Permaculture compost solutions for tropical resort?

[lalizeb]

Hi all,

Wondered if anyone could help? I am working as the permie on a new eco-resort in Malaysia, who are keen to incorporate permaculture solutions as much as possible into their systems. At the moment I'm trying to come up with the best composting solution. We are on an island, in humid tropical location and so need to factor in pests, aesthetics, etc carefully in the design of this system. There is a bar and restaurant on site, as well as workers canteen, as well as a lot of biomass especially palm fronds etc. so lots of material to work with.

Because of the large amounts of, especially, food waste, I'm thinking the best solution would be a bokashi ferment of this waste before mixing with manure (the owner has shipped in chicken dung but I plan to include some chooks for later stages in the design, esp for pest control with termites/ants) and carbon materials such as wood debris and palm fronds, cuttings etc on a large (hot) compost pile...

I've done this because from my research EM/IMO's will neutralise the food waste and so decrease the chances of pests being attracted to the compost piles if we were to just do a standard mix of these food wastes with the carbon stuff. The problem is there is only one suitable (shaded) area available to site the compost piles and they are at the back end near some workers quarters and office etc so they obv do not want bad smells/vermin etc being attracted to our piles.

Questions:

1. Any advice or suggestions on whether this system is suitable?

2. Will drying cut grass, leaves etc mean this is now C or N material in compost pile? I've always been confused by this! I know we'll have lots of N material but outside of the wooden twigs on site, I'm having issues trying to figure out what would be the best locally available C material.

3. I plan on making our own IMO and using this to make a bokashi substrate with EFB (empty fruit bunch of palm wastes which we have been able to secure as a mulch from a nearby palm plantation). I know they usually use rice husks, or straw but as we are in Malaysia I think trying to secure a locally abundant material, especially one that is considered waste, is the best solution...Advice?

4. Will including the palm fronds in a hot compost pile (mixing manure, fermented food waste etc) work to produce compost in a short period of time? I've read they can be difficult to compost? The owner was thinking of getting an incinerator and burning this but I am keen to avoid that for obvious reasons! The soil is sandy and low in organic matter so need to try and utilise as much OM as possible from site. Anyone have experience of using palm fronds in compost? Or any other solutions for this resource?

5. There are lots of termites and ants on site, now in this location I figure that they are the main earthworm like decomposers so do I need to worrry overly about them in the compost pile? I figure an open pile should be fine esp if the hot compost method is used? Too hot for rats I'm thinking.

Phew. As you can tell I have lots of questions. This is my first permie 'job', and trying to apply my gardening/permie knowledge on this large a scale is a challenge - definitely been thrown in the deep end So any advice and help from those with more knowledge is muchos appreciated.

Cheers!

[Grahame]

One of the main issues you will have is the fact that you are going to have a steady stream of food wastes, so building a hot compost is going to be difficult, because you can't really just keep adding to it. They are more of a build it once and let it cook kind of thing.

Have you considered a large scale worm farm for the food scraps? Chickens of course make the most sense, as you will also have a steady supply of good eggs

4. Will including the palm fronds in a hot compost pile (mixing manure, fermented food waste etc) work to produce compost in a short period of time? I've read they can be difficult to compost? The owner was thinking of getting an incinerator and burning this but I am keen to avoid that for obvious reasons! The soil is sandy and low in organic matter so need to try and utilise as much OM as possible from site. Anyone have experience of using palm fronds in compost? Or any other solutions for this resource?

My understanding is that palm fronds are notoriously difficult to compost. I imagine you would have to chip them up (if you can find a decent mulching machine to do the job) before including them in the compost.

5. There are lots of termites and ants on site, now in this location I figure that they are the main earthworm like decomposers so do I need to worrry overly about them in the compost pile? I figure an open pile should be fine esp if the hot compost method is used? Too hot for rats I'm thinking.

Generally your compost would need to be moist enough and hot enough to deter ants anyway, so if you are getting them, the compost is probably not working properly.

I'm sure some of my northern friends will be able to help you more with the palm fronds.

Good luck

Grahame

[adiantum]

"Recycle at the hightest level" is a principle perhaps finding application here. Compost is a low-grade use for food waste. Try to turn it back around into food before it becomes soil. Chickens are the obvious first level, or a pig if there's enough waste. Stuff that's completely nasty, rotten, or that the critters won't eat as is, along with some or all of their manure (as well as that of the people, for that matter, can then go to a second level...soldier flies or earthworms or both, which provide yet another feed yield that goes back to the chickens. If some of the waste is coming off in semi-sterile condition (such as coffee grounds) you might be able to work mushrooms in. Once these yields are taken off then you can go towards composting, whether by default (as in the deep litter of a chicken pen), conventional piles, or simply trenched in the ground (a good policy for nasty stuff or stuff containing humanure in any case, with perennials being planted over. If you have an excess of high carbon matter you could look into biochar too....this will stabilize some of the carbon in your tropical soil and prevent it from disappearing so fast. This is a good use for paper and wood waste of all sorts...living on an island should be a graphic and daily reminder of what in fact is true of the whole planet...there is no "away" and good design has a productive use for everything cast off by any part of the system. You might be able to use the heat from the char process to sterilize some of the other nasty composts. Inoculate the char with urine and lock in another nutrient. If your compost smells or breeds bugs it usually means excess nitrogen....the solution is to add carbon and fluff it up (let the chickens do this for you) The Designers Manual shows a cool drawing of a bug-zapper light over a fish pond....turning even the bugs into a yield. Seems like that would work over a poultry yard too.

[j_cornelissen]

Seeing you are working in a resort with a steady stream of food waste that you have to deal with, maybe you should consider other options than the conventional composting one, such as producing biogas (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGSl72xZHNk)

this seems a much better solution.
- no issues with pests
- no smell
- you still get fertilizer plus the added bonus of methane that can be used for cooking

There are many videos on youtube on how to construct one of these digesters and you will see there is no need for cow dung.

Good luck, Jan

[lalizeb]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions folks, I am definitely leaning towards the chickens as the first step in the process of dealing with food wastes. Re: worm farms I might look into the worm bed solutions for our zone 1 beds, Milkwood have some neat designs that I'd like to try and emulate. There is a whole educational element to the resort too as they have partnered up with a conservation org that I'm currently working for, so solutions both small-farm scale for the resort side and garden scale that visitors to the island can implement back home, are needed.

We are hopefully going to build a compost toilet in the long term as part of the children's playhouse/education areas so I think using the fronds as an input for this system should work. Adiantum excellent point about the island being a microcosm and there being no 'away'; I am really trying to push for the owners to think of 'waste' generated as a valuable resource so we operate under a closed loop policy. But I think it will be a matter of doing a little at a time and demonstrating that these solutions work and thus building trust.

Although I'd love to do something with biogas, I'm unfortunately coming in at the tail end of the operation so kitchen systems/infrastructure are already built and ready to go, but there might be some use in looking into this for later implementation, thanks for the suggestion Jan! Once the site is up and running we will know exactly how much waste we are generating and then be able to ascertain whether other solutions are needed.

I'm definitely looking into biochar Adiantum, to make use of woody biomass and especially the coconut shells - I'm reading that the Adam's retort is the best way to go for this for efficiency and reduced emissions, but any advice would be appreciated as I have no experience with biochar.

Cheers once again folks.

[Joel]

Chooks and worms sound like a very sensible first step towards dealing with food wastes. Regarding your Bokashi/EM idea - these bugs have been shown to do a great job in a bulk situation with municipal green waste (which tends to include difficult-to-compost things like palm fronds) with municipal food waste. A combination of food scraps/humanure and tough plant material like your palm fronds could do well with a scaled-down version of this approach. If you're interested, you could look up the "Groundswell City to soil" project, for example: http://137.92.97.157/groundswell/process

[lalizeb]

Thanks Joel that was very helpful indeed and definitely the kind of thing we are aiming to setup albeit on a smaller scale than municipial. I had a look at the products they use and they just seem to be the standard Korean/Japanese Natural Farming culture recipes with fancier names, so fingers crossed we can make on site! Any other links you or anyone might have on this front - commercial operations - is extremely beneficial. Thanks all.

[alle-mark]

There's a growing trend in restaurant composting grand rapids mi. I think it's about time it, it's such a great idea.