Tag Archives: grass

August Garden, Compost Eighteen Days Later

Here is the rotatable composter on August 8.

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DSC07545Here is the same compost, plus a little more, eighteen days later.  You can see that it has settled a lot.

DSC07543 I moved it into a place where the weeds in the unplanted garden are grass.  This indicates a sunnier spot, because grass requires quite a bit of sun.

For this composter, I am trying to implement a hot compost method, where sun is helpful to reduce cooling.  The hot compost method produces faster decomposition, and better kills weed seeds (along with killing some of the beneficial things) than the cool compost method.   The heat is caused by bacteria which function well at a higher temperature, about 140 degrees Fahrenheit.   Since I have not gotten compost from this rotating  composter, yet, I would like to see if I can spur it on!

Another source says to keep your hot compost in the shade, and that the temperature spikes up and cools down to maintain a hotter temperature according to the ability of the special bacteria to grow, we need to give it more material and continue suitable moisture and nitrogen conditions.

One day after doing this, I put my hand into the middle of the compost, and it felt like it was only slightly warmer than body temperature, maybe 100 degrees.  Two days after doing this,  the compost was cool in the morning, so now I will try to increase the compost volume to see if I can improve the growth of the heat producing bacteria.