Why Some Compost Chunks Dont Break Down

So our next question is from Joanna. A question about the reduction of pile size with regards to how finely chopped the carbon ingredients need to be. How long does it take for the most resistant materials, big chunks, to break down in a compost pile? Are we getting soil from, are we are getting soil from our three cubic meter piles, but still have some one to two inch hay pieces that were originally a foot long or more, have not broken down. Also some matted roots have not broken down. Okay, so let's have a look at some reality here. These are my compost piles that I've been putting together conveniently for my volunteer workers who are learning this. And I've used cages at the beginning here, simply to make sure that they've got the volume right, because they tend to get smaller and smaller like Chinese whispers if I don't keep an eye on them. So these are about one and a half to two meters in volume, and this one's accumulating. A lot of this stuff's come out of the chicken pen, so it's got manure with it. This one here is sitting there waiting. Now, there are lots of ways you can compost. I've done it in 18 day compost. For my students here at the moment, that doesn't work, because they don't work at weekends. So what we do is we put this cage together. Brown, green, manure, brown, green, manure. You can see the layers. Brown, green, manure, brown, green, manure, brown, green, manure. And then we get it nice and wet, and we normally cover it, and we leave it a week, because that's just what works for our system here. And after a week, we turn it. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, it's been turned today for three weeks. Now, it's a month. It's 30 days, but they're learning, and they're not working every day, and it works for their schedules. Now, one week like this, and after a week, it's turned on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then it has a long weekend. Saturday to Sunday break. So this has been only turned once out of the pile, but it's still quite chunky. Then when we move along, this has been turned twice. There's quite a lot of heat in there. And then you can see it's changing color. It's not losing size much, and when you open it up, it's holding moisture a lot better. Still got a bit of heat. It's getting dark. The next turn's considerably darker again, but there's still some chunks in there. This probably isn't gonna make it. Now, in the tropics, that will probably break down. In the subtropics, it's getting there. But if you're in a cold climate, these little branches, they're not gonna break down. The cold climates, whether they're wet or dry, are not easily gonna build up the same sort of heat and humidity. If you're in a really cold climate, and you want a composting window, you probably gotta go inside a glass house or a plastic house. If you have successional compost going through that, that early compost will be heating the actual atmosphere inside the glass house or plastic house. Topics is the front end wood, large wood almost. Over here, we're nearly done, but there's still some little bits left. And this one, we're already adding to the garden. We've already taken from it. And remember, this is not just my compost. This is my students' compost. So they're learning, and we'd have to sieve this for a polymix. That's not bad. There's some chunks in there. Now remember, and you must remember this, that good compost is a life system. The best compost is full of a very large, the largest number of microorganisms and fungi, and, because the fungi are almost not microscopic when they get full size, they're very long, and a great diversity of those, if at all. So it's an inoculum of life. It's not a dead element, it's not just soil amendment. In my hand, well, let's see, in that tiny piece there, in that tiny bit, there's a billion organisms. It's ridiculous how much is in a small amount of compost if you look to a microscope. This is a life, and if there is no organic matter here to feed it, there has to be something left to feed it. If there isn't, you better use it right now, because it's going to starve. But there has to be something left at the end. So these little chunky bits are quite okay. So your one to two inches of straw, they're fine. But if you want to put it on really fine seeds, like carrot seeds, you want to mix it with the sand you're planting your carrots with, you want to put it through a sieve. Here's a little bit of woodchip, that wasn't going to break down, but it's soft. So if you want to make a pollen mix out of it, and you want to plant fine seeds in that pollen mix, yes, sieve it, and different sized sieves. But if you put this through a sieve, this will come out as fine, beautiful, fine material. I could show you that in the nursery. We sieve at different levels of different sized mesh sieves and you get finer and finer and finer material. True compost, I'll show you what true compost is. That's true compost, what's stuck in my fingerprints. If you look in the dictionary, it says compost is a colloid. It's colloidal, soap is colloidal. That's what makes the water in your wash basin go cloudy with soap. As fine soap particles are less than 15 microns in size. Colloidal substance is made up of particles smaller than 15 microns, and they easily sit in your fingerprint. I've got millions of organisms inside my fingerprints right now. It's quite a good anomaly look probably. I just get these organisms out of my fingerprint. There you go, that's just for you people that might be worried about the sterility of my compost.