Composting the EM Way

Composting is nature’s way of recycling, producing free soil improver and stopping biodegradable waste reaching landfill sites. The value of a good compost is very high and will help your soil quality immeasurably, the main problem people have though is odour. The lengthy composting time or they can’t get the right balance or ‘starter’ to ignite the composting process.

All of these can be fixed by using Effective Microorganisms or EM in your compost. EM helps to speed up the natural composting process—without many of the negative side-effects of foul odors and pests. Adding EM compost to the soil and then mulching it will help to hold in moisture, requiring less watering, keep weeds down, and provide a home for worms and microbes.

Composting using EM is a safe and simple way of improving the effectiveness and output of your composting system. EM can be used in both aerobic and anaerobic composting systems and has many advantages over traditional composting. These include:

• High microbial content
• Increased composting speed
• High Energy(anaerobic method only)
• High Nutrient levels
• Fermentation rather than decomposition (anaerobic method only)
• No leaching
• Odour Prevention
• Accelerated Composting
• Less Waste
• Pro-biotic end product

Aerobic Composting

EM will effectively enhance you aerobic compost system. It will give you a more complete breakdown of organic matter in your compost and also give you a higher quality. This means you will get a higher growth index and therefore better growth rate from plants as a result.

Anaerobic Composting

The EM anaerobic composting process is a fermentation gateway to very effective compost. The benefits over a aerobic composting system are that it doesn’t generate heat so therefore retains all of the energy usually lost. This makes it very effective and more digestable to the soil. The Anerobic system requires that the compost is packed down and covered with a plastic sheet and secured. No turning is required. This cover will prevent the loss of moisture, and also prevent leaching losses through excess rain. This compost will have higher energy and nutrient levels than a conventional aerobic compost because the heat generated is much lower, and no leaching occurs because of the cover. This process is similar to making silage where we get a process more towards fermentation than decomposition. A good example as to why this process is important is that as the silage process makes herbage more digestible to cows, this EM based composting process makes the material more digestible to the soil!

Composting Process

EM will speed up the composting process significantly with research showing they overall timeframe can be decrease by up to 30%, this is important as it allows you to get the compost into the soil  quicker and also generate more compost over the course of a season.

For more information on EM composting read more or contact us.