Why is Oxygen So Important to
Composting? After over a 1,000 oxygen monitorings, Mother Nature's
Farm, Inc. published their findings on their web site at
http://www.magicsoil.com . The following are excerpts from
that published information assembled here for brevity. While
their study used a forced air system, it clearly demonstrates
how critical oxygen is to effective composting. To view the
full article(s), please visit their web site.
"The most effective microbes for converting organic residuals
(wastes) to premium top soil and soil conditioners are aerobic
microbes. "Aerobic" means they work in the presence of oxygen,
that they consume oxygen. In the absence of oxygen the entire
chemistry changes and foul odors and phyto-toxic VFA's can be
produced. All fungi are strict aerobes.
Preventing Foul Odors:
Preventing Foul Odors seems to be simply a matter of
maintaining Aerobic conditions. Some compost feed stocks are
by nature great hosts for micro-organisms that consume a lot
of oxygen. When the micro-organisms consume all the available
oxygen then the process goes Anaerobic and foul odors are a
common result.
Our own research has shown beyond any doubt that the microbes
can exhaust the oxygen in a large compost pile in 15 minutes
or less. This research was done on a pile that had been on
forced aeration. The oxygen probe was inserted about 36" into
the pile from the top. The forced aeration was turned off as
soon as the first oxygen sample was pulled from the pile.
The easiest way to prevent foul odors is to maintain aerobic
condition throughout the entire composting mass. Many of the
chemical byproducts of Anaerobic conditions are foul odor
gases. Thus the key to preventing foul odors and VFA's is to
maintain oxygen levels greater than 15% throughout the
composting mass.
The key to preventing the foul odor gases from being produced
in the first place is to maintain aeratobic conditions,
providing the oxygen essential to good neighbor composting.
Equally or even more important to us is that anaerobic
byproducts are often phyto-toxic, toxic to plant growth.
Most of the information on the above chart is from THE
PRACTICAL HANDBOOK OF COMPOST ENGINEERING by Roger Haug."
