Compost

106°F

111°F this morning. The pumpkin pieces and dry leaves added this week are clearly active. I added a few more greens, including some spent coffee grounds that Alena picked up from Starbucks, along with some straw and dry leaves, and gave it a turn. It smelled a little worse than usual but not rancid, so I will be keeping an eye on that. The pile is finally at about 3′ x 3′ now; as I understand it, this is the smallest recommended size to get a true hot pile going.

108°F this morning. We got two big bags of leaves from the front of the elementary school yesterday. Stopped by after we took the kids to the park. One bag is mostly dry brown leaves. In that bag I’m going to try to make leaf mold. Crunched them up a bit, added water, and put some small holes in the bottom of the bag. The other bag I want to let dry out some and then use as brown on the compost pile. I’m going to dump them out so they dry up.

88°F, but 100°F when I moved the thermometer to the middle. I kind of didn’t want to disturb it since it’s finally heating up again, but I had another bucket of kitchen scraps to add so I did that, but quickly, with a little bit of turning for aeration. I stuck the thermometer more in the middle of the pile and noticed that instead of just 88°F, it was actually at about 100°F in the most active areas.

78°F today. I added diluted urine to the pile.

68°F today.

I want to get this pile hot again.

From June until November, I added kitchen scraps to the pile weekly. I also added cut up cardboard, garden straw, alfalfa meal, and other greens and browns. The hottest it got was 120°F and that was for less than a few days.

Today, I cut up well and added a large pumpkin from Trader Joe’s.