2024 April 26 Hot Compost Goals
My composting journey started lazily. Food scraps were literally just thrown out back. I’d open the window and chuck out a pepper core. That’s actually the beginning of my gardening journey too. I happened to throw out the seeds of some peppers I ate, and a few weeks later, I had pepper plants. Now, however, I am a little more deliberate with my composting system, but I have some learning to go. I have never achieved that beautiful hot compost pile, so that’s a goal for the near future.
We have a little stainless steel food scrap bin with holes, a lid, and a handle that sits by the back door. Food scraps and also any paper products like napkins, shredded paper, and compostable packing materials.
When that fills up, it goes out to the Sun-Mar Garden Composter in the backyard, which I bought for $20 at a garage sale over 10 years ago. I turn it every couple of days. This system works slowly and on a small scale. It’s a cool, not hot, type of compost. Like I said, I have been lazy about my composting efforts over the years. It does give me some nice compost after time.
In addition to this, I have some heaps of garden waste in both the front and back yard. This includes fall leaves, pruned branches, dead weeds, dead annual plants (flowers and vegetables) and some grass clippings. I throw chicken poop into everything. The chickens love scratching around for bugs in the compost heaps and adding extra nitrogen as they go.
The plan is to make a larger composter out of pallets this summer so I can integrate all the types of compost into one big hot pile that I turn every week. I even bought Russian Boking 14 comfrey to add green manure to my future compost heap. In that pile I will include equal volume parts of both nitrogens and carbons. Here are some examples:
Nitrogens (green):
Vegetable scraps
Coffee grounds
Chicken poop
Grass clippings
Weeds
Fruit scraps
Comfrey leaves
Carbons (brown):
Cardboard
Fall leaves
Paper
Wood chips
Straw
Sawdust
Napkins
Comments
Post a Comment