.. Seems to me Kimmsr has a point. You gotta get the mix right. Can't ignore Lloyd though. A smaller volume makes everything harder vis-a-vis hot composting. In a smaller volume the mix is going to be more critical. I just assembled a bin for the first time without grass clippings. Just leaves and chipped sticks. 17 cu ft. Got 150 F for a very short while then 140 F for a day or so and then 130 F for another couple of days then into the 120s. Turned if after week adding grass clippings. Got a couple of days of 140 F and 130 F for the rest of the week. Just turned it again tonight in the rain. We'll see. I would expect the given mixture in a 1 cu yd to do something similar. I think the small size just hindered things some. I haven't worked with straw but something tells me it's made to be rot resistant. That tells me it will compost slowly. Couple Lloyd's experience with an observation supporting our fears plus the small volume and I think things are just going to go slower. Not a major disaster. It'll rot. Just not as fast nor as hot. to sense ..

Hi Jenn. I've used John Rowley's Interbay Mulch method of composting with great success on an existing raised bed of amended clay garden soil. As long as you have a good mixture of varied ingredients, without too many browns or too many greens predominating, Interbay Mulch should work for you. It's also important to make sure the ingredients stay moist. (Like the ingredients in a compost heap, somewhere close to the dampness of a well wrung out sponge.) And like a compost heap, it helps if the ingredients don't pack down so much that there is no air flow. You want air to continually circulate so the decomposition stays aerobic. You ask about mixing native soil into the layers of the pile as you're building it. If it was me, I'd drop the extra soil at the bottom of the pile, and keep any mixing to a handful of soil per square yard, per 1-2" layer deep. This will help the ingredients to be primed with the existing local soil microherd, but it's really not necessary -- the local microherd is already omnipresent on all the living and dead things in our gardens, fields and forests. :) However, some gardeners advocate for adding clay soil to compost heaps as a growth site for nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. Personally, I've done both and haven't noticed much difference. YMMV. Any grass, including grass with ripe seeds, which you add to an Interbay Mulch pile, is likely to get consumed pretty darn quick by the microherd. (Although if you have persistant stubborn perennial weed grasses like crabgrass, you may want to keep them out, or keep them to the center of the heaps. Others here could likely advise you better on that issue, if it may be a problem for you.) Some years ago I built an IM heap in the fall. It was originally stacked up about 4-5 feet tall on an 8' x 4' raised clay bed, but it slumped a foot or two within the month. Then I built it back up to the original height, covered it, and left it alone until the following spring. When the snow melted and warm weather arrived, I removed the cover and started raking thru the largely decomposed ingredients. Aside from fresh wood branches over 1/4" thick, nearly everything had broken down into a rich brown-black compost. The breakdown was far more rapid than I usually see here with standard passive compost heaps -- and far more uniform throughout the pile. Even the larger wood branches which remained whole had been stripped of their bark, and the bark reduced to fragments the size of small wood chips or less. There was about 8-10" of compost left once all the branches were removed. I raked it smooth, covered it with a leaf mulch then a wood chip mulch, and transplanted thru it all into the soil surface. The tomato, pepper and basil plants in that area of the garden produced bountifully the following summer, with no weed, pest, or disease problems. Just make sure you follow the standard composting guidelines. Varied ingredients with a good balance of browns and greens; damp as a wrung out sponge; pile loosely so there's room for airflow. Summer rainfall here where I live is enough to guarantee any IM or other compost heap usually stays moist. Depending on your local weather, you may want to check the heap once every few weeks to make sure it hasn't dried out. I found IM a surprisingly fast, efficient and low-effort way to produce large volumes of compost. But if I was doing it again, I'd reduce the number of green branches over 1/4" thick. Though older and thinner deadwood broke down quite well, for me. Good luck! All the best, -Patrick p.s. When I built my IM heap, I had no burlap handy. So I covered the pile with a single layer of the heavy brown paper from torn-open yard waste bags. Weighted down with light boards and small stones, they kept the heap dark and moist enough to keep working through the winter.

1. Layering can help you get the proportions closer to optimal, but mixing everything together gets the process started sooner. There is no "right" way to pile up material for composting. 2. How much coffee grounds to add to how much shredded leaves/grass mixture is what will get that mixture composting. The only reason you would need a specific amount of either would be if you were doing a scientific study with the need to write a report. Throw your material together, but do not pack anything tightly since that reduces the amount of air available to the bacteria that will digest your material. 3. Whether you need to break up that clay soil underneath this pile first is subject to a great deal of debate. I have seen some, few, clay soils (there are many types of clay soils not just one) that need to have some OM worked in first, but most, that I have seen, do not. Most of the clay soils I have seen that do need OM worked in first have been black in color. 4. The only reason to put cardboard, or newspaper, or any other ground covering material, down is to suppress unwanted growth. If your pile of material is a foot or more thick there would be no need for anything on this unwanted growth since the pile of material would do that. Cardboard, newspaper, etc. are an aid to help extend the available mulch material and nothing else. 5. If that soil did have drainage issues you may want to consider correcting those before piling a lot of organic matter on top which may aggravate that problem before it starts to cure it. The Soil Food Web that is going to make your soil better, eventually, needs air to function and if there is insufficient air in the soil they won't.

Anyone? I reallu need the input! Thx!