New to composting

Hello and thanks very much for this forum

I started three medium sized compost bins in October. I am in zone 6a. I'm not getting a lot of heat but decomposition looks pretty good. The problem is I don't have enough room in the bins to turn the material over properly. I'm considering dumping the contents of the three on the ground between two of my raised beds and then turning well with a pitchfork and then covering with a tarp. I'm still saving kitchen scraps etc. during the winter and will add those and turn them into the pile as well. Does that make sense?

Thanks for your help.

Dale Gilbert
Fancy Gap VA

I am new to hot composting myself, but I watched a video on hot composting a while back that involved no turning. In the video they created a long cylinder out of chicken wire and alternately layered carbon and nitrogen throughout. They left an open air core vertically throughout the middle. That combined with the air coming in through the exterior chicken wire kept the process aerobic enough to dispense with the need for turning.

So I am wondering if you could eliminate the need to turn by increasing air flow to the materials. I just made a traditional, wooden compost bin, but I aim to try to replicate the strategy in the video and keep my bin contents in a donut shape in hopes that doing so will allow me to be lazy about turning without ill effects.

Hi Dale,

Welcome to Permies.

Dale said, "I'm not getting a lot of heat but decomposition looks pretty good.

If the decomposing looks good why worry about the heat?

Mother Nature's compost pile may not use heat.

If these were my bins I would stir/turn them the best I could.

Hi Dale,
As has been mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much about the heat if it is decomposing. A hot compost pile can break down faster, can kill weed seeds, and can kill bad micro-organisms. However a cold compost pile can still make great compost. If you are not composting questionable material (e.g. cat poop, moldy food, etc) I don't think it is a big deal.

If you want to do the hot compost anyway, I would shy away from containers. To make a hot compost pile, you need to make sure it is big enough. Most sources suggest at least 3'x3'x3'... which is a lot bigger than most compost bins I have seen.

Dale, your plan sounds fine to me if the food scraps you add don't attract varmints (or you protect from varmints), particularly if you can add red wiggler worms (assuming <90F and enough moisture).  Worms not only kill pathogens, but build soil macro-structure.  Make sure you have plenty of insulative cover material to help hold in any heat produced by the compost during the winter to keep the worms working.  See Bently's article on trench composting at www.redwormcomposting.com.

You folks are awesome. Thanks so much for the informative replies. I'm very happy that I found this forum.

Angel, I use no turn composting.  While there are other options besides hot composting, here are some well documented resources for hot not-turn aerated composting: Johnson-Su passive aeration with vertical pipes in the compost.  O2Compost is a proprietary system using active aeration without the need for vertical pipes going through the compost bin and allows you to build the pile over a few weeks.

I'll add that while aeration has its benefits, there is some evidence to suggest that it may be a little overrated if you let the compost cool down and age so that anything that went anaerobic at temperature has a chance to go aerobic before use.  The temperature vs pathogen kill charts are still valid whether the compost is aerobic or anaerobic.  I use the Joe Jenkins center-feed composting method documented at humanurehandbook.com, which doesn't use passive air pipes or active aeration.  I've found that when I add the new material in the depression made by pulling the top few inches of recently cooked material to the side as described, that that is enough aeration so that the pile doesn't go anaerobic.

Burton Sparks wrote:Angel, I use no turn composting.  While there are other options besides hot composting, here are some well documented resources for hot not-turn aerated composting: Johnson-Su passive aeration with vertical pipes in the compost.  O2Compost is a proprietary system using active aeration without the need for vertical pipes going through the compost bin and allows you to build the pile over a few weeks.

I'll add that while aeration has its benefits, there is some evidence to suggest that it may be a little overrated if you let the compost cool down and age so that anything that went anaerobic at temperature has a chance to go aerobic before use.  The temperature vs pathogen kill charts are still valid whether the compost is aerobic or anaerobic.  I use the Joe Jenkins center-feed composting method documented at humanurehandbook.com, which doesn't use passive air pipes or active aeration.  I've found that when I add the new material in the depression made by pulling the top few inches of recently cooked material to the side as described, that that is enough aeration so that the pile doesn't go anaerobic.

Great resources! Thanks. I like the idea of the Johnson-Su reactor. If I could be sure I'd have enough biomass all at one time, I'd try it.

For anyone else interested, I found a video of Joe Jenkin's center feed method.

Welcome Dale, I concur with the above endorsement of Johnson-Su. My buddy taking the Elaine Ingham Soil Food Web course looked at a couple batches of mine under the scope with me and we found a ton of fungi, and a good amount of everything else. It is also just the work of collecting the material and piling it in the 4x4ft circular bin in thin layers. I harvest the good stuff from the bottom for compost teas and extracts in the spring when the rest of the pile is not quite done. It takes a year, but I doubt any method could generate fungal diversity and abundance faster, and that is what most of our disturbed land lacks most.

Dale Gilbert wrote: ...Does that make sense?

Yes it does. Look, you can't screw up compost in an absolute way. Decomposers will do what they have always done. All our efforts are in optimizing and accelerating the process. If you dump a big pile of compostable materials and walk away for five years, you will almost certainly dig into a pile of composted material when you return.