There never seems to be enough compost for a busy gardener.
That being so, there are two things for a gardener to do, either make more compost piles or have the present ones work faster.
With space being at a premium in many yards, the former is generally the better solution.
Composters have become ingenious in developing small ways of speeding up composting, however, hot composting is really the solution most have found effective.
A regular compost pile may take two to four years to produce finished compost while a hot pile may need only two to four weeks.
The trick to hot composting is simply to work with the microorganisms that do most of the actual work in breaking down organic matter into compost.
They, like all living beings, need three things for healthy life: food, water and air.
Food is the easiest of the three to supply.
The microorganisms feed on decaying organic matter, in fact their metabolic processes cause the decay.
Preferably the organic matter will be in the proper ratio of carbon and nitrogen for the composting microorganisms to feed most effectively.
A good rule of thumb is to consider dry or brown organic material such as dried leaves or old hay to be carbon material and for wet or green material like freshly pulled weeds or cut grass to be nitrogenous material.
If the two are mixed fairly evenly by volume, it tends to give a good ratio for the organisms to eat and be healthy.
Like an athlete, the better the meal, the better the performance.
Water is as near as the nearest tap for most of us, the well pond, or spring for the rest.
As the pile is built and each time it is turned be sure that there is sufficient moisture but not too much.
Too little and the organisms die from thirst, too much and they suffocate from lack of air.
If they were swimmers we would call it drowning.
Here a good rule of thumb is to grasp the compost occasionally as the pile is built or turned and see if it is as damp as a wrung out dish rag.
If too dry, water the pile and if too wet add dry material.
Air is the hard one to get into the pile.
While some ingenious compost workershave devised ways of piping air into the center of the pile or using various means to aerate the pile without turning, it still remains the best way to get air to all parts of the pile.
Use a fork to turn the pile every three or four days and it will allow air to touch all parts of the compost.
A well built and turned pile will heat after every turning as high as 160° F.
This will aid the composting process and will pasteurize many of the weed seeds in the pile.
The quick hot composting method will speed up the composing process giving more compost from less space.
Indeed the only drawback may be finding enough material for the next pile in a short time.
That being so, there are two things for a gardener to do, either make more compost piles or have the present ones work faster.
With space being at a premium in many yards, the former is generally the better solution.
Composters have become ingenious in developing small ways of speeding up composting, however, hot composting is really the solution most have found effective.
A regular compost pile may take two to four years to produce finished compost while a hot pile may need only two to four weeks.
The trick to hot composting is simply to work with the microorganisms that do most of the actual work in breaking down organic matter into compost.
They, like all living beings, need three things for healthy life: food, water and air.
Food is the easiest of the three to supply.
The microorganisms feed on decaying organic matter, in fact their metabolic processes cause the decay.
Preferably the organic matter will be in the proper ratio of carbon and nitrogen for the composting microorganisms to feed most effectively.
A good rule of thumb is to consider dry or brown organic material such as dried leaves or old hay to be carbon material and for wet or green material like freshly pulled weeds or cut grass to be nitrogenous material.
If the two are mixed fairly evenly by volume, it tends to give a good ratio for the organisms to eat and be healthy.
Like an athlete, the better the meal, the better the performance.
Water is as near as the nearest tap for most of us, the well pond, or spring for the rest.
As the pile is built and each time it is turned be sure that there is sufficient moisture but not too much.
Too little and the organisms die from thirst, too much and they suffocate from lack of air.
If they were swimmers we would call it drowning.
Here a good rule of thumb is to grasp the compost occasionally as the pile is built or turned and see if it is as damp as a wrung out dish rag.
If too dry, water the pile and if too wet add dry material.
Air is the hard one to get into the pile.
While some ingenious compost workershave devised ways of piping air into the center of the pile or using various means to aerate the pile without turning, it still remains the best way to get air to all parts of the pile.
Use a fork to turn the pile every three or four days and it will allow air to touch all parts of the compost.
A well built and turned pile will heat after every turning as high as 160° F.
This will aid the composting process and will pasteurize many of the weed seeds in the pile.
The quick hot composting method will speed up the composing process giving more compost from less space.
Indeed the only drawback may be finding enough material for the next pile in a short time.
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