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Soil would be a source of microbes, but I have run plenty of successful
compost systems of various kinds withoout adding soil.  There's a lot of
folklore being passed off as "facts" out there with respect to composting.
As my friend the compost guru says, compost happens.  If you put a bunch of
biomass in a container and keep it even slightly moist, it will decompose.
There's lots to experiment with to make the system faster, hotter, whatever,
but I've never had organic matter refuse to compost, no matter how much I
ignored people's advice about what I "must" do.

Dave Smith

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Susan Timberlake <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
>
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Hello,
>
> I am planning to do composting in soda-bottle "bioreactors" (as
> described at http://www.css.cornell.edu/compost/soda.html).
>
> I noticed that they don't call for the addition of any soil to the
> reactor, while a lot of other composting instructions do call for
> adding soil.
>
> If there's anyone out there who has done soda-bottle bioreactor
> composting, can you tell me whether or not soil should be added? (I
> realize this is one of the variables we could experiment with, but I'd
> still like to have some idea ahead of time of what will happen if we
> don't add soil.)
>
> Thanks,
> Susan
> _____________________________
> Susan Timberlake
> Writer, editor, and content developer
> www.susantimberlake.com
>
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-- 
David L. Smith
Da Vinci Science Center
Allentown, PA
http://www.davinci-center.org

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Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was
listening, everything must be said again.  -- Andre Gide

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