[HN Gopher] 12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape...
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12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody
Expected (2017)
Author : pulisse
Score : 251 points
Date : 2026-04-07 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| skipants wrote:
| > Despite this promising start, the conservation experiment
| wasn't to last, after a rival juice manufacturer called TicoFruit
| sued Del Oro, alleging that its competitor had "defiled a
| national park".
|
| ... why does TicoFruit even care? Did they just see their
| competitor do something that might be good for people and sue
| them out of spite?
| jaffa2 wrote:
| I guess tico fruit is just an asshole. Being sued is usually
| bad. If you can sue your competitor even better.
| throwway262515 wrote:
| My guess is that Del Oro would have a competitive advantage in
| its waste disposal costs.
| nightpool wrote:
| They saw it as corruption, basically. Here's a contemporaneous
| article:
| https://apps.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillar/index.php?action=retr...
|
| > TicoFrut, which is 98% Costa Rican-owned, charges that the
| environmental services contract is little more than a permit
| for improper disposal of its foreign-owned competitor's waste.
| TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be compelled
| to build a proper waste-disposal plant just as his company was
| forced to do in the mid-1990s amid allegations that orange
| waste from its juicing plant was polluting a nearby river. So
| TicoFrut teamed up with a high-profile environmentalist and
| radio host, Alexander Bonilla, and enlisted the support of two
| prominent congressmen and a few citrus growers in denouncing
| the Del Oro project. However, none of Costa Rica's conservation
| groups joined in the attack on Del Oro.
|
| [...]
|
| > One of the ministers they cited was the acting environment
| minister at the time, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, who signed the
| contract on behalf of the government. Rodriguez, an attorney,
| denied having sat on Del Oro's board but acknowledged
| representing the company while working in a law firm contracted
| by the CDC, Del Oro's British owners. The other official,
| Agriculture Minister Esteban Brenes, acknowledged having sat on
| Del Oro's board but denied any involvement with the contract.
|
| > TicoFrut also claimed foreign employees of the CDC and, by
| extension, Del Oro, had received diplomatic immunity as a
| sweetener to invest, and could thus act with impunity.
|
| > The Costa Rican Ombudsman's Office conducted its own review
| and declared the contract illegal. In its non-binding ruling,
| the ombudsman's office said no official studies had been done
| on the viability of the orange-waste experiment, and that due
| process had not been followed before the contract's signing
| underlipton wrote:
| In a way, they might have been right. Who knows whether or
| not a continuation of the active experiment would have pushed
| it over a tipping point where the positive effects were
| nullified. Maybe part of the "magic" is that they literally
| left it there to rot.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| it could have been corruption _and_ something that turned
| out well in the end
| jandrese wrote:
| I mean it makes sense if you were just forced to implement an
| expensive waste management system and your competitor gets to
| just dump the stuff on the ground in a National Park. I would
| complain too.
| ambicapter wrote:
| It doesn't make sense if you were forced to implement waste
| management because you did it poorly to start with and your
| competitor found a smart way to do it for cheap.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > TicoFrut President Carlos Odio says Del Oro should be
| compelled to build a proper waste-disposal plant just as his
| company was forced to do in the mid-1990s amid allegations
| that orange waste from its juicing plant was polluting a
| nearby river.
|
| This is the work of a petty man child. This is how it reads
| to me: "I got caught being a lazy irresponsible cheap-skate
| who was illegally dumping and had to pay. Meanwhile, these
| intelligent forward-thinking jerks find an environmentally
| beneficial way to dispose of their waste for free! I'll show
| them and take those goody two shoes down a peg!"
| TheGRS wrote:
| I'm also disappointed by the decision, but I get the
| argument made from the business perspective. I'm required
| to dispose my waste properly and its reflected in my
| prices, my competitor is not doing these practices and they
| should be compelled to follow the same regulations. I'm
| just disappointed that their court sided with the business
| since a better resolution would've been "your company can
| do this too if you just do the legwork".
| gambiting wrote:
| Well they weren't allowed to do it for free - they had to
| give up some of their land which had value.
| proee wrote:
| One risk here is that a giant pile of biomass could allow
| nefarious critters to grow disproportionately. For example, in
| Alaska, they had giant brush piles that ended up fueling beetle
| infestations across the state.
| bell-cot wrote:
| This being HN - might there be any Costa Rican lawyers in the
| house?
|
| It would be extremely interesting to hear about the legal merits
| of the rival company's lawsuit, and the politics of the Supreme
| Court.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's the kind of question that I'd rather see answered by an
| ecologist than a judge!
| bell-cot wrote:
| The kind of issue that's better _decided_ by an ecologist
| than by a judge, true.
|
| My curiosity is about how the legal system got it wrong -
| simplistic or outdated laws, or clueless or corrupt judges,
| or some combination, or something else?
| throwway262515 wrote:
| > As for how the orange peels were able to regenerate the site so
| effectively in just 16 years of isolation, nobody's entirely
| sure.
|
| Another data point to the thesis that it's not the earth that
| needs saving, it's human systems. If disruption becomes the order
| of the day, who's impacted the worst?
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Why dump the peel when you can use the entire orange to make that
| nasty orange British drink.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > As for how the orange peels were able to regenerate the site so
| effectively in just 16 years of isolation, nobody's entirely
| sure.
|
| We now understand that fungus plays a vital role in the soil
| ecosystem. And given how easily fruit and vegetables rot and get
| moldy, the orange peel mass sounds like the perfect layer for the
| fungus to thrive in. The dead earth received a live giving
| blanket yielding healthy soil vegetation can thrive in.
| TheGRS wrote:
| They also mentioned that invasive grass species were suppressed
| by the orange peels which likely contributed to native plants
| thriving better.
| calf wrote:
| They should check for new penicillin strains in this forest.
| asplake wrote:
| Previously: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=orange+peel
| ethagnawl wrote:
| It's recently occurred to me how "valuable" today's trash is
| likely to be considered in the future. I'll focus on organics
| here but I think the plastics will be equally valuable, too.
|
| I have no idea what % of American households compost or live in
| places which offer municipal compost pickup but I imagine it's in
| the single digits. As evidenced by this article, compost is/can
| be an incredibly powerful agent of change: food production,
| habitat restoration, etc. However, most of us are putting
| organics into refuse streams where they're likely to be burned or
| buried in a way that's actually harmful because they release
| methane when they decompose under those conditions. It can be a
| bit gross and tedious to compost at home but there is a certain
| satisfaction which comes along with it.
| bdcravens wrote:
| For those who can't or find dealing with compost a challenge,
| there are also other options to recycle biowaste. It's a bit of
| pricey subscription, but we have a Mill which processes most
| food waste into chicken feed (you do have to mail the processed
| food to them for further processing).
| schrectacular wrote:
| The thought occurred to me some 25+ years ago that today's
| landfills will be tomorrow's mines. I hope it isn't true but
| taking the very long view I'm afraid it will be.
| kleinsch wrote:
| Today's landfills are already used for natural gas
| generation.
| mlyle wrote:
| We already mine landfills -- mostly for land reclamation but
| sometimes to recover resources.
|
| In the longer run, when there's been more compaction,
| settling, and densification (and changes in what things are
| valuable), and more need to reclaim land that was previously
| landfilled, we will do this more.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| People sometimes build stuff on top of landfills.
| salad-tycoon wrote:
| Like ski courses!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Indeed, sometimes big things. The landfill we used when I
| was growing up is now beneath a Home Depot, which was
| built over the top of it almost 25 years ago. The
| landfill in this case was unlined, too.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup. It is a little undesirable for various reasons, and
| not every landfill is suitable for construction on top
| (seismics, sealing/capping technique, materials, etc).
| dekhn wrote:
| Example: Shoreline Amphitheater, near Google HQ in
| Mountain View. Built on top of a landfill. For a while in
| the 80s, there were occasionally small fires during shows
| when people lit cigarettes. Google also harvested the
| methane and used it to power some stuff, although I can't
| find an authoritative article with details.
| 6510 wrote:
| A british inventor created a setup with two long vibrating
| plates with ferrofluid in between. A flaky powder made from
| garbage was dumped in on one side and came out the other end
| beautifully separated in many layers by density. (with one
| mixed layers in between that went back in at the beginning)
| Innitially he "knew" it was silly to use something as
| expensive as ferrofluid but planned to try other substances
| if it worked. It turned out the process produced a lot more
| ferrofluid than it used.
|
| No one was interested in further research.
|
| edit: I see some research is now happening.
| roboror wrote:
| Proud to report residential composting is now mandatory in NYC.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| It's doubtful that'll ever happen in Dutchess County but I
| can dream.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Please elaborate. From what i know based on prior research,
| most metro (including NYC) recycling is effectively a scam.
| How do you mandate composting in NYC ? Are you implying that
| all buildings have now must build a 3rd chute specifically
| for compost ? And who's picking up that compost ? NYC Trash
| collection ?
|
| I've seen compost vending machines in my visits to NYC and a
| few other places, but i've yet anyone using them
| rayiner wrote:
| > most metro (including NYC) recycling is effectively a
| scam. How do you mandate composting in NYC
|
| Also a scam.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| In what way?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| For anthropologists and archaeologists, trash/sewage is gold.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| These machines are currently too expensive for widespread
| adoption, but I love the electric composter I bought that I
| keep in my garage.
|
| There's no grossness or work involved. You just dump stuff in
| it and it cooks it down to something dirt-like(nearly but not
| quite compost ready) in less than a day.
|
| I have municipal compost, but it's only picked up every 2
| weeks, so that meant I needed to keep food scraps around for
| two weeks before pick up, so they either would get super gross
| and smelly, or I had to use my chest freezer to store them and
| make that gross and smelly and dedicated to just compost.
| acomjean wrote:
| I worked for a time designing and building landfills. Nothing
| really rots in them typically as it's really dry and don't have
| good access to oxygen. Modern landfills are like giant plastic
| bags. This is to protect ground water.
|
| Decomposition as noted releases methane. Some landfills gather
| it in pipes and "flare" it )burn. They have to vent the gas as
| a full landfill is covered by a plastic cap to prevent water
| infiltration.
|
| We dug up trash from the 70s to extend the landfill out. It was
| in remarkably good shape.
|
| https://planetliner.com/landfill-cap/
| tonypapousek wrote:
| Thanks for the share, crazy that 1-2mm polyethylene is all it
| takes to cap a landfill.
|
| Practical Engineering put out an excellent video on landfills
| a couple years back, well worth the watch for the
| visualizations alone.
|
| https://youtu.be/HRx_dZawN44
| zahlman wrote:
| > Some landfills gather it in pipes and "flare" it )burn.
|
| Can useful energy be recovered from this?
| hommelix wrote:
| At some sites, the methane is burned in gas engine to
| generate electricity. Some sites build a CHP and resales
| the heat for district heating. The engines may need more
| maintenance due to silicate in the gas.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes, any landfill of any size is going to clean this up a
| bit and run it through a generator. They can get contracts
| from the utility to use so much power per week (whatever
| the tank capacity iso and since the utility controls when
| it is on (that is when other renewables are low) they get a
| higher price. The details are complex, but thus is very
| valuable green renewable (we can debate how green and
| renewable eslewhere) energy to a utility.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://www.floridatrend.com/article/14356/trashed-plan-
| to-u...
|
| St. Lucie County wanted to use a plasma torch that would have
| converted plastic and other carboniferous waste to energy. Like
| many other plans to do the same, it fell through
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
| pstuart wrote:
| Yeah, reminds me of Changing World Technologies -- so much
| hope, so little reality:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies
|
| In a more civilized civilization we'd be investing in making
| these processes work. Likely there was more money to be made
| by stakeholders to scuttle these endeavors.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Apparently that same technology is being used on newer US
| Navy ships for waste management.
| makr17 wrote:
| California has a low-double-digit percentage of the US
| population, and mandates organic waste separation/collection.
|
| https://calrecycle.ca.gov/Organics/SLCP/collection/
| arnorhs wrote:
| Does orange peel not produce any CO2 / methane when left like
| this? I'm assuming there is some negative carbon footprint before
| this becomes a positive?
|
| The ecological win definitely looks nice on paper, but whenever
| people talk about compost the carbon footprint / gas emissions is
| always at the front of people's minds, and I don't really see
| that discussed in the article.
|
| The article does say
|
| > Especially since, in addition to the double-win of dealing with
| waste and revitalising barren landscapes, richer woodlands also
| sequester greater amounts of carbon from the atmosphere - meaning
| little plots of regenerated land like this could ultimately help
| save the planet.
|
| How long will it take for it to cross the CO2-neutral mark? Maybe
| a silly question, definitely not my area of expertese.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| The orange peel is going to decompose and produce CO2 either
| way. Methane is produced when there is not enough oxygen
| available while decomposing, which certainly seems a
| possibility if it's dumped in big piles.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Mostly.
|
| Remember the orange trees took the CO2 out of the atmosphere
| to make the peels. Some of it, probably most of it, is going
| back into the atmosphere but some of it is going to become
| soil carbon which could be retained for decades
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_carbon
|
| Soil carbon is like dark matter in that there is a lot of it
| and it is poorly understood.
| dgacmu wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but it's a reasonable question if
| posed in good faith. The tl;dr is that there are really a few
| options for what could happen to those orange peels:
|
| (1) Landfill burial (1a) Without methane
| capture and use: Produces methane, relatively high short term
| warming potential. (1b) With methane capture and use:
| Ends up as CO2 after burning the methane.
|
| (2) Composting (this approach) (2a) Mostly
| aerobic: Produces CO2 (2b) Mostly anaerobic: Produces
| methane
|
| A deep pile that is never turned will decompose anaerobically,
| resulting in fairly undesirable methane. A shallower pile or
| one that is mixed well will result in mostly aerobic
| decomposition. The aerobic decomposition will produce CO2 but
| not huge amounts of it. Each hectare of land could absorb
| something like ~8 tons of CO2 per year; with 7 hectares, the
| CO2 emitted by composting 12t of oranges is going to be dwarfed
| by the new vegetation. After a few years when you're growing
| big trees, the rate of CO2 absorption might rise as high as
| 20-30t/year/hectare in costa rica's environment. And this is
| probably an underestimate, as the soil amendment of the orange
| peels seems to have stimulated faster regrowth than would have
| happened otherwise.
|
| And perhaps more to the point: There isn't really a purely "no
| co2" way of disposing of organic matter other than perhaps
| burying it at the bottom of a deep mineshaft (but the co2 or
| methane will be produced anyway). Landfilling it is strictly
| worse - you still get the decomposition products, _or worse_
| because you'll mostly get methane, but without producing useful
| soil byproducts.
|
| Overall this project is a huge win on a carbon perspective and
| a waste reduction perspective.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| It's not a reasonable question. What's the alternative for
| the orange peels? They were going to rot and release that CO2
| whether they did it in a big pile here or somewhere else.
| dgacmu wrote:
| That's why I said if asked in good faith. :-)
|
| But seriously GP could have had a mental model that
| landfilled orange peels might sit there for a long time --
| which depending on conditions and food could be true on
| human scales (like 10-40 years) but not on the scale of 100
| years. Especially if the conditions were dry -- a dry
| orange peel is pretty robust. That's not likely to be the
| case in Costa Rica, but I'll forgive some naivety here
| absent demonstrated malice.
| sfink wrote:
| CO2 is going to be neutral for the peels. You're just
| transporting it from where the oranges grew to where they were
| dumped. The CO2 benefit is purely from the trees and other
| biomass that grow where they wouldn't be growing before.
|
| As for methane, that's a good question. Orange peels are better
| than most things because the limonene inhibits methane
| producing bacteria. But you'd still get quite a bit in the
| deeper piles (that produce the anaerobic conditions needed for
| methane production).
|
| Spreading them out more would help, but might interfere with
| the beneficial effects.
| rustystump wrote:
| I may be wrong but isnt most of the tree carbon capture over
| stated as in the overwhelming majority comes from algae in
| the oceans?
|
| While forests are great they are not the best focus iirc
| compared to the oceans.
| nomel wrote:
| Yes. A potential method of capture is to seed the ocean
| with more iron [1], to help the algae.
|
| I assume that China will be the first to do these sorts of
| things, since the west will be too hogtied in regulations,
| lawsuits, and bureaucracy.
|
| [1] https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2026/02/17/ocean-iron-
| fertilizat...
| subscribed wrote:
| China could definitely do this, to offset the minuscule
| of the destruction they do with the dark fishing fleets
| around (and possibly in) protected marine areas.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| Suppose this is the article to give that person who chides you
| for dropping an orange peel on a hike.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| life's too short for friends like that
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It's apparently long enough for me to see the same orange
| peel in the same place over a year or two.
| chunkymilk wrote:
| It depends on where the hike is: Dropping an orange peel in a
| humid, temperate, low-elevation place is vastly different than
| a desert, high-alpine, tundra or other environment where
| organics take a long time to decompose.
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| I'm mostly joking.. LNT is always the best policy, even if
| only (sometimes) for the feeling of pristineness.
|
| Honestly orange peels are incredible, the smell, the
| robustness. It reminds me of the joke of the plastic cup at
| Whole Foods filled with orange slices. If only there was a
| natural packaging alternative...
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Monty Don has said before that really the best and only thing you
| need for a great garden soil is regular addition of lots of
| compost. This is it on a very large scale. :)
| mynegation wrote:
| They could not find the site and searched for it for years. A
| stark reminder that civilian use of GPS is relatively recent
| thing. The site was created in 1990s and GPS was opened for
| civilian use only in 1995 and gained equal accuracy by
| legislation in 2000.
| zokier wrote:
| on the other hand, basic surveying is centuries old. if you
| lose square km patch of land, it is not due lack of technology
| even in the previous century.
| rasz wrote:
| GPs was available for civilian use since 80s, just expensive
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation_device#Hi...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Turning degraded land back into fertile land is actually very
| feasible and not as hopeless as it may seem. A lot of the damage
| people have done to landscapes in recent centuries is still
| reversible. There are a lot of examples all over the world of
| people turning dried out and heavily eroded land back into
| fertile land with great bio diversity.
|
| Sometimes at small scale, and sometimes at very large scale.
| Often even just leaving it alone, and putting a stop to the
| practices that destroyed the land, (e.g. keeping the grazers out)
| sometimes is all that is needed. For example, a simple fence can
| allow vegetation to re-establish itself without getting destroyed
| by hungry deer, sheep, or whatever.
|
| Once you have plants with deep roots, the land gets better at
| retaining water and soil stops eroding away. Once the land can
| retain water, a lot of life can make use of that. Nature tends to
| be resilient and adaptable. There are no one size fits all
| solutions for every landscape. But there are a lot of things that
| have been tried that have yielded good results.
|
| In any case, stuff like this is not as surprising as it seems.
| Organic matter rots. That usually involves a lot of bacteria and
| insects. The result is basically compost. A giant heap of compost
| and a lot of wild seeds from neighboring grounds with a bit of
| water is one hell of a good way to kickstart nature. Probably the
| best decision was to leave it alone.
| sophacles wrote:
| Often you don't even need seeds from neighboring land. The soil
| that remains often still has seeds sitting dormant waiting for
| conditions to return to healthy.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Reading this feels like a great metaphor to life that I am
| unable to explain but I will still try, in the sense that,
| within a degraded land with just the right conditions, it is
| just waiting to grow :D
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Life...finds a way.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| This is good, I found another one to express what I was
| feeling.
|
| We are here, We are waiting.
|
| - Optimus prime.
|
| My interpretation is that everyone no matter how bad
| things look from outside has hope/seeds of hope which are
| just waiting for the right conditions.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJszUl1EI4A (I also feel
| like, the ending of this movie/transformers was one of
| the best movies and the ending still gives me goosebumps
| in hope for future)
| 6510 wrote:
| It once struck me that it is unimaginative to assume this is
| their first planet.
| fainpul wrote:
| As demonstrated in "The Biggest Little Farm" [1]. However it
| took years of hard work.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8969332/
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _Despite this promising start, the conservation experiment wasn
| 't to last, after a rival juice manufacturer called TicoFruit
| sued Del Oro, alleging that its competitor had "defiled a
| national park"._
|
| This is why we can't have nice things. Juice company makes
| compost? Sued! Ford wants to pay his workers a living wage? Sued!
| Nail lawyers to trees.
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| > Despite this promising start, the conservation experiment
| wasn't to last, after a rival juice manufacturer called TicoFruit
| sued Del Oro, alleging that its competitor had "defiled a
| national park".
|
| No good deed goes unpunished--wild that the competitor company
| successfully sued them.
| adammarples wrote:
| Maybe they can now overturn that judgement
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| There's actually no guarantee that if the "experiment" were
| allowed to continue that the results would have been as great.
| If the biomass accumulated faster than it could be broken down,
| we might not have seen the same result.
| calf wrote:
| Even a consequentialist should accept that it would have taken
| 16 years to realize it was actually a good thing to do with
| orange peels.
| dessimus wrote:
| The article says they returned after that long having
| forgotten about the experiment. I think they would have
| recognized there were positive results long before that if
| someone happened to be checking in at say Year 2, 5 or 10. It
| not like the land was still barren piles of orange peel at
| Year 14 and then suddenly Yahtzee!
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| Did they forget? Or did they know this would happen before
| dumping the first peel and it simply wasn't worth the money
| it would take to prove it in the public record?
|
| Because what I bet happened is that off the public record
| who knew their stuff said "this will happen" and then the
| government rep said "you need to pay some sort of 3rd party
| with a government license to weigh in on such matters an
| obscene amount of money to produce a report that says that
| on the public record" and it was a nonstarter so the
| project just died and now 16yr later here we are.
| nvader wrote:
| I came here to say this, because this whole anecdote mildly
| infuriates me.
|
| I don't necessarily blame TicoFruit for their actions. They
| might have some legitimate concerns about fairness, since their
| competitor is now able to dispose of peels much more
| economically.
|
| But for the courts to stupidly go along with the injunction is
| what disappoints me. A much better result for everyone in Costa
| Rica would be if both manufacturers were allowed to dump at no
| cost.
| contingencies wrote:
| The whole compost thing can be a lot of hassle for people. For a
| simpler option, if you are lucky enough to have a decent garden
| area, find somewhere away from your house and just throw biomass
| there regularly. Coffee grinds, spent tea, leftover veg, etc. and
| watch what happens! Sometimes simple is best.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Indeed. I've been doing that for a quite a number of years now.
|
| I just put food waste and some other compostable stuff outside
| -- in a pile, on the ground. Currently, that pile is in a place
| where autumn leaves tend to gather naturally.
|
| And in that pile, it all composts. It turns last week's bean
| soup into next year's hot pepper harvest.
|
| It's not zero-effort but it's very close. I'll have spent more
| time writing this comment than I have on any aspect of
| composting over the last several months.
|
| Later on, to use it in the garden, I just... use it in the
| garden. I scoop aside the top layer with a shovel and take
| whatever is beneath it. The plants don't seem to care that the
| composting method is slow and lazy, or that a portion of it
| might be somewhat unfinished.
|
| (Now, to be sure: Home-scale composting can have a great deal
| of optimization applied. Bins, aeration, deliberate
| introduction of red worms, careful management of moisture,
| temperature monitoring, whatever -- the sky's the limit. But I
| have enough hobbies, and I'm not trying to market it as a
| product or win a race here. This method keeps up with my
| household's output just fine and doesn't take up much room at
| all in my tiny-ass yard.)
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Ngl I didn't know there was another way to compost. The whole
| idea is to just throw vegetable waste into a pile and let it
| turn into dirt, isn't it?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Rats and other undesirables can be attracted to compost. So it
| is probably best to use a composting bin, if you can.
|
| Also try to mix in some brown/carbon (leaves, shredded paper,
| cardboard etc) with your green/nitrogen (food scraps, grass
| cuttings etc), otherwise it can become a stinky swamp
| (anerobic).
| contingencies wrote:
| It's possible to approach composting form a more simplistic
| standpoint. The listed issues are mostly specific to high
| density (eg. in a fixed bin) composting. If you spread it out
| these problems basically go away, and so do the stinky
| compost labor and purchasing requirements.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Do you not have problems with rats and other vermin?
| contingencies wrote:
| No. What's 'other vermin'? We have plenty of native
| animals. I see a few of them feeding in the area I
| distribute organic matter, including (non-snake)
| reptiles, turkeys, possums, butterflies, native bees,
| spiders, etc. Lots of fungi too.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >What's 'other vermin'?
|
| Badgers, foxes, racoons etc. Depends where you live.
|
| Probably should have used a better word than 'vermin'. It
| sounds overly judgemental.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Presumably the reason this article delays showing you the
| before/after photos is to get you to scroll and see more ads,
| since you'll probably just close the tab after. Which sucks, but,
| fine.
|
| What really gets me is that: I scroll passed all the ads without
| even registering them (I haven't figured out how to block ads on
| my phone). Surely almost everybody else also does. Surely anyone
| who clicks or seems to react to them in the data is a mistake. So
| why is there still money, however little, in showing them? Why do
| they even bother? Who is defrauding who here?
| shrx wrote:
| > I haven't figured out how to block ads on my phone
|
| Firefox + ublock origin + consent-o-matic saves the day for me.
| jdlshore wrote:
| If you're using Safari on iOS, the "hide distracting items"
| option accessible from the icon in the left of the URL bar
| works really well, and it remembers your choices for your next
| visit to the site.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| The actul study linked to the project...
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rec.12565
| krisroadruck wrote:
| Avid backyard gardener here. When we moved to our new house in
| Fort Wayne our yard was a real problem child. It was a new build
| in an old neighborhood. All the other houses where about 40ish
| years old. Ours had also had a 40 year old house, but at some
| point that house was abandoned, eventually condemned and then
| knocked down. Eventually a builder snapped up the lot and built
| our current house. But that means the ground had been stripped of
| topsoil and compacted all to hell not once, but 3 times in the
| past 40 years. What was left was dead heavily compacted clay
| subsoil. It had drainage issues in wet weather, it developed
| crazy deep & wide cracks in dry weather, and just generally
| didn't want to grow anything.
|
| We solved it by dumping around 400 cubic yards of arborist
| woodchips spread 12-18 inches thick over most of the yard, then
| top dressed that with composted manure and worm castings.
| Finally, we planted a bunch of wine cap mushroom spawn (to break
| down the wood) and clover (to fix nitrogen and feed the fungi)
| over the whole thing. 3 years later we have rich loamy soil that
| drains well, is full of earth worms and grows anything we plant
| it it.
|
| TL;DR: Add tons of carbon and nitrogen into degraded soil and the
| local fungi, bacteria and worms will turn that into good soil if
| given sufficient time.
| eudamoniac wrote:
| Not snark: did you actually improve the soil, or did you just
| add a bunch of good soil? How is the soil doing 2 or 3 feet
| down?
|
| I'm currently improving my soil via a series of cover crops
| chosen to fix nitrogen and aerate soil, but it's yet to be seen
| how well it turns out.
| tbirdny wrote:
| I'm surprised they would just throw orange peels away. There are
| beneficial compounds in orange peels that can be extracted:
| limonene, hesperidin, naringin, pectin, insoluble and soluble
| fiber. Or, could be added to animal feed.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| I have 45acres of low-grade agricultural land, and if someone
| dropped 12k tons of compostable material on it, I'd be delighted.
|
| Where do I sign up?
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Not sure what is the biome of the land, but you can look for
| the work of Ernst Gotsch[1] and Syntropic Farming [1].
|
| The main idea is introducing biomass in layers and heavy
| pruning, start planting a lot of short-life plants (like grass)
| while also planting some medium-life plants (like bushes or
| small trees). Prune the grass on every seasonal cycle keeping
| the cut leafs on the ground. Repeat the cycle while also
| introducing long-life plants (like bigger trees, preferably
| fruit-bearing trees). Another idea is having plants that seek
| for water deep underground, those eventually bring streams and
| creaks back to life.
|
| When you understand it, the plan sounds simple, you are just
| speeding up the natural cycles of the location, using grass to
| fix carbon and generate biomass while other trees grow in the
| vegetation. It is pretty impressive
|
| Edit: added a better link explaining Synthropic Farming
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_G%C3%B6tsch
|
| [2]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
| bluGill wrote:
| Ask your county extention are dnr. Different states do this
| differently but most states have programs with experts who know
| what works in your area and what the options are.
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