vermontkingdom
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Will Non Turning Pile Work?

As a gardener, I'm in a great position of having too much mulch. However, I don't want to waste the opportunity to have still more. So, here's the problem. I have two compost bins, 4 x 4 x 4 and both are now full. One was started a month ago and has been turned a couple of times. Temps in it are running in the 135 range. The second bin was formulated five days ago with several buckets of kitchen waste, nine huge bags of grass cuttings, twenty three 5 gal buckets of horse manure, 50 lbs of alfalfa meal, and raked-up straw from my garden paths. The temperature in that one, is approaching 150 degrees. In both I have several large vertical pvc pipes (with many drilled holes) to help get air deep into the piles. Unfortnately, now I don't have that second bin to turn the compost into.

Has anyone just used small pipes to periodically punch holes into a pile to let in more air and moisture? I know this method isn't the best since I've composted for many years and know how well the turning method works. However, I hated not to use all the horse manure and grass clippings available to me.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

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rainbowgardener
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I do no-turn composting in a wire bin (lots of air getting through) and poking holes down through the pile when I add stuff.

However my pile is a lot different from yours: smaller, way more browns, no manure, doesn't heat up as much most of the time.

Your new pile seems to have very little brown in relation to a ton of intense green....

rot
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If you have the space, you can just pile it up and water and after 6 months to a year after feeding you have some fine compost. You want to let the worms in though.

I have some slow, build-as-you-type bins. They're built on pavers which I think is important in a slow operation because they let the worms in but keep tree roots and burrowing rodents out. They're made of pallets and I add window screen to keep the critters out. They have about a 3' x 3' footprint. My latest is about 4 feet tall and I've been feeding it for about a year and a half. I've topped it 5 times this year.

At some point after a few months the volume starts reducing and I keep adding and it keeps reducing. If I keep up with the water I can get something like 130 F in the part I just added - about a foot and a half to two feet. This one has gone fungal and I get mushrooms about the time I'm ready to refill which is one reason I think I get so much volume reduction and can keep feeding it for so long.

I usually start with about a 6 inch layer of browns - sticks, leaves and shredded paper mostly. That makes a nice biological sponge on the bottom. When I fill I build up walls of grass clippings mixed with shredded paper or leaves on the outside and put the hard to digest stuff in the middle and then cover with leaves and then grass clippings. I always keep it moist.

After I've topped for the last time I will just keep watering and after 6 months to a year I've lost a lot of volume but it's beautiful chocolate cake like stuff full of worms.

No turning. No pipes. Just time, space and water and then some help from the worms and the fungus among us.

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a0c8c
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I have two piles from last year, one I turned and one I didn't. I can't honestly tell the difference between the two now.

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rainbowgardener
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a0c8c wrote:I have two piles from last year, one I turned and one I didn't. I can't honestly tell the difference between the two now.
That's interesting, since I haven't done the experiment. Not even in texture? My compost tends to come out that chocolate cake like. Some people's compost seems to come out a bit lighter and fluffier, more like potting soil. I was assuming that's what turning gets you.

(But I will say my compost 2.0 since I've been using more leaves/browns and watering more and it's heating up more, seems to be less dense than compost 1.0 before that, even without turning)

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soil
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google "common sense compost making", its a method that involves no turning and imo produces amazing compost if you follow the simple instructions.

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Halfway
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soil wrote:google "common sense compost making", its a method that involves no turning and imo produces amazing compost if you follow the simple instructions.
Soil, that link pulls up several under the same topic. Are you talking the blog, the book, etc?

Thanks.

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Halfway
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LOL. nevermind. Looks like the Maye Bruce article is the ticket.

Thanks!

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soil
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sorry its the book. at the website journeytoforever

a0c8c
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rainbowgardener wrote:Not even in texture?
Not even in texture. My two piles look exactly the same, except for the fact that one has more sticks since I only let sticks into one pile and not the other.

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rainbowgardener
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I just read the common sense compost making (here's the link https://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/QR/QRToC.html )

Thanks, soil, for sharing that! It is way cool and utterly charming! I love the portrait of May Bruce and I love the chance to learn from all these amazing women (and men, but I was thinking of Ruth Stout too) who have gone before.

I can't say as I agree with every bit of it, and she does note in there about conditions being different. Particularly, I wonder about her insistence on excluding rain water. My compost pile has done much better since I started being careful to water it whenever there's not enough rain. I think if I kept rainwater out of it, I would just have to water a lot more, which doesn't make sense to me.

But one thing I think I will try as soon as I can make it happen is the burlap bag over the top. (Maybe then I wouldn't need to water as much.) It is one step less convenient (to add to the pile you have to lift the bag and then replace it), but seems like it might be worth doing. I never wanted to cover my pile, because of excluding air, but the burlap wouldn't do that. Here in the 21 st century, it may be a little harder to find burlap than it was in 1946, but I'm sure it is around somewhere.

a0c8c
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Loss of moisture is one reason I don't use pvc pipes, it causes all my moisture to evaporate out in our Texas heat. A Burlap sack sounds like a good idea

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soil
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you don't have to follow her instructions exactly to the T. I adapted the method to my environment and it works great. the key part is getting the herbal extract right and applying it right.( and NOT turning!!!) the burlap works real well too. but you can also mulch with leaf mold instead of burlap if that's all that's around( which is what I use)

rot
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I've capped my slow bins with about a hundred pounds of used coffee grounds. I already apply coffee grounds directly to the ground anyway so I don't care if it doesn't all break down.

The part I didn't like was it crusted over for several months which meant I had to water it real slow if I didn't want the water to just run off the top. If I bother to do that again, I'll probably throw a layer of grass clippings on top of that.

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