Hey there folks, I’ve started typing out alot of my techniques for compost making, as well as natural farming theory and practices. Some of it is pretty basic, and I think will help new growers looking to get into this side of organics, but it may also interest some of you who are more experienced in the subject.
Cheers,
-greenbeans 
This composting process begins with a thermophilic stage (hot stage) and finishes with a mesophilic stage (resting stage).
Composting (thermophilic process)
Notes:
-Smallest pile you’d want is about 3ft x 3ft x 3ft tall. You can build a box out of wood (best) or just pile it up.
-Greens can be any green plant or manure, vegetable scraps, etc this is your nitrogen.
-Browns can be straw, woodchips, dry stocky plants. This is your carbon.
-Figuring out how much of each layer is more of an art than a science becuase it depends alot on the material and mixtures of materials that you are using
Notes:
-The temperature in your environment, the ratio of ‘greens’ to ‘browns’, as well as the moisture in your pile will all impact the time it takes to reach 130degF
-You may want to look into getting a compost thermometer that has a probe at least 2ft. Especially if using manures. If you do not have a thermometer just stick you hand in the middle, if it is hot enough that you don’t want to keep your hand in there then it’s probably heated up enough
-If you are having trouble getting the pile warm enough try turning it to encorperate layers. If you are still having trouble, you may need to add more ‘greens’ or wet your pile.
Notes:
-Try to get the middle of the old pile on the outside of the new pile.
Notes:
-Heating, along with the LAB, kills pathogens. This process should take about 1-2 weeks
Further considerations for thermophilic process
-Moisture through this whole process should be maintained to a point where you can squeeze the material and a few drops will come out or your get some water between your fingers.
-Depending on your starting material you may have to wet it at the beginning. The nitrogen or ‘green’ component generally has a good amount of moisture in it. If it easily heats up to 130F when you pile up the layers then there is sufficient moisture.
-Cover with a tarp, or build the piles under a shelter. To make sure they dont get soaked during rain.
-Make sure the piles have drainage underneath, rocks, gravel, or if doing wood boxes, build on top of a wood pallet with metal mesh and landscape fabric over top of it.
Composting part 2 (resting process)
After you have gone through this process you will have inevitably lost some of your good microbes from the heat, so you need to let them recover for a while before using the compost.
Or
Notes:
-Plant things like oats and corn that form strong mycorrhizal connections.
-Chop the plants down before they flower and let the greens decompose on the surface.
If you do all this, you will have a beautifully diverse, and living compost that you can build a soil with.
I have the hardest time here in southern Colorado. It’s just so dry, usually in the low double digits for RH. I need to move the pile to a new spot with a roof or tarp to do it better. Otherwise the water I give it just evaporates. It never gets hot enough to kill seeds of other stuff. I never did the inoculant stuff, so I’ll make some this year I hope. I was trying to move into KNF but had a weird summer last year. I’m gonna try again.
Do you have enough material?As green beans suggest you need a good size pile, 3’sq to get the temps up. Do a search on the “Berkeley Method” (which is what green beans described.)
I make a pile that is about 10 x 20 feet wide ,4 feet tall and turn it with a tractor. So much steam comes out of it when I flip it some would mistake it for smoke. Also probably should mention it is easy to have a actual pile fire if it is not kept wet and turned occasionally.
@GMan Inoculating with the compost extract when you pile up definitely well help get things cooking faster. It’s a pain but you may have to ‘water’ your compost every day, just a little per day to keep the biology happy in there. In the ‘Johnson-Su bioreactor’ composting method they actually set up a drip irrigation type ring at the top of the pile to make watering everyday a little easier. (Highly recommend looking into Johnson-Su if you haven’t already, it makes a very very fungal dominant compost 
)
Also, finishing the pile with a good thick layer of straw
on top should help with evaporation!
I’m going to be post some KNF stuff here soon so stay tuned! 
Very jealous of your tractor… I’ve been turning 10 x 10 x 4 with a pitch fork and it’s starting to catch up to me lol
Good point, on the fires. In my area in eastern Canada it’s so wet that it’s not really an issue for smallish piles. The local composting site gets pile fires all the time though, probably becuase of all the wood and size of the pile
I feel your pain I’ve been doing everything by hand my whole life and flipping piles that size is no easy task.
Thankfully the place I work has two tractors and all the fun attachments for them so I’m able to get stuff done with out destroying my back. I take care of a 116 acre ranch with three homes on it and a 1 acre market garden, if we didn’t have the tractors I would spend all year weed eating and never come close to getting it done. With the tractor I twist a couple fat ones up, attach the skid box and it still takes about 4-5 hours to do all the fire lines.
Can jms (diluted 1:10) be used along with/in place of imo/em/labs to innoculate the compost?
116 acre ranch… yup definitely need a tractor for that. What kind of livestock are you working with?
I just run a 1acre market farm, with a a BCS walk behind tractor. They’ve got most the same attachments as a full size tractor, but unfortunately doesn’t have a bucket. (Machine probably doesn’t have the weight to be lifting a bucket) it’s been a fun tool to play around with, right now I’ve got the sickle, tiller, and snowblower attachment. Can also get plows, harrows, hiller’s, woodchipper/spliter, irrigation pumps, mowers. It’s quite the little machine.
I wouldn’t use JMS in place of IMO or compost extract. Both of those are aerobic microbes where JMS is heavily anaerobic. It wouldn’t hurt to add some JMS to get the diversity in there. And hey, if the anaerobic microbes don’t survive the aerobic pile they will just becomes food for the other biology.
JMS has tonnes of Lactobacillus in it, so yes it could be used as a replacement for LAB. Lactobacillus is a facultative anaerobe meaning it can survive and grow in both aerobic and anaerobic environments.
EM-1 can’t really be replaced by JMS becuase it is a specific set of 3 Microorganisms that work together to ferment organic matter without putrification. They have a similar end goal, but the process to get there is quite different.
Hey, I’ve been saving some of the fish scraps from filleting summer fish. Can I put those in a blender and then find a bucket to ferment it in, with the EM-1? I’d love to use all that I can from the earth. It’s gonna be a lot of learning but I really want to start and slowly get away from store bought stuff. 
Respectfully disagree. JMS will absolutely activate and fire up a compost pile. My standing temp is around 140, and I regularly apply JMS when the pile starts to slow; typical temperature increase is 20 degrees after application. Regular application has reduced my finishing time by 3-4 months! IMO-1 is only used as a soil innnoculant, while the input IMO-2 is sugar and wild harvested fungi, so also an anaerobic input preparation (all of my inputs in the garden are anaerobic ferments). If used to synthesize IMO-3, this would be used to break down organic material in the same way as a “hot” compost pile. JADAM/KNF methodology does not support hot composting, however, and recommends the use of these inputs in the soil rather than in a compost pile.
If you have time, you can make fish hydrolysate, and you don’t need the EM-1. Fish, sugar, ferment.
I have a year old fish amino acid that I fermented this way…plants love it, and after the first 3-6 months the fermentation is complete and has no aroma!
Fish Amino Acid recipe from KNF
Do you use jms alone or along with labs/imo?
IMO is predominantly fungal. Fungus dies at 90 degrees, so there’s no real benefit to adding IMO.
LABS would potentially be effective, but is limited to predominantly Lacto loving bacteria. JMS will be the broadest microbial population. That’s the only one I ever add to compost
@HeadyBearAdventures We can agree to disagree. I feel as though IMO and Compost extracts have much different microbial communities and ratios, which I have observed through the microscope. I believe that when you feed a pile JMS it is the metabolites which fire up the aerobic microbes that are already present. By doing both you are getting the benefit of added aerobic microbes as well as microbial metabolites from the JMS.
In my studies and experience IMO-1 is simply a way to get those microbes out of the woods and back home, IMO-2 is storage, and IMO-3 activates and expands the microbes. I only use IMO in the 2 or 3 stage as a compost and or soil inoculant. You can see in IMO-3 that these microbes are mostly aerobic. They are grown in an aerated pile.
Just remember that what I described in this composting is a mix of different theories and methodology that I’ve come up with over the years. I understand that this is different then ‘by the book’ KNF. The IMO is added after the thermophilic stage, do improve biodiversity and aid in mesophilic, aerobic decomposition. This compost is then used in the soil as an inoculum.
In yoga and other eastern practices there a saying:
“Many paths. One destination”
I love hearing about your methods and research, and I celebrate our differences.
I’m glad you’ve found one of the paths that get us where we’re going… we’re not on the same one, but I’ll see you at the end!
Much respect @HeadyBearAdventures 
I like that saying ‘many paths, one destination’ it is certainly true. I wish you all the best on your journey!
I can get pretty into it when discussing these topics, and I hope my reply didn’t come off as argumentative.
Cheers,
-greenbeans
Not at all my friend. As someone who is a proponent of critical thinking, I think it’s important to acknowledge the difference between anecdotal (I’ve had an experience) vs. scientific (direct observation) evidence. I don’t have microscopy observation, so I’m open to the potential that my assumption/ observation is the result of correlation without causation.
Thanks for the lively discussion!
