My composting

16 July 2018 - One month later, the compost sits still. The temperature didn't go above 35 degrees. I watered it, that didn't change anything. I think I started with too little green mass and not enough shredding, so I kind of gave up on this pile. In the November Course I will do next pile with the students, keeping in mind to have a LOT of greens

12 June 2018 - On the second day the compost still had the temperature of 25 degrees. So I opened it up a bit and put inside kitchen compost, hoping it will add the "Green" bit. I am not very surprised that the temparature is going up slowly, because a lot of my Green stuff where quite mature and everything wasn't shredded very well at all (apart from cardboard). I suspect that we will have to wait a bit for the critical mass of microorganims to build up.

10 June 2018 - I made my first compost pile. The ingredients I used :

Greens:

  • 1,5 bag of mature Carduus
  • 0,5 bag of Mercury
  • 1 bag of Pantana Leaves
  • 1 bag of Nasturtium
  • 0,5 bag of fresh tree leaves
  • 0,5 bag of Malva and mature Mustard (seeding, but still green)
  • 1 big cublo of chopped Tunera
  • 1 bag of Crocosmia leaves

Browns:

  • 4 bags of Sawdust
  • 1 bag of shredded cardboard
  • 1 bag of small branches
  • 3 bags of straw and dry Mustard stalks

High Nitrogen:

  • 3 bags of mature sheep compost (with a lot of brown type bedding)
  • 1/5 bag of chopped green bananas
  • some urine

Greens : chopped up Tunera and a pile of other stuff that I gathered one week before. (I could have got much more Tunera. It came up very little and is abundant here.

Brown : Cardboard and Sawdust, wetted. I would like to use more cardboard, because we have an abundance of it here, but it takes ages to shred it!

High Nitrogen : I used mostly mature sheep compost (we have a lot of that) and added some chopped green bananas as an experiment.

The end effect : I am quite happy with how I managed to guesstimate well the volume of all ingredients together. It took about an hour to put everything together, wetting layer by layer.

I covered it with shading, put a thermometer in and am waiting now :)

Today - 3 June 2018 - I started preparing my compost materials. I decided for the ratio of:

  • 20% High Nitrogen (fresh pig compost, sheep compost, green bananas)
  • 35% Green (tunera, nasturtium, pantana leaves, crocosmia leaves, carduus and some weeds)
  • 45% Brown (sawdust, straw, cardboard)

I prepared the place and a round frame for the pile to sit in. In the following days I will cut the cardboard that I need. Pictures will follow once I finish preparing the materials.