weds. 1215 pm

1 pm-yay

Two hours? Impressive! That pile's going to have a nice, big core and compost at good speed from the looks of what you threw into it.

Did you water it as you piled it? Nancy

nancy; i wet it before piling it but kept checking to make sure it was damp-after 2 days the heap is at 135 and should easily reach 165.

WooHoo! Nancy

23F last night with condensate frozen all along the edge of the tarp covering the heap. core temp is 155. i covered the heap with several feet of leaves-mostly oak and poplar- before the cold hit. the top of the leaves under the tarp is 100. slight vinegar smell which means some fermentation is occuring. will turn it in place this afternoon to increase oxygen level. anyone composting in the cold, cold midwest?

the heap is hot

Dude!!

Nice pile!

Nice steam!

;-)

Lloyd

Nice heapin helpin of heatin !

Last weekend I consolidated my old cold leaf cage piles into one smaller cage, and piled 4 tarp loads of new leaves into the cages. It's not only too cold but too WINDY right now to do any more. Any leaves I tried to handle would be in the next county. I'm gonna wait till it warms up again later in the week. Hopefully we'll get one more mowing and have a little grass/leaf mix to bury the Thanksgiving turkey carcass in. :-]

Lloyd nothin' like a hot ,steaming pile of

compost

A hot steamin plate of green beans is almost as good, but I reckon there's still nothing quite LIKE a steamin heap o' compost. :-D

toxcrusdr have never put non-veg material in heap but obviously must work out for you. when you say carcass do you mean just the bones or all the remains? and are there potential problems for which to watch? people are being slow to put their leaves out this year. would like to add more-well, actually a lot more-compost fever you know-turn the heap and let it go until next spring. are you someplace that is having that amazing snow?

David, thanks for sharing ! I don't know why it gives such a feeling of satisfaction to see someone else's good job steaming ! But it does !
I put 2 carcasses of chickens with some bones of lamb's legs in a closed compost bin on august 15th and only the bones remained middle of september, one month later. I also put 3 poor mice that my dogs killed in the compost piles and I sometimes dream of putting some mean people under there but I've got to work on the problem of bones first ;-)

I always make turkey stock from the bones and all the debris, then recover whatever meaty bits I can get out, so there isn't much left besides bones but there is the cartilage, skin etc. Fat I scrape off the top after the stock cools and use for birdseed blocks. So I'm putting the bare minimum of stuff in the pile. Plus all the spent veggies I put into the stock - carrots and celery and all that.

Mainly you have to watch out for pests - dogs and raccoons and other varmints who will dig into the pile to get it. And make sure the pile is well aerated and hopefully hot (but probably not required). A hot pile decomposes it faster and shortens the window of varmint attraction.

I often throw a bone or two in during the year, but there aren't that many at any one time except turkey time.

Here in MO the state DOT did an experiment once composting road kill deer and other critters in a huge pile of sawdust. The outer layer was thick enough there were no odors, and it worked very well. Composting animal carcasses on that scale is not for the meek!

stirred up the heap which had begun to cool a bit. dumped 10 bags of slightly moist ash leaves on it. leaves will finish in a week or two IF i stop adding to the heap. however, a friend is bringing over his poplar leaves which were gathered with a lawnmower so a nice mix of chopped leaves and grass. just about compost heaven. ps. after what tox said about MO dot perhaps aix has an idea for dealing with annoying people.

This post was edited by davids10 on Thu, Nov 20, 14 at 17:05

I once commented that I had no friends left after I took up hot composting (takes about six months in a hot pile).

Only a few got the humour of it.

Lloyd

but so very nutritious :-) i discovered that talking about hot composting is a pretty good way to bring just about any conversation to an end.

I have more pictures of my composting escapades than I do of my family. Ya, we may be a bit on the zealous side methinks.

I'm from the camp that there are two types of people in the world: those that hot compost and those that want to hot compost.

;-)

Lloyd

I have composted chickens but if you have dogs forget about it. I used a closed bin, but it was a real pain and not worth it. Remember when someone posted "my turkey compost smells gross?" I insisted it had to be about composting turkeys. But, it wasn't. They meant Turkey manure. It did not make my compost better, and was just a pain to get it all done and I ended up picking out bones.

I once worked in a commercial research lab doing environmental fate studies on pesticides and pharmaceuticals. A company hired us to study the degradation of a poultry antibiotic. The study involved acquiring a couple 5-gal buckets of fresh turkey manure, which had to be dehydrated first. It smelled awful. The lab techs got the brilliant idea to dry it on tarps in the attic of the building. Not our building but the OTHER lab building. So they snuck in there and set it up. Within a couple hours the phone was ringing and our colleagues were hollering about a god-awful stench coming from everywhere and what the he!! did you people do over here? The fools had to go collect the stinky turkey manure and move it. I still chuckle about it.

by volume heap is mostly leaves, by weight probably 50/50 garden/leaves. the lignin and minerals in the leaves make for a great soil amendment. heat and steam rising from the 150F core make leaf breakdown fast. rain, snow and ice forecast for this weekend so probably not many more additions. i use chicken scratch from my neighbors hen house when i can wrestle it away from him. breaks down into wonderful stuff but lordy lordy what a stink.

why compost is endlessly interesting. i put a few feet of leaves on heap, moistened but not mixed. 24 hrs later temp of new leaves is 160 which usually would be fast for a green heap. hmmm.

This post was edited by davids10 on Tue, Nov 25, 14 at 21:37

heap was originally garden cleanup but with additions of the last month is now probably 90% leaves. if i had been making an all leaf heap would have ground the leaves to break the cuticle but heat and steam of the working heap did that. have been adding leaves a couple of times a week, giving them time to heat before additions. i feel-although this is just a feeling-that the 3 packed garbage cans i added today will be the last.

3 cans of slightly moist leaves

if weather doesnt change soon compost hill will be compost mountain

Hey...wait a minute...I've seen that somewhere before.....

Oh right, I remember now....

It's Marjory!!

:-)

Lloyd

i'm sorry-didn't know you were that fond of her.

oh lord, will it never end? friend just brought over bags and bags of sycamore leaves. may have to chop them. in my experience they are the slowest to break down.

what good exercise working the heap for 1/2 or 3/4 of an hour once a week is. like going to the gym but when you're finished you have mulch. leaves added 3 days ago are steaming so time to add some more-open it up and spread the footprint.

This post was edited by davids10 on Wed, Dec 17, 14 at 18:06

weather very mild here so continue messing with heap

I should have watched Fraggle Rock, and would have if I had known there was a crusty-witted sentient compost heap. Cool!

marjoryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

David.

Great thread. Love the updates and pictures. Keep them coming.

leaf only top of heap at 145. cleaned up dry shade garden, so a lot of ground up vinca and various leaves to add to heap. 1st green stuff since made original heap. 2 cans of that and a can of leaves added to hot heap may make heap volcano.

This post was edited by davids10 on Sun, Dec 21, 14 at 16:30

heap widened leveled and turned

heap restacked. we are on the south edge of a pacific storm so very pleasant today-mid 60's so nice to mess about outside. jrupjr as you see i keep adding to heap as long as weather and materials allow. will spread heap in late winter and make spring heap with final garden cleanup. have got to confess that i pay absolutely no attention to brown/green proportions but things seem to work out ok. making a hot heap with all brown materials is the composters challenge.

addition of green stuff has taken temp of upper half of heap to 165. if i can scrounge up some leaves will add them tomorrow. much colder temps coming on thurs so will probably let it go after that. jan. in hawaii and then -GARDEN.

David's... You have some mad stacking skills. Impressive without a bin!,