Material in Compost Tumbler Not Heating Up

[rot]

..
virchu,

"layers of: dried grass clippings (very tall grass), vegetable kitchen scraps and soil' sounds like all greens to me except for the soil.

Also "1 m3 volume and it is 1/5 full" sounds a tad small to me.

Not a major disaster.

Add some dry woody stuff like leaves, maybe shredded paper, saw dust and so on. The dry woody stuff is good for covering your kitchen scraps when you add to the bin. Keep moist as opposed to wet (shield from sun and wind to keep it from drying out too fast) and when the bin gets about halfway full you should start to notice things and even some heat.

Slowly adding things over time is not the way to get a lot of heat. I wouldn't worry. I'm slow to add and build things up and it just takes longer.

to sense
..

[virchu]

Thank you eric for posting the photo!
I want to ask another question: I have a big bag of weed cuttings (very tall grass and weeds) that is half dried. I use it as if it was the carbon-content ingredient. Do you think this is correct?

[virchu]

I'm sorry there was an aswer before I asked
Thank you rot (rot?)

[DoubleDogFarm]

What does everyone think of a half glass of beer?

It's not as good as a full glass of beer!

Grass and weeds are high in Nitrogen.

https://www.composting101.com/c-n-ratio.html

Eric

[toxcrusadr]

[I missed reading Pg. 2 so some of my comments below have already been made...]

Well now hold on there with the additives. Blood meal is great but it's high in N. Same with manure. If you're adding only kitchen scraps, that's already on the green side. So you need to keep up with some browns along with the greens, and if you're going to add either of those other things, doubly so.

If your (very nice, may I say) bin is only 1/5 full and part of that is soil, that's why it's not heating. Patience and more additions will get you to compost. You must have faith

PS I post from my office, where social networking sites are completely blocked by the net nannies.

PPS used beer much preferred for the compost...

[applestar]

Speaking of used beer ...

I refuse to throw away perfectly good leftover juices and other beverages (coffee, tea, lemonade,... Nobody except DH drinks soda and he won't leave any leftovers) greens and rice rinsing water, UNSALTED pasta cooking water and also UNSALTED greens blanching water, etc. Down the drain any more. Especially in the summertime, though not so much in winter.

I pour them all in a bucket or one of those cooking pots and walk it out to the compost pile. It needs to be moistened during the summer drought anyway.

[toxcrusadr]

Most everybody with hot summers should have a kitchen bucket, IMHO. My mother, who lives in Albuquerque, has elevated it to a fine art. The water department came to her house to offer education because she had not cut her water use over the last several years of them pushing everyone. She showed them all her water saving and recycling techniques and the lady left with new ideas she wanted to use on other customers!

[virchu]

ok, thank you all,I took note of all your remarks
some of my kitchen leftovers are not sooo green such as (please apologize my clumsy English and my poor vocabulary, you see, I'm a Spanish speaker):
corn stalks, outer skin of peas and beans, fruit and vegetable rests of the juicer,
well, I'm not adding any more soil and I'll find some carbon-rich things
I thoght on buying a straw bale but around here there are only made of alfalfa and that is still N ingredient
I only read online newspapers...
I'll keep thinking,

[rainbowgardener]

Check the greens/ browns sticky at the top of this Forum for more browns ideas. Bring your groceries home in paper bags and tear them in pieces for the compost pile. Fall leaves AND the yard waste bags they are collected in. Shredded office paper (at my office I can have all the bags of that I want!). Cardboard boxes (groceries stores have tons of them for the taking). Coffee filters with the coffee grounds...

[Moley]

Pasta and Vegetables should both be cooked in water with the salt consistency of sea water... just my two bits, but if in the restaurant, one of our cooks didn't use salt for either, he'd be out on his ear.

[toxcrusadr]

That's a little salty for me (3.5% I believe is the salt content of sea water). I do agree you need a little salt for flavor though. I didn't salt my pasta water for years, and when I started, my wife said the pasta tasted really good, and asked me what I did to it. But I only use a teaspoon or two in the pot. This is a small enough amount that it can go on the ground or in the compost later. Actually, I've started killing weeds in the patio cracks with the boiling pasta water.