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How to extreme volumes?
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Posted by
klavier Z7 Baltimore (
My Page) on
Fri, Jul 6, 12 at 21:43
Anyone have suggestions on the best way to compost a lot of fruit waste? 3 tons of waste an hour to be exact. Is there a way to compost this much waste in a way that will kill plant born disease? I would like to use the compost to fertilize the same fields from which it came, but I do not want to spread diseases around the field.
Cheers,
Werner |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Do you have reason to believe the plants are/were diseased, or are you being cautious? |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Wow Im interested to see where this will go. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Just being cautious. The plants are tissue culture grown, so the fields are essentially free of disease. This will be in Sierra Leone. The whole complex is owned and operated by an international not-for-profit to create economic opportunity for the region. Cheers,
Werner |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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All waste food will compost, be digested by the bacteria that convert waste materials into something useful. What you need to know is the Carbon to Nitrogen Ratio of this fruit waste. I have seen lists that give numbers from 15:1 to 35:1 and you will need some fairly high carbon material to balance the waste you do have. The Optimal C:N ratio in every compost pile is avout 30:1, and that is what you should be shooting for.
Fruit waste also tends to be quite wet so you need some material to help absorb that excess moisture since the bacteria you want digesting it are aerobic and in a too wet environment they do not work and are replaced by anaerobic bacteria that can produce unpleasant odors.
The amount produced only means yuou need to have sufficient room to hold it all. I did have compost piles that were 6 feet high, by 6 feet wide by 45 to 65 feet long and there are commercial operations out there today with the same types of piles. This would be just composting on a larger scale then most of us practice, but the same principles apply. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Klavier- I don't want to make asinine assumptions, so I have some equally asinine questions: Is there a readily available source of browns - shredded paper, dead leaves, wood chips, and the like? Do the fields ever lie fallow or are they in production constantly? Leaving the fields aside, how much flat open room is available for the composting process? What is the water source and how near to the possible composting areas is it? Do you have heavy equipment (bulldozers, bobcats)available to do the turning of the compost or will it be done manually? Is the fruit waste production year-round or seasonal? |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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Hello All,
Thank you for all of your feedback. The production is year round, the fields do lie fallow every 3-4 years. The crop is pineapple. There is watering equipment to keep the compost wet, and there is a buldozer, but it is contracted and very expensive to have on site.
Cheers,
Werner J Stiegler |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Apparently you are no longer in Baltimore. It seems to me the most pertinent question is how do you currently move all that waste? |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Sun, Jul 8, 12 at 13:22
| IMO this is too large of a project to be seeking advice from backyard composters on what is basically a garden forum. There are consulting companies that specialize in these larger endeavours and I would seek input from them. Lloyd |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Alot of people on this forum own farms and do large scale composting. This is the world wide web remember? Lots of different types of people use this site. klavier, you will find good info on this site. Once you get your ducks in a row Im sure things will run smooth. Composting is composting after all. Large or small. Sierra Leone huh? Ive read stories about that place. Im glad to hear things are getting better. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Sun, Jul 8, 12 at 13:53
| I farm and do larger scale composting and I know this scale of a single source product, in a foreign country with no knowledge of local laws and no knowledge of what else is available for this project is beyond my level of knowledge. I doubt that there are half a dozen people on this forum that are anywhere near qualified to be offering advice for this project. There are professional composting forums more suited to this query. A smart person knows their limitations. Lloyd |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Lloyd is right (IMO); the scope of this is way beyond some good advice. I looked up pineapple composting on the 'net, and there are at least a couple of articles about such composting in Africa - Ghana has been a prime exporter of pineapples to Europe, and has had tons and tons of pineapple waste to deal with. Apparently, it's not too easy, as it takes quite a while to break down, due to the structure of the fruit itself. Klavier, I wish that I/we could help you, but you would be better off contacting one of the big waste handling/ composting companies and seeing what they could do for a non-profit. It's going to be an insanely big job, so good luck. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| So far so good keep the info comin...lol |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| I have to agree with some of the other posts recommending that you seek advice from industrial compost experts. I am sure there are some forums out there, wish I had a link for you. That said, this an interesting topic that I'm sure we would all like to hear more about. Will the waste be shredded? Are we talking about mostly leaves (which are quite waxy and would break down slowly I would think), or skins from a canning plant, or pulp from making juice, or...? With that kind of volume, if you're going to compost in piles, you'll want long windrows to facilitate turning and mixing. And the questions about browns are spot on - you're going to need a lot of them. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| The basic principles of composting do not change with the size of the composting operation, and they have not really changed for a long time before Sir Albert Howard learned about composting and wrote about it. You need to balance the amount of Nitrogen with Carbon and provide enough, but no too much, moisture and air and the bacteria that will digest that material will get to work. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| I presume that since you are hiring a front-end loader on occasion that must be to scoop up the accumulated waste periodically into a truck and send it away. Most likely it is ending up as a component in animal feed, somewhere. As Lloyd says, we none of us know anything about a monoculture in Africa, nor probably anywhere in the tropics, other than the simple fact that monocultures anywhere will eventually develop problems. Even composting and returning that single waste stream into the system will probably not suffice for long-term sustainability. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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- Posted by jolj 7b/8a-S.C.,USA (My Page) on
Tue, Jul 17, 12 at 14:14
| I would think you need to shred it to compost it, another big machine$$$$$. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| We don't really know exactly what the waste stream looks like, since klavier hasn't described it, so I don't think it's clear that shredding is needed. I would like to know more about what is actually being composted. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Tue, Jul 17, 12 at 16:27
Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Skies pineapple composting
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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- Posted by pt03 2b Southern Manitob (My Page) on
Tue, Jul 17, 12 at 16:50
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Werner - Is there any possibility of feeding the waste to animals and sending the manure back to the fields? If you can get pigs fattened on pineapple scraps they could be tasty. |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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Lloyd,
Once again you are the voice of reason in this forum. I aaplaud your efforts and input |
RE: How to extreme volumes?
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| Nice one Lloyd! I love those pics. Just thinking about how good pre-marinated pineapple pork would be. Mmmm, pork. |
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