Level 3 · Operator · Curriculum outline · external review pending
Compost Operator
A rigorous Phase I and Phase II specialization covering materials, water, biology, aeration, ammonia, sampling, quality and batch records.
18lessons
18full lessons
54self-check questions
EN · HIlanguages
Photo: Rahumath nisha, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source
Learning outcomes
After this course, you should be able to:
- Distinguish Phase I and Phase II objectives
- Interpret ammonia and readiness evidence
- Evaluate sampling and airflow context
- Reason through a batch deviation
Course map
Every lesson opens with objectives and a diagram, carries sourced numbers, ends with a farm task and three questions.
- 01Raw MaterialsWheat straw can mean a bright dry bale or a grey heap already rotting in the rain. Compost is never better than the lot you accept.
- 02FormulationA compost formula is not a recipe handed down by a neighbour. It is arithmetic on the materials standing in your own yard this week.
- 03Water & MoistureMost failed compost in India is not short of nitrogen. It is either drowned or thirsty, and nobody measured which.
- 04MicrobiologyNobody heats a compost heap. The microbes do, and the thermometer on the stack is really a report on how well they are being fed.
- 05Phase IPhase I is the noisy, smelly, outdoor half of composting. Everything Phase II can do is decided by how well this half was run.
- 06Bunker OperationA bunker turns Phase I from a weather problem into a machine problem. The machine only works if air actually gets through the compost.
- 07AerationThe number on the fan plate is what the fan can do against nothing. What reaches your compost is a different number, and only one of them makes compost.
- 08Phase IIPhase II is four jobs done in one room, in one order, with the door shut. Getting the order wrong costs the whole batch.
- 09PasteurizationPasteurisation is not sterilisation. You are killing pests and weed moulds while deliberately keeping alive the organisms that finish the compost for you.
- 10ConditioningPasteurisation kills. Conditioning feeds. After the peak, heat loving microbes eat the ammonia that would otherwise kill your spawn, and evidence, not the clock, ends the hold.
- 11AmmoniaAmmonia is the commonest reason a good looking batch kills its spawn. Removing it is not the hard part. Proving it has gone is.
- 12Tunnel OperationA Phase II tunnel is not a room with a heater. It is one air circuit, and the loaded compost is part of it. Read it otherwise and you chase numbers the fan never delivered.
- 13SensorsA number on a display is not a fact about your compost. It is a fact about one probe, in one place, at one moment.
- 14Quality ControlRelease is a decision, not a feeling. Compost is not certified by colour, by smell, or by a squeeze in the palm.
- 15SamplingA laboratory can report a number to two decimal places from a sample that never represented your batch. Precision on a bad sample is only confident error.
- 16TroubleshootingTwo batches can show the same symptom for opposite reasons. Naming a cause quickly is the fastest way to fix the wrong thing and lose the next batch as well.
- 17HygieneCompost hygiene is mostly about direction. Dirt travels toward finished compost far more easily than the other way, and it travels on a loader, a fork or a pair of boots.
- 18Batch RecordsEvery crop failure is investigated backwards. If the batch record stops at the tunnel door, the investigation stops there, and the batch comes back next month.