ingham had her soils lab for a time in Kauai, on the site of a project conceived and managed by one of the people on our design team. He is a Permaculture Farmer, Chef, etc. and the property was a prior Guava farm and then new owner backed our person to design a farm-to-table restaurant, farm, composting operation, business incubator and most all food came from the property and if not at least within a 4 mile radius. This was other local farmers and fisherman and the menu adjusted accordingly. Several hundred meals served per day, he lived there about 3 years, the place is called "Common Ground". I lived in first Community in Oregon starting 1979 and was food growing coordinator...double-dug French Intensive style! with plenty of composting going on. In our group we also have another farmer, architect, artist, graphic designer from Mexico w/Master's in Sustainable Design, and a certified food grower. We design communities, farms, swimming pools too (hundreds actually), greenhouses, sustainable landscapes, etc. LOVE your content of it is great...and thanks for posting.

[LSinclair]

Thank you SO much for sharing..this was delightfully fascinating.

[hineko_]

when doing composting I just throw in some soil from my successful beds and some soil from forest along with leaves from there

[dinkozdedabilo]

How do you balance this micro organisms in compost

[mantaronline]

It will be a good idea to publish such videos with subtitles in other languages. This will even increase global sfw network, worldwide

[AshiwiZuni]

Ive been experimenting in the chihuahuan desert for many years now, as we have extremely sandy, nutrient poor, rhyolitic soil.
It also gets very hot, and very cold here. Ive found that drought and heat resistance in alot of plants can actually be bred into existence over a relatively small number of generations. Ive grown cannabis my entire life as well as many tubers and different variants of corn. What ive documented is very obvious genetic mutations in cannabis plants AND heirloom corn plants over 5 or so generations in a drought and heat ridden environment, the seeds the plants produce will start mutating faster than if they were planted generationally in an ideal area. I think this observation can be useful in what she was mentioning about understanding what crops want what as far as fungi and bacteria in the soil go. If we can breed certain strains of plants to be more accepting of varius strains of fungi and bacteria in the soil, could we defeat drought intolerance or say, even photosynthesis? Bypassing those obstacles could allow for an entirely new wave of extremely hardy crops to become the new norm

[katipohl]

There is algae, viruses and archae living in soil as well

[pokeweedk]

Now tilling some would be good for plants on th low end of succession right? Like amaranth?

[alisonburgess]

Still looking for a nematode in my soil .. lol. Maybe I'll put some mature compost under the scope and see if there are any there...

[leadbyexample]

Does every plant have different biology or is it all the same? In the other words, does wheat berries have the same biology as sorghum?

[andreabelli]

What does Elain think about Ruth Stout method? No tillage, no compost, only hay mulch, the garden starts producing in abundance right after the coverage, I have proof of that because in Italy we are many using this method (search conferences of Gian Carlo Cappello on youtube). I think that insulation of soil created thanks to the mulch is enough to increase dramatically the rate of bacteria and fungi to let them grow and create structures. Then the soil will improve even more overtime with all the roots, mychorrizal web and decayed organic matter.

[Adhikaritvam]

what happens if the inputs to compost are not organically grown? I mean of the cow manure is from cows fed with hay grown around herbisides?

[johnjude]

Since I am stuipid as to crop rotation I will plan to have one or two of my vegetable garden rows in cover crops next season ( zone 6 Ohio so probably to late this season) .
Question ❓. I'm clay base soil what do I need to plant to begin?

[austingingrich]

So I have a rather long comment... I have been developing my green belt here in bay city, Michigan zone 5 I have berms that are approx 3-3 1/2 ft tall the area next to the curb and sidewalk at ground level are dug down 16 inches with the cavity being filled with 3-4 inch rock to prevent loss of water via runoff and large watermelon size rocks are placed at bottom on top of rocks to (hold the berm in ) increasingly small rocks are stacked on top of each other up the face of the berm . The soil structure is made up of at ground level is large logs with fill clay dug out followed by finished compost and leaves finished by finished compost aged woodchips and builders sand (very porous) and winter leaves not shredded this year in the following year they will be. To the point I have observed 100s of isopods and the new (invasive ) jumping worm as well as regular worms in the soil (note I am not a no invasive type person) my problem is one of figuring out how to balance the vermicomposting critter population. I am more interested in fungally dominated soil not vermicompost. Are you aware of any beneficial nematode, predator, or soil innoculant That would re-balance the quantity of worms in the garden I’m not so concerned about isopods. While some level of everything is OK whether it be bacterial dominated soil, bokashu, etc I don’t like the destructive a fact worms can have on mycelium.

[UninstalledLeague]

What a nice video, thank you for sharing. :)

[Mistermeena]

I have a compost question. Can somebody give me a definitive answer as to whether or not one can successfully compost eucalyptus. I understand The reasons not to mulch the leaves on beds but I've seen so many posts also saying a good hot compost or loong passive compost will do well to remove most allelopathic compounds from the leaf matter.

I'm not using for food producing beds. I'm using it to try bring sone organic matter back a very damaged old cattle pasture that is now our garden after having construction vehicles all over it. I know there might well be better material but, for now, I can't buy in anything and those eucalyptus are, by far the, largest source of organic material I have available just at present.