I just wanted to post a little bit about “pile turning”. I’ve been running lots of mini piles and find myself turning a pile everyday. I have greatly improved my turning game. I have seen folks using stall forks with 90 degree tines. Second place to one of those is the good old fashioned rake. Rake by Organic sinse posted Jul 9, 2021 at 7:58 PM The trick is to pull and pick apart anything matted up, and kind roll it with the rake. I also use a 4’x4’ sheet of plywood to rake the pile onto. I do the traditional pull the front and top way front, then pull out the center. Pull the sides and rear in the middle. Add what was the top from the front of plywood, and just shovel the old center on top. Takes minutes and really works well. Not very physical either! With these smaller piles, having everything shredded and following the Berkeley tech I’m turning out some great stuff. It’s been cold in the 50’s and rainy to boot, so I’m super impressed. Cheers Os
I don’t have enough to do tomorrow and I’m reminded that I’m waaaay behind on turning the piles. I’ve been getting good rain and warm temps. I’m interested to check this hot pile I started.
I've been getting so much grass lately I'm turning it brown and using that in the compost. It's nice not having to wet em down . More good news, someone dropped a brand new pallet on the road in front of my house, I smell another compost bin
I’ve got a plastic trash can and a 5 gallon bucket that are roadside finds. Love those kinds of gifts.
What do you mean by this comment, turning them brown? Are you saying you’re collecting grass, letting it sit until it’s brown and using it as browns? Is that possible? I don’t have access to much browns and i’m trying to make a huge cold compost pile (Was told cold and slow and the way to go? Just made that up.) I want to make like the ultimate compost. It won’t be ready this year but i’m growing bocking 14, and want to do everything possible.
Hot composting is where its at. Only exception in my book, is letting leaves turn into leaf mold. I use both hot compost and leaf mold. Best of both worlds. Cheers Os
Ok I wouldn’t know, just what I’ve seen few people say. What can I do if I don’t have access to leaves and just greens and scraps?
Yes, I lay it out ,thin,like 4", rake it around like OS said and when brown n dry ,use like a brown. I read it online but it sounded reasonable to me. I started doing it a month ago, hope it works , between garden greens and grass cutting greens,I'm gonna be a very green dragging with all the rain here lately.
That’s a familiar predicament for me and I’m sure many others. For most folks, myself included, we have greens all summer from pulling weeds and mowing grass, but browns only come along in Autumn when the leaves fall. I hoard as many leaves as I can in the fall and use those the following summer. It’s still never enough in my case. In that case I have to be creative. Other good sources of browns are saw dust and straw. The smaller the pieces the better. I think I have enough leaves to make one more mini pile, and then I’m switching to straw and saw dust. There are a couple options with grass you might try. If you live in a dry enough climate, you can convert your grass to browns by really spreading it out and letting it dry. The exact opposite of making a stock pile of freshly cut green grass. Probably not an option, but if you can cut the grass, leave it dry out in place, it will dry out and become a usable brown. It can then be raked or bagged up with the mower. Sometimes you can get real lucky and have it work out like this. Mow grass week 1, leave the grass to dry in the yard. Mow week 2, bag grass-automatically mixing the dry and fresh grass all at once which could be just dumped to make a legit hot compost pile. You can also hot compost just the freshly cut grass by making the tallest pile you can. Let it sit 4 days and turn it, then turn it every other day until it’s done. Unfortunately without browns, it’s going to get pretty gooey, and you will lose a lot of volume, but it does work. It will get the ask look from the thermophylic bacteria, but it disappears when turned to the outside of the pile. I’m currently trying to perfect making what I call “mini piles”. It’s out of necessity really. What I try to do is take the fresh cut grass from my neighbors lawn and mine. Add fine browns and build a pile. I also take whatever weeds I have accumulated and run them through the shredder so they are freshly cut and small like cut grass. Fresh cut greens, like grass, really activate, or heat up, the pile. With smaller piles it seems to help to go a little heavy on the N to get the smaller mass heated up. Using the grass clippings right away, I keep as much Nitrogen as possible in the grass (and out of the air). I have been trying to get this right for a while, and proudly have the process nailed. Here is a great link to the Berkeley compost method. https://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/ HTH Cheers Os
Looks like some fine black gold you got going there@Green Dragging. I'm getting some botrytis on my Red poison in my greenhouse. This rain is not helpful at the rates we are getting lately.
Thank you timj, it's a labor of love, this weather's been crazy, does greenhouse get to 100% rh? My fans r always on.
Yes, it does at night. I have a 16" oscillating fan on high 24/7. I should have researched a bit more and picked strains that were not susceptible to PM or botrytis. I have plenty of great choices, just wasn't thinking.
I got my piles turned and wet them down even tho I got a good bit of rain earlier this week. I’ve got one small pile in a tote that I’m wanting to grow a pumpkin in. It’s good and brown but not broken completely down.
I don’t add water after turning them. They do get rain when not covered. I feel watering later cools the pile too much. There is of course such a thing as too dry due to hot dry weather. I have very deliberately peed on piles that were not heating up right or petered out too early. If your a little light on N it can work well. In fact I should really pee on one of the piles I have going now that’s kind of slow.I just turned it and it needs a little something. Cheers Os
The one i started with the big ball of green in the middle is reading well within the active range and I just turn it by hand and I could feel the heat in it. That big poor looking bin is going but it’s slow, but down to about 1/3 to what I started with back in the winter.
This is also a nice resource Carbon to Nitrogen Compost Calculator: Create the Perfect Compost Pile I made a batch of compost recently using mostly grass/weeds and much less browns than I'm used to - I'll let you guys know how it turns out. 25:1 C:N ratio.
I'm feeling a little irritable this morning and so stupid internet stuff is bugging me more than it normally would. So I come here to vent about the bro-science I see on Reddit about composting. Folks are talking about how you basically should nuke plant material with bud-rot (botrytis) rather than composting it. Because composting it will lead to more bud-rot in future plants, supposedly. Try to explain that botrytis spores are endemic (along with spores for most decomposers) but no, I'm wrong because "I have heard otherwise." Time to