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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.
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