A flume study was conducted using a soil, yard waste compost, and an erosion control compost to investigate the response to concentrated flow and determine if the shear stress model could be used to describe the response. Yard waste compost (YWC) and the bare Cecil soil (CS) control responded to concentrated laboratory runoff similarly in rill formation, and the shear stress model was useful in...

The remarkable influence of organic inputs, such as manure and compost, on dN values of growing plants suggests the possible use of N natural abundance as a tracer of N. Thus, using N natural abundance might be possible to estimate compost-N recovery as an alternative method to the use of N-enriched materials. The objective of this study was to verify the feasibility of using dN value to esti...

Manure or compost from beef cattle feedlots can be excellent sources of nutrients and organic matter when added to soils. This study was conducted to determine the effect of a single application of manure and compost on runoff and erosion under no-till and tillage conditions. Tillage consisted of a single disking operation up and down the slope on a Sharpsburg soil which was cropped to grain so...

A three-strain mixture of Escherichia coli O157:H7 was inoculated into fresh dairy compost (ca. 10(7) CFU/g) with 40 or 50% moisture and was placed in an environmental chamber (ca. 70% humidity) that was programmed to ramp from room temperature to selected composting temperatures in 2 and 5 days to simulate the early composting phase. The surviving E. coli O157:H7 population was analyzed by dir...

Composts are the products obtained after the aerobic degradation of different types of organic matter waste and can be used as substrates or substrate/soil amendments for plant cultivation. There is a small but increasing number of reports that suggest that foliar diseases may be reduced when using compost, rather than standard substrates, as growing medium. The purpose of this study was to exa...

The persistence of naturally occurring campylobacteria in aerobic compost constructed of manure from beef cattle that were administered chlortetracycline and sulfamethazine (AS700) or from cattle not administered antibiotics (control) was examined. Although there were no differences in population sizes of heterotrophic bacteria, the temperature of AS700 compost was more variable and did not bec...

Pilot-scale field-testing of passive bioreactors was performed to evaluate the efficiency of a mixture of four substrates (cow manure compost, mushroom compost, sawdust, and rice straw) relative to mushroom compost alone, and of the effect of the Fe/Mn ratio, during the treatment of acid mine drainage (AMD) over a 174-day period. Three 141 L columns, filled with either mushroom compost or the f...

A 7-year study located in Prince Edward Island, Canada, examined the influence of compost and manure on crop yield and nematode populations. The compost used in this study consisted of cull waste potatoes, sawdust, and beef manure in a 3:3:1 ratio, respectively. No plant-parasitic nematodes were detected in samples collected from windrow compost piles at 5- and 30-cm depths prior to application...