Johnson-Su Bioreactor - 900 Days Later | Is it worth the effort?

After a long two-and-a-half-year wait, I open up the Johnson Su bioreactor to see how well the chicken manure and woodchip had broken down. I then put the compost to the test by applying it around some hazelnut trees and in a garden bed. Four weeks after that I check in on the garden bed to see how well the plants have grown.
Check out the original video that talks through how I set up the bioreactor:
• Johnson-Su static pile...
If you are interested in regenerative farming; soil biology; farming equipment; farm life; the highs and lows of trying to establish an organic permaculture hazelnut orchard, on an island in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland - then hit that subscribe button.
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[@RoloTomasi654]

Huge respect for Dary, he’s never afraid to risk it for a biscuit! A rare breed ..man of action & innovation with a healthy dose of humility & humour… a true farmer! Having attended a training day with the lovely David Johnson & his lovely wife Hui Chun Su I have to point out where Dary went wrong…. basically everywhere 😬 1. So a Johnson Su bioreactor’s function is NOT to make compost! It’s a mycorrhizal spore factory, hence Bioreactor. Though you will have 25% of your original contents after 1 year to use as a compost when your finished. 2. 2.5 years is way too long! It’s just 1 year to completion, Dary clearly is a very patient & busy man. 3. Never let it either dry out or get too wet as either will kill the fungi & make it bacterial dominant or anaerobic & then you waste a year’s work 4. Aeration is key! You need a breathable fabric like mypex weed fabric & some horse wire as a frame instead of bricks. Use pallets underneath to allow air flow & drainage. No part of the compost should be more than 12 inches/30cm from air to begin with. 5. Add earthworms after the initial early decomposition heat release phase. Once it’s not too hot for your hand after a week or so it’s safe to add worms and they’ll aerate the substrate for you as well as encouraging mycorrhizal diversity. 6. Cheat and add some mycorrhizal inoculant like Supersoil when you add the worms. 7. Check your end product under a cheap or borrowed microscope or send to a lab to confirm it’s mycorrhizal dominant. N.B. There won’t be any hyphae after 1 year just fungal spores. 8. Make a compost extract by adding some compost to water (just 1lb/0.5kilo can inoculate enough water to treat an acre!) & after filtering spread with a sprayer onto your land & voilà! In Dary’s case focus near the roots of the Hazel trees. The key is to have actively growing plants for the mycorrhizal spores to attach to as bare soil is a waste of time, they need living roots. This is not a criticism of Dary’s hard groundbreaking work! I live vicariously through Dary’s learning curve and I am in his debt! So keep up the good work Dary & give us a hazelnut orchard update please 🙏 Or better still organise a farm walk day!? Charge a tenner a head like the farming for nature walks down south!? Bountiful farming Brother!

[@GubbFarm]

Thank you Conor! That is very interesting and informative. Good man and thank you for taking the time to educate me. All the best Dary

[@tinybear56]

I love follow up videos like this. Great information!

[@GubbFarm]

Good to hear. All the best.

[@martinpayne2934]

It’s interesting to see the results after more than two years, but I can’t help but feel the Johnson Su is just a way to make composting more difficult than it needs to be. It would be interesting to see a side by side comparison of just sticking the wood chips in a heap and ignoring them. In my experience mulching with wood chips works really well. It is claimed that doing so will result in wood lice eating all my veg, but I haven’t experienced that. Putting them in a pile worked well for me, putting them in a compost bin worked quite well but they dried out quickly, and the best results were just mixing the wood chips in with other plant waste as I filled my compost bins. I think balancing wood chips with some other materials does really help to retain moisture.

[@GubbFarm]

Thank you for that feedback. I haven't yet decided how best to proceed, but currently favouring just using woodchip around the trees. All the best.

[@chriseverest4380]

I would, if possible go with both options. Wood chips round trees and the Johnson-Su bioreactor. A very knowledgable chap seems to have explained everything in an earlier comment (and I missed the worms : Did you use them?). By God you work hard! Kudos sir! I look forward to more adventures win, lose or draw. Very enjoyable and inspiring.

[@GubbFarm]

Hello Chris. I had a good chat with a friend recently about the woodchips and why ramial woodchips are better than woodchip from the main trunk. He explained that the ramial woodchip works better because of the higher nitrogen content. I think I'm going to revisit mixing manure with woodchip to create woodchip compost that has a higher nitrogen content for spreading around the trees, to prevent nitrogen robbing from straight woodchip.

[@industrialathlete6096]

@@GubbFarm Johnson-Su recommends a mixture of 70% 'browns', 30% 'greens' ie: wood chips, manure. In other videos I have perused, horse manure, cattle manure, swine manure and fowl manure in order of nitrogen content, least to highest. Use your best judgement as to which works best depending on availability and the 'type' of wood chips available, type denoting moisture content and what part of the tree it originated from!

[@Theorimlig]

If you want or need extra slug protection on your raised beds you can get copper tape (or nail on strips of scrap copper if you have it) all around it. Deters snails and slugs pretty well. We find slugs in our newer raised beds without copper, but pretty much never did in the ones that had copper all around them.

[@GubbFarm]

How interesting. I have never tried that. Thank you.

[@Theorimlig]

@@GubbFarm Granted, our raised beds are higher than yours which probably also deters them. But it's a pretty well corraborated trick that slugs are reluctant to crawl over copper!

[@seamuscolgan7654]

How's the farm going?

[@stevefromthegarden1135]

Nice Dary. Long time coming for your Johnson Su. Were you ever able to source some worms to add to the bin? Probably needed a higher nitrogen component to help break down the woodchips or the woodchips needed to be smaller. My Johnson Su bins usually are finished after 1 year but leaves and pine shavings (from horse stall cleanout) make up the carbon source instead of woodchips. I'm also able to add worms to the bin since I raise them in the basement. How are the hazelnuts doing? It's been a few years since you planted them. At least the 1st batch of trees. My peach tree that was planted at the same time as your earliest hazelnuts is producing fruit and my Pink Lady apple is producing for the 1st time this year (which was planted at the same time as the peach tree)

[@GubbFarm]

Hello Steve. Lovely to hear from you. I never added worms and oddly enough I never found any in the compost. I assume the have come and gone, That is an interesting comment about the nitrogen and I was wondering if I had of used more manure would it have broken down more. I hope all is well.

[@GubbFarm]

Regarding the hazelnut trees, I am seeing nuts on many trees, so fingers crossed I see good progress on yield this year. I have some data on last year's yield, so maybe I will do a video on that soon.

[@stevefromthegarden1135]

@@GubbFarm That would be great to see how the trees are progressing from year to year.

[@chippyminton8711]

I don't see the point of going down the johnson su route, I make perfectly good compost at home and can make roughly 2 bulk builders bags worth of compost a year which i use for topping up my raised beds and sifting to make a finer compost for seed sowing and potting on. My experience of raised beds is they seem to encourage slugs and snails, unless i go out on a nightly patrol my lettuce and other veg just gets decimated, i've been told that weeds encourage the slugs and snails and it's imperative to make sure there are no places for the little blighters to hide. Good Luck

[@GubbFarm]

Hello. Alas slugs have arrived in my raised garden, but so far it isn't too bad. I suspect the fresh soil took a while for them to explore, but at least the plants got well established before they turned up, so I got something to eat this time around! All the best Dary

[@dogrudiyosun]

Johnson-Su claim their compost method creates a highly diverse microbial compost. It is probably more suitable for orchards they contains mycelium species more compared to a regular compost.

[@shwa8157]

Definitely NOT a Johnson-Su Bioreactor but a cool experiment I guess.

[@GubbFarm]

How very true.

[@helenaoconnor9972]

Any evidence of fungal activity in the compost? I thought that was the real win with the Johnson Su method and that's why it's good for young trees.

[@GubbFarm]

Good question. There was no obvious hypae in the soil, to suggest a strong fungal dominance, unlike in woodchip piles that I left for a year or two. That is very interesting and I wonder if it because the nettles took over or maybe it was because the pile was very dry when I opened it.

[@small-timegarden]

For this method, I haven't seen any one post videos of successful Compost. I understand the science but practically speaking, I'm disappointed.

[@billiebruv]

​@@GubbFarmI'm not a fan of the J-Su, but follow some forums for interest. This is not a J-su, and more of of some weird abortion of a compost. Fungal hyphae can only be seen with a microscope, so quality compost needs microscopy. Buy a flail catcher, you have a gargantuan amount of growth, and raise the pile up as a square cubic metre, and raised off any wet area, but keep it moist, about 70%. Worms are essential, and should have it all ready within 12 months, if not sooner

[@Cam_two]

Why are you calling this a Johnson - su???

[@GubbFarm]

I started with good intentions... but alas the road to somewhere is paved with them.

[@jonathanleo3778]

He did everything wrong that isn't even close to Johnson su

[@GubbFarm]

Oh no. How about a Johnson su inspired bioreactor?

[@ADAWC]

Good try. But too wet. The pile should have covered and avoided the drowning the microbs. Put pallets in the bottom for aeration. If you had pallets in the bottom instead of a liner and water, the worms may climb up from the ground when the liquid leached to the ground. The liquid attracts lots of worms easily. Your own native worms are safer and free. Good try. Thank you for sharing! Impressive!🙏