Mycelium Running... for real this time.

I appear to have had some luck running mycelium in coir and wood chips lately. See the above three jars filled with bits of happy mycelium? They are from left to right, pure-ish coir to mixed coir and wood chips. So far it seems like the rightmost mixture is the happiest, though it could also have something to do with the fact it appears to have retained a little more moisture than the others. The pure-ish coir jar seems to have good, fuzzy mycelium in it:

Whereas the one in the mason jar seems to have developed some other form of mould to compete with the pleurotus ostreatus. Perhaps a holdover from its days holding other foods and not being as thoroughly cleaned as it should have been:

If I had supervision of any kind at this time, I might be forced to throw it out, but I really want to see just what happens... and if it goes rank, I'm putting it under the microscope, by gum!

The black soldier fly is doing well. They are crawling off a lot nowadays, so I hope we are getting an increase in the local population. I am not yet ready to start collecting them as I have nothing to use them for. If the neighbourhood allowed it, I would have gotten a chicken or something to et the BSFL, but I think they are going to have to go into an aquarium of fish eventually as fish food. They eat bloody fast though and I'm alone in the house now with dwindling amounts of food to give them. I had a bunch of people over last night, so we had some scraps, but I can't well have a party every night just to feed my BSFL. 

Then again, I suppose I could, and it would be pretty awesome to have a maggot-themed party, I'm sure.

Lastly, I've ordered a vericomposting kit to compost the castings of the BSFL into some friable compost. In order to keep moisture in the indoor food collection bin down, I've been putting dustings of coir in the bottom. These are slowly building up in the BSFL bucket as the BSFL can't really eat coir. After a good soak in the bacteria-rich goo that the BSFL leave in the bucket, it should be soft enough to be able to be eventually digested by the worms I hope. Also would like to plug the vermicomposter's designer, from UFO  (Urban Farms Organic). Check out their designs for high-volume modular composters. I will be reporting back to UFO on how they work out here in the tropics on BSFL leavings.

That's me up-to-date, more news as it happens...

Mushroom Fail, Soldier Fly Win

While it seems my mushroom bin went rank due to moisture pooling in the bottom of the container, the larvae that I had once worried were not black soldier fly appear now to be black soldier fly. I'm not 100% certain - heck, I'm not 100% certain about many things - but they do seem to have taken on the proper form of BSF.

My dear mushroom contacts over at Ministry of Mushrooms came through for me today with some spawn to pick me up from being morose about a failed first mushroom experiment. One kilogram of oyster mushroom grain spawn to experiment with on my coir! Next, I'll have to purchase a pressure cooker...

Treats for the Maggots

I hear Black Soldier Fly larvae like coffee grounds. My friends at the neighbourhood Starbucks obliged me with a metric assload of coffee grounds, some of which I intend to use in bulk substrate for growing mushrooms, some for my BSFL. The BSFL are quite active - today I found a couple on the roof of the bin and a couple on the walls. The reports I had heard from other tropical BSFL ranchers that they have incredible climbing abilities when the walls of the bin are wet appear to be substantiated. Now, to use that to my advantage in self-harvesting...

You can see the great, big, fat and happy larvae on my trowel there in the picture on the right. There is an incredible amount of size variance amongst the larvae, and these were easily 1cm long and perhaps 3mm-4mm wide. Many are still tiny. Just from observation, the fat ones are found in the vicinity of meat and the skinny ones seem to be found around vegetables, so I imagine the BSFL have sublimely fast metabolisms and their growth is only limited by the amount of protein they can find in their environment. I learn more every day.

In other news, the coconut guy came today to hack down some coconuts for us. I had one to celebrate. Deeeeee-licious. Of course, I saved the husk to dry for coir.

I gotta admit, I really have this wonderful sense of not knowing what the hell I'm doing, but truly enjoying just trying stuff out and seeing what works. The main thing is that I'm not throwing all this stuff in the garbage. It will go back into the land, somehow.

Black Soldier Fly

I've been trying to attract black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) for some time now. First, I started with rotten coconut. That dried out, moulded, and ended out nasty and disgusting. I then tried reconstituting corn, putting it in the coconut to rot, and attracting BSFL that way. The corn moulded and ended up not being colonised. Finally, I had some old cabbage pickles that were going rancid in the fridge. I put those in the coconut and kept them wet but under a cover. After a week or two, I spotted what I believe to be BSFL. since then, I've gotten a bucket and started feeding them outside the coconut. While they've not completely colonised the bucket, they are slowly eating our biodegradables. See disgusting picture below :) (the BSFL are the white things in the middle of the bottom third of the picture)

Of course it doesn't disgust me, I'm the proud father of highly useful maggots :)

Phase three: the Lawn

The lawn is something I have never truly understood. For some reason, fully grown men (typically men, I don't often see women infatuated with their lawns) spend untold hours fertilising, mowing, aerating, and preening their lawns to a brilliant, lush green. I don't get it. It's just work. I would rather plant bamboo, or hay or something.

Still, if people want to have a lawn on their own land on their own time, more power to them. There's just one problem. People use too much fertiliser. Not all of it goes into the ground, and a lot washes out storm drains into bodies of water. There, it creates algae blooms. Sadly, these are not particularly good for their environment: they grow, metabolise all the CO2 in the water, then choke on their own oxygen. When the algae die, aerobic bacteria come in to eat up the stuff that remains - absorbing all the oxygen in the area in the process. This can create huge, lifeless sections of water known as dead zones. It's wasteful, harmful, and it's all for the purpose of an ornamental crop that does nothing much other than suck up municipal water supplies in Calgary's semi-arid climate. There has to be a better way than fertiliser to make a lawn lush and green. What's more, there has to be some other kind(s) of ground cover that would be equally pleasant and less labour and water intensive.

Now, as I've said, I'm not against people having their own lawns. Even though I find them an utter waste of time and effort, people should have the freedom to cultivate their lawns to their hearts' content. Just one catch: no chemical fertilizer

Luckily, phase two of the "ground up" project provided us a couple things we can carry into this phase: compost tea and vermicompost. Phase three is a landscaping company that purchases and applies these products to the nutrient-hungry lawns of the subdivision. Thanks to this source of ready natural fertiliser, the lawns of the subdivision do not have to go wanting, and will find themselves as lush if not lusher than the heady days of phosphorous and chemical runoff.

But there's more to this service than meets the eye. First of all, it wants to take your lawn clippings. Second of all, if you're keen for a little experimentation, they might grow some varied cover crops on your lawn other than grass for all sorts of economic uses - anything from barley to sunflowers - and they'll take care of it for you. Any number of things can be grown with the amount of lawn area that a full subdivision has, and whether the landscapers want to harvest barley for a brewery or sell sunflower seeds, they will be able to populate your lawn with something nice. They'll even take care of it, harvest the crops, make a little cash on the side, and do it all without you having to pay them.

Let's examine the ideas I had above: a brewery or a sunflower seed operation. Breweries are wonderlands where humans and nature have the potential of living and working together in harmony. Beer is produced from malted barley by yeast. The by-products are: CO2, dead yeast, spent grain, and beer... delicious beer. Through the miracle of phase 1, we already know where the off-gassed CO2 will go: into the algae bioreactor. The dead yeast and spent grain can go any number of places, including the Black Soldier Fly composter from phase 2, or a biochar pyrolizer. More on that later. Of course, the beer can be consumed locally or exported. With sunflowers, the natural product is sunflower seeds, but at harvest, there is an awful lot of biomass left over. This is especially true if the seeds are de-shelled and sold as baking goods or snacks. This is also a great candidate for reduction to biochar.

Biochar has some benefits that are not only agricultural. Besides being able to combine it with vermicompost for an organic one-two punch that will invigorate your lawn, a pyrolizer makes its own fuel, and a continuously-run pyrolizer does not need any input except biological matter. The combustible gases released in the pyrolization process - after having been started by some form of outside combustion such as propane - continue to power the unit until it is turned off again. This means the pyrolizer is a free heater. In wintertime, this byproduct would be a boon to any number of pocket industries - including the brewery itself for roasting malted grain. Finally, the process of biochar pyrolization produces sequestered carbon, which can be eligible for carbon credits. This will make even your lawn clippings a reasonably lucrative product, and make leftover biomass from beer making and sunflower cultivation positive energy inputs that can stay in the economy for just that much longer.

In this phase, we take care of garden waste, eliminate polluting chemical fertilizers, some people help a brewery make beer, some people help a company produce sunflower seeds, and both companies send their biomass to a pyrolizer to produce biochar that can be fed back into phase 2 or exported as well as being redeemed for carbon sequestration credits. What's more, there's beer, sunflower seeds, and heat left over as by-products, and all three can go back into the economy after consumption in the coming phases.

Phase Two: Food Waste

Taking the focus back down to the subdivision level, what might be possible to achieve once an algae biodiesel plant has been set up. The central location in the subdivision where the plant and gas station can be set up would also be the site of several other pocket industries. In most of the next developmental phases, these industries are waste management related. This development can happen either within or outside of the waste management concept I've already talked about. The reason for this is simple: throwing away garbage creates no revenue. Processing it creates revenue. We are simply foolish to let the opportunity to generate revenue get buried in a landfill instead of exploiting it. It also happens to be more environmentally friendly. Funny that, eh? Both making money and saving the environment! I love it.

Right, the first waste stream to begin work on is the one it seems most people don't have any time for: organics. Food waste. A two-tier system would be highly useful in this phase. Black Soldier Fly (BSF) could compost the organics received first, and vermiculture could be used in the second tier. I've already talked a lot about BSF and vermicomposting is a reasonably well-worn technique. One thing to note: the two systems are complimentary. BSF digest food very rapidly, on the order of kilograms a day. Worms are slower to digest whole foods. When the worms process BSF waste, however, they process it much faster. What's more, items high in cellulose, which BSF find hard to digest, are easily digested by worms. BSF reduce the total volume of waste by 10 or 20 times each day so long as there is adequate surface area. Worms can then take those castings and turn them into superb humus. In the process, the byproduct of loads of BSF larvae and worms are produced, along with compost tea and vermicompost. These things are eminently marketable.

In the case of the worms and BSF larvae, the nutritional profile of the little beasties just happens to be rather good for fish feed. This, with a little algae residue left over from the biodiesel, would combine into a protein-and -fat rich fish pellet if properly processed. BSF and worms also produce chitin, which is oddly enough a useful flocculant in helping algae settle out of solutions. If the BSF and vermiculture operation was paired with a fish feed company that also harvested chitin, it could feed back into the algae biodiesel processor to increase efficiency in algae recovery! The system would then feed back into upsteam products as well as take leftover algal biomass (typically equal to the weight of oil extracted) and put it into a nutritious dry fish feed.

The nice thing about this arrangement is that all the byproducts of the biodiesel process are now spoken for (except the trace glycol, but I have heard of systems that feed the glycol back into the process). We are now handling food waste - which could be collected on a daily basis, feeding in from restaurants as well as homes - and producing a nutritious dry fish feed for profit. We also have leftover vermicompost and compost tea to sell into the next phase of the program.

No Such Thing as Garbage

Calgary's budget (2009-2011 business plan) is divided into the following parts (each of these numbers is net budget taking into account both revenue streams and overall expenditures):

Asset Management & Capital Works  (public works, fleet management)
$35,858,000

Community Services & Protective Services (EMS, Fire, Parks, Community services)
$3,121,300

Corporate Services (the personnel who keep IT, customer service, and the books straight)
$115,292,000

Planning, Development & Assessment (land use planning and development)
$34,772,000

Transportation (Calgary Transit and Road infrastructure)
$278,740,000

Utilities & Environmental Protection  (garbage, recycling, and water)
$42,297,000

Calgary Police Service  (you get the idea)
$243,175,000 - 2009 budget

Corporate Administration (the people who run the city and bylaws)
$21,026,000

Right now the main budget line I'm interested in is the Utilities and Environmental Protection. In effect, I'm proposing it ceases to exist entirely. Well, perhaps not water, seeing as it generates $60M overall revenue per year, but garbage and recycling services. These services do generate some revenue, through landfill fees and recycling and the like, to the tune of $82,238,000 in 2009. This acts to offset (along with some $11 million in recoveries) the total of $128,640,000 in gross expenditures on waste disposal and recycling services.

All this to say that garbage collection is not a total loss. $82 million is hardly chump change and those revenues and more are still available to the Calgary city economy if the ideas I'm going to talk about are adopted. I simply believe that the disposal of waste is idiotic when every ounce of "stuff" that normally ends up in a landfill can be returned to the economy. The more we start thinking of garbage as an input rather than waste, the more money everyone stands to make. The idea of making effluents and byproducts into "industrial nutrients" are of course core to McDonough and Braungart's Cradle to Cradle, and dealt with in Natural Capitalism. I'd like to make a slightly more concrete recommendation that could be initiated on a five-year window to increase jobs and save $42 million from the city budget. Let's not forget that the money also implies FTEs, that's government-speak for "full-time equivalents" - people. The waste management stream of the city government employs 574 FTEs, going to 610 FTEs this year. Those people have to be taken care of, or the elimination of this budget line would have to be considered a failure.


First priority, then, is to inform the people working for Calgary's waste management that their entire section is to be spun off over the course of 5 years. Each employee should be given a five-year guide explaining exactly what changes are going to take place and what opportunities they will have in the course of these changes. During the course of the change, the population of Calgary will have to be kept informed of the new methods for garbage and recyclable collection. In effect, the effort of garbage and recyclable collection is going to be decentralised and handed over to numerous independent operators. They (and their competitors) will negotiate to the population in their area to determine the best means to effect garbage collection.

The process would have to be people-oriented, and strive to meet the highest standards of transparency in order to work. Business thrives in environments where there are controlled risks. There has to be risk to make a margin, but not so much risk that the margin is constantly in doubt. Transparency regarding the process of transition must be complete and unburdened with the rarified language of bureaucracy. The plan would move through the following phases:

1) Research
The City government will engage business planners, designers, and policymakers in formulating some basic business plans that may then be verified by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). The basic need in this phase is to formulate the regulatory framework that the new waste management system will evolve in (bylaws and instructions to the Calgary population regarding how and where to sort and set out their household garbage). It will also be good to identify several basic business plans that might survive and thrive in the new regulatory environment so that early buy-in by participants is easy and relatively painless.

2) Engagement
The City will then go to its waste management professionals and offer them a view of how the system will evolve over the next five years. With the assistance of the BDC, the City will assist early adopters in receiving financing. Calgary will purchase or provide insurance on the loans in order to make the option more attractive and less risky. The largest loans should be reserved for the group of waste managment professionals who opt in in the first year. The number of opt-ins in the first year should be artificially capped at 100 so as to avoid strong competition, and to avoid flooding the market with too many services. When a city employee opts to take a loan, and either adopt a pre-existing business plan or make his own, he will be granted an area of the city in which to start his operation that is a reasonable distance from competitors. He will not have exclusive rights to the area, but City of Calgary will agree to withdraw their competing services from that area. In the subsequent years after the first roll-out of new services, new services will be able to piggyback on the infrastructure and best practices of old and established ones. For instance, if Bob opts-in first year to collect cans in a region of town for resale to a foundry, Jane may be able to hitch a ride in his truck when she establishes her bottle-collection business in the same area. Horizontal integration of these collection services will, over time, reduce costs all around and necessitate lower and lower opportunity cost to buy in.

3) Market development
From day one, the City will be engaged in developing markets - preferably local ones - for these business activities. In participation with the BDC, composting and vermiculture units could be established, black soldier fly processing companies started, or glassworks constructed. By creating a market for lawn clippings in the form of biochar, perhaps mixed with worm castings, the City will encourage the establishment of the gasification plants that can produce that biochar. The city itself - for instance, in parks and recreation - can create a market for compost tea and worm castings for its gardening work. An office in the city could be established in order to subsidise the purchase of these products through creating easier access to carbon sequestration credits.

As the plan progresses, the initially risk-averse should slowly be able to rationalise a start in a new business. Those who would prefer to leave the industry can be given a simple golden handshake. In five years, this budget line will have been removed, but by saving $42 million, the city will be creating milions more dollars worth of jobs fuelled by waste. The economic knock-on effects are staggering to consider: all of this stuff that previously had no value and left the market will be given value again. Ingenuity and entrepreneurialism can create new industries within this market that will fuel a new period of export creation and import replacement. By turning this industry over to the private sector in a humane manner, everybody benefits.

Compost Tea

While compost tea seems to be generally regarded terra incognita, some people are hard at work thinking of ways to make it better. One of them, I'm proud to say, is my dear government of Alberta.

Compost Tea

There are commercial brewers available:

Earth Tea Brewer

Entire websites set up about the stuff:

composttea.com

And even the Pennsylvania government is in on the action:

Pennsylvanian Compost Tea.

I'm new to the whole compost tea thing, but I suppose if it's produced as a biproduct of vermiculture systems and black soldier fly digestion, it's something that any system incorporating those technologies would have to take into account.

BioChar and Terra Preta

BioChar

This has got me excited.

The problem is that I notice there are actually too many technologies now that can take food and farm waste and convert them into something useful. I worry that there will be too much competition in future for these useful byproducts, leaving people begging for food scraps to power their pet waste recycling system. I suppose it would be useful to have edible scraps digested by Black Soldier Fly, inedibles turned into BioChar, urine cycled into an algaculture apparatus, and fecal matter run through an anaerobic digester before being added to a bioremediation system. There is no end to the possibilities, and all of these business opportunities not only sequester carbon but improve soil quality and produce food...

I have decided that aquaponics is just kinda dumbed down bioremediation. That is sad, because I'm a huge fan of aquaponics, but the truth is too plain to see. Why would someone make a two-cell system that requires constant fish feed inputs when they can design a system that feeds the fish by itself? Aquaponics people have been thinking for a while about raising their own fish food, I must admit. Two great ideas proposed by Murray Hallam include Black Soldier Fly larvae:
Murray Hallam Black Soldier Fly larva (YouTube)
The company that made his BioPod is found here:
ProtaCulture

Hallam has also proposed duckweed:
Murray Hallam's duckweed

These are great ideas, and the studies on how good these two system elements are at converting waste products into protein and lipids are superb arguments for their inclusion in aquaponic systems. Sadly they are elements extraneous to the system as neither is directly integrated into the system. Black soldier fly and duckweed are considered supplements rather than food, and the main food given to fish in these systems is commercial fish feed. A large component of this fish feed is antarctic krill, which is being overharvested. In the final analysis, aquaponics is still an unsustainable system unless it can phase out fish feed. Given that black soldier fly larvae have a similar if not better nutritional profile than most fish feed, and duckweed and other vegetables can pick up the slack in other nutrients, it's a wonder why these elements aren't made integral to the aquaponics system.