Do I need to inoculate my compost pile?

[Bootsy]

I know , but still not good to have around very young children......and I'm sure OFSTED and the parents wouldn't have been too keen either

I agree - but I've got a child fence as well!

 

[Upsy Daisy]

 

[Bootsy]

Nice idea @roadrunner

I don't use the compost as a mulch but as a plant feed or soil improver. So I need it rotted down first. It rots much quicker in a heap. As we grow lots of plants and vegetables we need tons of compost and it helps promote growth by a considerable amount.

As an example:-
We removed 22 x 40 year old conifers from this area in mid March 2015 and dug in all this compost

By the beginning of September 2015 we had this

 

[Purrfluff]

I measured the heap. It's 18 feet long by 9 feet wide. I'd say it's about a foot to a foot and a half deep. The compostable materials are spread pretty evenly.

I am trying to shovel it into a shorter but deeper pile now. It's awfully slow going because moving there is a hell of a lot to move with just a shovel and I can only toss shovefuls a couple of feet at a time.

Quick update: I shoveled until the rain came. I was able to move about a third of the stuff towards the back. What's left is significantly deeper. Possibly as deep as 3 feet.

 

[Chuck]

All I would do is add a lot of molasses. @2 oz per cubic ft.

 

[DirtMechanic]

I gave up on shovels. Just call me Mr. Pitchfork when it comes to moving piles of compost.

 

[Bootsy]

If you're moving it to the back by just shovelling I would be inclined to pick one end of the 18ft run to use as the main heap. Then use a wheelbarrow to transfer it from the other end. Wheelbarrows are such a good gardening tool.

If you don't have a wheelbarrow it becomes more difficult. Maybe you could borrow one of these

 

[Purrfluff]

If you're moving it to the back by just shovelling I would be inclined to pick one end of the 18ft run to use as the main heap. Then use a wheelbarrow to transfer it from the other end. Wheelbarrows are such a good gardening tool.

Actually, that is exactly what I did. I shoveled things back and ended up with the composting material being 8 feet long by 8 feet wide and about two and a half feet deep. That's about as good as it's going to get. The front part of the enclosure is going to be the new heap. I took my mini tiller to this new area to aerate the soil a bit. Then I will just start tossing stuff on it.

It's going to be a bear to turn the stuff in the rear but I am hoping this leads to the pile heating up and finishing sooner.

 

[Bootsy]

Once it starts rotting down it's surprising how much the heap reduces in height. I keep my heaps separated and no more than 5ft x 5ft. That makes them easier to manage.

 

[Purrfluff]

How do I know when the pile is finished? I'd like to start adding it to the raised beds in late February or March. I did see some plans for making a compost screen which I may make.

I hope I don't end up sticking too much clay into the raised beds. We brought in outside topsoil for the raised beds to avoid the native clay soil and I don't want to screw them up.

 

[Bootsy]

If your compost consists of leaves, grass clipping and green waste then it will not have any clay in it. The idea of making compost is to use materials that rot down, will improve the consistency of the soil and feed the plants. The rotted compost should be put on the surface of the beds (flower, vegetable or plant beds) and just gently turned into the topsoil.

It is ready when it looks something like the photos I posted in post #24. It generally takes up to a year to get to that stage. That's why it is best to have more than one pile. You make a smaller but higher pile (the compactness of it helps the natural aerobic reactions to work better). Then start another one, or more, to leave the first one to get on with its work. Turning it occasionally helps to spread the reaction.

Fallen tree leaves take a lot longer than grass clippings and soft leaves/vegetable matter to rot down. So if you have a lot of fallen leaves in the heap they will take at least a year unless you put them through a shredder first. This can also be speeded up by the addition of chemicals such as Garotta and they are generally known as 'accelerators'. Most contain nitrogen to help encourage the bacteria that actually do the rotting.

 

[roadrunner]

Actually, that is exactly what I did. I shoveled things back and ended up with the composting material being 8 feet long by 8 feet wide and about two and a half feet deep. That's about as good as it's going to get. The front part of the enclosure is going to be the new heap. I took my mini tiller to this new area to aerate the soil a bit. Then I will just start tossing stuff on it.

It's going to be a bear to turn the stuff in the rear but I am hoping this leads to the pile heating up and finishing sooner.

I hate to say this, but I don't think it's going to build up that much heat, if any. You have plenty of cubic feet for a hot pile, actually, you can make several piles, but for hot composting it's all about the shape. And since your pile is only about 2-1/2 feet deep, then there's a really good possibility that you will lose all the heat to the air as the heat rises; maybe if you covered it, that would help, but you can't cover and forget, because you need to ensure it is getting enough oxygen. These are really good links that talk about the shape of a compost pile to create hot conditions

http://compost.css.cornell.edu/physics.html
https://www.planetnatural.com/composting-101/science/physics/

Personally, I think the benefits of Hot composting are overblown. Compost is simply the waste product of living organisms. I'd rather have compost containing various ingredients, which you get from cold composting, the most natural form of composting in nature.

It's also very difficult to make enough compost for a garden, unless you have a very small garden, in my experience it's best to just build up the soil where you plan to garden. You can do this by just taking that mulch and spreading in your garden.

Build it and they will come.... In other words, provide habitat and everything you need for a healthy garden will move in. Every year that goes by I notice my garden becoming easier and easier to grow things, despite it grows tons of stuff every year. I don't have to worry about my soil going infertile from intensive growing, because I keep "feeding" it.

 

[DirtMechanic]

@Purrfluff It will look like unrecognizeable original components or black dirt when done.

 

[Bootsy]

It's also very difficult to make enough compost for a garden, unless you have a very small garden,

I produce about 15 cubic yards of rotted compost a year (approx. 12,000lbs). This is usually sufficient for my garden and I'm a fairly heavy user of it.

I don't know the pros and cons of hot and cold composting but I'm sure that the way I do it produces good compost fairly quickly. It is obviously hot composting as it can be seen steaming when I turn it over.

 

[roadrunner]

I produce about 15 cubic yards of rotted compost a year (approx. 12,000lbs). This is usually sufficient for my garden and I'm a fairly heavy user of it.

I don't know the pros and cons of hot and cold composting but I'm sure that the way I do it produces good compost fairly quickly. It is obviously hot composting as it can be seen steaming when I turn it over.

That's a lot of compost. I found that I couldn't make enough because I just don't produce enough kitchen waste. I could go around and collect some, but I don't have the time, it takes enough time just to collect yard waste.

I could also just compost my leaves and other yard waste, but I find it serves me best to use as mulch, i.e. habitat...

As far as hot compost vs cold compost, I admit I don't really know how they chemically compare and I've never been able to find anything on that in books...

However, my affinity for cold compost just comes from the fact that I've noticed that more organisms are present, meaning more biodiversity and with more biodiversity the healthier a biome tends to be. However, with hot composting, nothing can live in there, except for the thermophilic organisms and the compost is simply a byproduct from them, whereas I got the byproduct from countless organisms, including worms...

They also say that hot composting destroys pathogens and weed seeds; however, for the seeds the ones deep in the pile do breakdown very quickly, because they are always in the presence of moisture and the ones at the top I turn back into the pile, contributing to the compost ingredients/nutrients.

WRT, disease...I can't say, other than to say again a bio-diverse environment with predators is a healthy environment. Maybe I'll have another viewpoint of this when I come across a problem with disease, but with nearly a decade of doing this, I've yet to have any serious problems with pathogens.

But like I said, just an opinion...