Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben E Lou
Golden, right? Well, I didn't feel like the pile was large enough. More on that in my next report.
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And now for the rest of that line of thought (and to get the thread caught up to fully-current status.)
COMPOSTING--Go Big And Get HOT!
(September 24-25)
The garden will be roughly 400 square feet total, 240 of that growing space. In order to get 2-3 inches of compost, it's ~40-60 cubic feet of compost for growing space only, ~70-100 cubic feet for the whole area. The pile I had as of the weekend was maybe 4x5, and 2ish feet high--only 40 cubic feet, and of course as everything decomposes, it's going to shrink.
This past weekend being the first one after Florence in our significantly-wooded neighborhood, there were lots of leaves to rake (well, for other people,) and twigs to gather. Coming home from a late Sunday afternoon errand, I couldn't help but notice the dozens upon dozens of bags of leaves and grass by the curbs, ready to be just WASTED, BEGGING to be composted instead. I wish I'd taken a picture of the back of the van when it was full. There were around a dozen large bags of pretty much pure leaves, and 2 or 3 grass/leaf mixtures (people who didn't rake before they cut the grass, in other words.) Perfect!
I had some time Monday around lunchtime, and I added all of that stuff, along with some grass I'd cut from my yard, kitchen scraps from our house and next-door neighbors, and several pounds of used coffee grounds from Starbucks. I followed "best practices" (other than adding water) by doing thin layers--maybe 3-4 inches of leaves, then an inch of grass, some leftover lime from last year, 3-4 inches of leaves, an inch of coffee grounds, more leaves, a kitchen scraps/grass mixture layer, and so forth--basically alternating "brown" and "green" matter until I'd used nearly everything up. (I was left with a small amount of grass clippings.) When I'd finished, here's what I had (wheelbarrow intentionally placed for size context):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1ws7am8hmeht5k/pile1_20180924.png?dl=0
And mid-day today, THIS!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9zfi2wp8py...80925.png?dl=0
I was seriously shocked to see it get that hot, that fast. I measured in several different areas and checked ambient air temperature to make sure it wasn't a fluke or that the thermometer was off. Nope. Measured in the upper 150s/low 160s in several spots. DIE, weed seeds, DIEEEEEEEEEEE! (I fully admit to being a little too excited about this.)
I've seen conflicting information regarding how much these piles reduce in size. It's currently roughly 90 cubic feet, but I'd expect it to drop to somewhere in the 40-70 range. (Like I said, conflicting info, so wide range.) Point being, I'm relatively confident I'm going to want to do one more pile roughly this same size to fill out my needs. Not sure if there will be enough bags out on the curbs Sunday night/Monday morning to do it on Monday, but we'll see. It's weird being at the mercy of all my neighbors to do this. I'm also completely out of used coffee grounds, so I'll try to find some time later this week or into the weekend to hit all those Starbucks Coffee stores again.