कम्पोस्ट समस्या निवारण

01Describe before you diagnose

Three facts come before any cause. Which stage is this: pre-wetting, Phase I, Phase II, or after release? What is the pattern: the whole mass, one end, the top layer, or the zone beside the door? And what changed: a new straw lot, a different manure supplier, unseasonal rain, a fan that was repaired last week.

Write those three down while the batch is in front of you. A symptom described only as compost is bad cannot be investigated next month, and most compost problems are only understood by comparing several batches.

02List competing causes

Take a heap that will not heat. DMR reports that below 1.5 percent nitrogen the material is not properly fermented and the heap may not pass 55 to 60 °C, and it sets a minimum base batch of 300 kg because small heaps lose heat too fast. The heap may also be too wet and airless, or genuinely too dry.

Each of those causes predicts something else you can check. Low nitrogen means the formulation record will show it. Too wet means leachate at the base and a sour smell. Too small means the outside is cool but the very core is warm. Go and look for what you should not find.

• Nitrogen too low
• Too wet and airless
• Batch too small
• Too dry

03Let the numbers name the domain

Several Indian figures act as boundaries, and crossing one points at a domain. Compost above 72 percent moisture cannot aerate properly, turns airless and invites brown and white plaster moulds. NHB links compost below 64 percent, under wet casing, to weeper mushrooms.

Outside pH 7.2 to 7.8 the mycelium slows and white plaster mould may invade. Above 60 °C at pasteurisation DMR warns that the useful thermophilic fungi die and olive green mould follows. Ink caps and Oedocephalum point back at ammonia and nitrogen. The symptom does not prove the cause, but it tells you which measurement to take next.

04Measure next, do not spray next

Compost problems are process problems. No spray corrects moisture, pH, nitrogen or air distribution, and anything applied on a mushroom farm must be checked against its current label approval and state rules before use, not chosen from an old note book.

So the next step after a diagnosis is a measurement, not a chemical. Change one thing in the limiting domain, record what you changed and why, then look for the response in the same measurement. If the response does not come, your cause was wrong and the record you kept is what lets you say so.