Compost

108°F – Yesterday I added another small bucket of kitchen scraps and some watermelon rind, along with some cardboard. Gave everything a good turn. Glad to see temps still rising.

98°F – Rising.

90°F – Rising.

80°F – Added a bunch of torn up and shredded cardboard and paper packing, used coffee grounds, kitchen scraps, and a couple of old bok choy plants. Added water and gave everything a turn.

80°F – Over the last few weeks I’ve been adding kitchen scraps 1 or 2 times a week along with 50% shredded cardboard. We’ve been putting that at the bottom of the little compost bucket we have in the kitchen so we don’t have to measure too hard brown/green all at once. I’ve also tossed in some plants we’ve let go, lettuce and the like. Alena did get some used coffee grounds recently and we have a ton of cardboard to chop up so I will try to get a hot pile going again soon.

I’ve used most of the previous pile, and the pile currently in the Geobin has been curing for a few weeks now. The kitchen scraps we collect each week, I’ve been burying with some shredded cardboard underneath various garden beds. As I understand it, buried deeply enough, it’s ok to plant right away things like beans, peas, radish, etc. Other things that want to root deeper, or would be hindered by a likely nitrogen tie-up from the browns, should not be planted for at least a couple of months.

Going forward, I’m going to be adding our kitchen scraps along with some browns to the Geobin pile, right on top. Did that today, lightly mixed and covered with the curing compost. Once I have a big enough mass, I’ll cut out some mustard, radish, and other plants at the end of their lifecycle, and make sure I have enough browns to turn it really well and see if we can get a hot pile again. But for now we’ll just do gradual, small additions for a bit.

86°F – With the drop below 90, I decided to give this pile a good turning and consider it in the curing phase now. I’ll likely move this to the curing pit in a couple of weeks, and then not touch it again for months. It looks good already, darker than the previous pile. But of course I can still see plenty of fall leaves mixed in still as those take a long time and a different kind of microbe to break down.

103°F

113°F

112°F

110°F

94°F

102°F – TURNED

I gave the pile a good turning today and added about 3 cups of coffee grounds and a gallon of kitchen scraps, with a little bit more water. Little bit risky here without some more browns to add but I’m treating this like an experiment. If it starts to get smelly, I know to add browns.

106°F

112°F – The pile seemed a little too dry so I added some moisture in the form of urine diluted with about a gallon of water. I also added some chopped up, undiseased plants: two pea plants and a few small pole bean plants. That was not quite a bucket all chopped up.

On the old pile, it’s looking fine but in order to help it cure faster, I added some coffee grounds and water. There is still some recognizable garden straw, cardboard, and leaves needing to be smaller. So I sharpened the shovel with a file and then chopped up the pile a bit. I also added some charcoal that I’d sifted out of grow bags recently used. I let it soak with some compost in a bucket so it was very wet. I then mixed it into the pile a bit and watered to make sure there’s plenty of moisture.

102°F

113°F – Added about half a bucket of kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and 3 buckets of shredded cardboard. I turned it into the pile, spraying with water along the way.

In the 2 and a half weeks since I started this pile, it has shrank in size about 25%. These new inputs and the turning puffed it up again.

122°F

131°F

135°F