inground composting?

[soearth!]

Hi,

I am trying to decide on how to build my compost pile. I had planned at first to build a simple bin out of wire fence about 3ft in diameter and 3ft deep. Then a friend suggest I just dig a hold in the ground. She said that the compost pile would heat up better in the ground. Is this true? Any thoughts?

Thanks!
Ryan

[hendi_alex]

I don't know how deep you are thinking, but compost has to get plenty of air in order to decompose aerobically and heat up. That is why most bins are constructed of wire or slats with spaces between. Also, most of the browns going into the pile are fairly good insulators. If the pile is at least 5 x 5 and four or five feet high, the core will most certainly get quite warm, if the mix has a reasonable ratio of greens to browns and has adequate moisture.

[cynthia_h]

The term for what your friend is recommending is "trench composting." If you perform an Internet search on this term, you'll get TONS of information--possibly more info than you ever wanted...

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Jbest]

In the days before garbage collection, almost everybody had a garden and did trench composting (kept a running furrow). The only time a ‘compost pile’ was built, is when the soil was frozen or the garden was active. As soon as the soil thawed that pile would be spaded under. Come spring when the garden was spaded/tilled, there would be no sigh of what was placed there the previous fall, early winter and early spring.

John

[soil]

pit composting is great, one benefit is contact with soil on all sides, so you get lots of worms and lots of microbes. but I would have to say its not a good method for a wet place, its better fro dry locations imo.

[Grey]

I actually was "lazy" and tried this last winter - rather than carrying my kitchen scraps all teh way to the pile, I just dug a hole in the garden each time and tossed the bucketful in there. By the time my spring plants had root systems, I could barely find the trash anymore, and by fall, you couldn't find a banana peel if you tried...