Yeast fermentation for composting solution?
I threw some hay off my lawn and some green weecds into a garbage can, some sugar and yeast and formented it to slug beer but the slugs did not like it. It then fermented further to vinegar, and a crust of green "Mold?" covered it. seems to have protected the vinegar from further fermentation.
I tried a second bigger batch ( morning glory weeds) with less sugar but after a few days of good fermenting it went rotten and stinky. So there are probably thresholds for sugar content.
Would the yeast be a way of adding fertilizer to organic gardens? Yeast can (I think) convert urea and nitrate to protein. Perhaps some green stuff has enough sugar to work without sugar addition. vine prunings? maybe. The first batch, i put bleach in to kill off microbes before I added water and yeast. Perhaps hydrated lime would work instead of bleach and also get the ph good for yeast fermentation. This might be a cheap way of liming your garden. (Here in victoria, hydrated type s lime is cheaper than limestone for garden addition. (But it contains more calcium!)
The "yeast tea" or vinegar tea could be used on the garden and the weeds could then be transfered to normal compost or used as mulch. It might be an alternative way of using diseased materials of composting seedy weeds to kill the seeds.
Brian
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The trickier thing is what was that product.
You mention the first batch as having ethanol and turning to vinegar... that's actually a two step fermentation carried out by two seperate biological entities (yeast and bacteria respectively).
If you didn't clean out the barrel sufficiently, contamination can alter your results, but, assuming contamination wasn't a factor, bear in mind that different types of fermenters, even ones that aare closely related, will differ in their products greatly.
Natural yeast is much different then domesticated yeast, as anyone who makes sour dough can attest.
As for what conditions to maintain during fermentation... that's dependent on the organism(s) your focusing on. Some actually prefer an acidic environment, others a basic one. so... research the beast you're trying to employ.
I'd say the second fermentation, you were trying to rely more on native yeasts.... if this was the case, i would not add sugar. They're slower growing then domesticated yeast and do not require as much sugar to do an equal job. They do require more time to do that job though.
This method of composting might be useful: Bokashi composting using EM or effective microorganisms- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokashi_composting
Most likely ( Im not a field technologist) you could optimize growth by creating your own "Indigenous Microorganisms" - check out this Instruction guide on how to cultivate using white rice: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/BIO-9.pdf
Indigenous Microorganisms came from Korea -- Search for Cho Han Kyu's manual called "Natural Farming" which is a recipe handbook for creating these IMs -- maybe available in the Janong Institute.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16646414/Farmers-Guide-on-BioOrganic-Inputs-from-Plants-Fish-Animal-Liquid-Extracts
(Philippine ingredients)
and here
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17295835/Korean-Natural-Farming-Inputs
(Korean recipes)
Fermented grass (done right) becomes animal feed.
L