How to sample

Compost Submission

For compost samples, leaf litter or other purely organic materials

1. Mailing address – The test report will be sent here. We mail only one hard copy to one address. The fastest way to receive your test results is by email. Please include an email address.
2. Billing address – If no separate billing address is provided, the bill will be sent to the same address as the report.
3. Payment method – Must be marked or samples will not be assessed until we have payment information.
4. Sample Identifier – Every sample must have a unique identification code. If you do not provide one, we will create one for each of your samples.
5. Compost Age - Tell us something about how long the compost has been composting. What kind of pile is this – worm compost, thermal, static?
6. Starting Materials – What percentage high nitrogen containing materials were used and what kind of hi N material, what percent of green plant material, yard waste or produce waste was added to the compost, and what percent of the pile was woody material, such as sawdust, paper, cardboard, brown leaf, conifer needles. Was a compost starter used? What brand?
7. Date Sample Taken – The samples should arrive within 3 days of being taken from the original habitat. If you sample on May 5 and the samples don’t arrive at the lab until May 10, there is little reason to assess active organisms, because activity will have changed from what was going on in the compost pile.
8. Desired plant that the compost will be applied – We base our interpretation on the plant you want to have. If you want apple trees, tell us that. If you say Bermuda, we’ll let you know that the compost is fine for Bermuda (if it is). Not what you really want to know!
9. Hi Temperature Reached – Did the pile get to 90, or 120 or 150 three times, or never?
10. Duration of Hi Temperature - How long did high temperature remain high? Quite often, if temperature stays high to 50 to 60 days, the pile went anaerobic for a significant period, and that inability to cool down indicates anaerobic metabolites hanging around being difficult to break down.
11. Number of Times Turned – Once a day? Once a month? You’ll be composting for months most likely. Turned on days 2, 5, 12, and 22. That’s what we want to see…
12. Water Added? How Often? - Never, 5 gallons every 10 days per foot of pile, 100 gallons for a 100 foot pile every 3 months. Those are typical answers.
13. Other Management Practices – Put on back of form.
14. Assays that you want us to perform – Select each assay you want to do. If you want to do active bacteria, total bacteria, active fungi and total fungi then there is a discount over that same set of samples run individually. The total food web, which is all 6 assays we perform on compost, is a further discount.
15. Samples arriving on a Friday cannot be tested for E. coli.