The two-way street is a mark of the facility. The composts it produces will go to the farm's researchers for testing in next year's sustainable and organic farming projects. The trucks depart with loads of finished compost to use as mulch in landscaping and farm research. Last October 21, for example, a front-end loader filled a truck with 6 cubic yards of finished compost, and the truck headed off to deliver it as landscaping mulch around a nearby Agricultural Research Service office building. The truck made five more return trips to complete the job.
Frequent turning makes for a uniform mixture.
It was built by working these materials, along with quicklime and cement, into the existing clay subsoil. Designing Composts for Special Uses Sikora and his colleagues will use the facility to find better ways to make composts from a blend of farm, industrial, and urban materials. We can also add disease-fighting microorganisms. Liquids leaching from the compost pile can be used as a liquid disease-control spray. The scientists will test composts in six concrete bins in the equipment shed.