r/composting

Initially I posted about how there's a few municipalities that give away hot compost (mulch) sprayed with sewege after it's broken down after 4-6 months.

I got some in the middle of winter and attempted to heat my cabin with it "semi successfully" running water pipes through the pile, into a radiator in the cabin. Lasted about 3 months in -30°f to 20°f winter giving me 90° from the radiator. Eventually it dropped to 60°f and I shut her down in early march. My system for extracting heat was terrible, same with my zero maintenance on the pile...

Well, now I grabbed some random weed seeds 2 months back and used 50% of that compost in my dirt mix with 50% wild dirt from the forest. The plants are exploding (they get 6 hours of direct sunlight) because I'm surrounded by forests up in the mountains.

As for the hot compost, it's still making slight heat 9 months later, (maybe 20° hotter than outside temp on average). Mind you, I never watered it, mixed it, turned it until July of this year when I flattened the pile.

Here's the original (shortened yt video)

https://youtu.be/H9D7fShe3F0?is=YoZEODi39P\_Uc1-S

-if the link isn't clickable the channel is "crazydiyguy" on YouTube and the video is "heating my home for free w/ poop & mulch (short version)"

(I'm not trying to promote my channel and I don't make many compost or gardening videos, mainly offgrid, homestead, solar, diy auto, crap like that, so just consider that if you look up the video and want to subscribe... My content might not be relevant to what you typically watch...)

And the weed plants 🪴 pic as of today, fertilized with human sewage, some random wood ash, dead leaves, and some worms/newspaper in the Walmart bag pots... like I said, no more than 50% sewege compost, that stuffs very fertile, could burn them. Approximate age is 2 months, seeds were random and unknown from a stoner friend. Lol.

Used cedar fence boards and a treated 4x4 for the corners

What do we think, r/gardening fam? Are we peeling the stickers off these bags and composting them?

Thank you r/compost for helping me start my system! I'm amazed already at how much the volume reduces over time (got this bad boy end of june) and I'm very excited to eventually have something usable for my garden!

I use small raised beds to finish my bokashi with ground access. (BSFL come in early and worms afterwards)

I was just curious if anybody knew what kind of worms they are? No particular reason I need to know, when I filmed this I wasn’t particularly trying to show worms so if yall need a better video I will upload a better one later.

Biloxi Mississippi.

Update 1.

YouTube video with better shots of worms

https://youtube.com/shorts/-S7ivbn-gCU?is=Quccek6jdLXWxFYM

This bad boy was up in a high space above our deck for 2 years and saw multiple families/seasons. It fell during a bad storm recently and is pretty effed. Huck it into the pile?

InB4 “banana trees aren’t actually trees”
We have a substantial banana grove, with a lot of dead leaves and trunks. I’d like to use them as brown material, but I’m aware that if I chop them while they’re green, they’ll retain a lot of nitrogen and not be great as brown material.

The pic is a pile of leaves that I’m pretty sure all died and withered on the stalk. That’s the bulk of dead material in the grove, and I’m thinking about the future. Is there a way to kill each tree after it has fruited, so that the nitrogen drains out, or is harvested banana material not suitable as Brown Material?

Have I accidentally made a worm farm?

Made of kitchen scraps with lots of coffee grounds, torn cardboard and obvs the occasional pee. I add a new bucket of scraps etc 1-2 x a week and use an auger to turn it. The worms are taking over. It’s not getting hot because of the slow add and it’s winter here in NZ but it’s breaking down pretty fast.

This gives me about 2 loads in a day per tube when I can manually track the sun. When I have to leave it when I go to work I only get 1 load per tube. It's about 3 cups after crushing on a good day. I only have a 43 gal tumbler so this works perfect for moderating nitrogen and moisture.

Terrible fumes tho, I need to work out a sun tracking platform and some way to burn the off gas and better collection of tar.

Recently inherited some very large compost heaps with the house we just bought. The heaps were bone dry from the recent heatwaves. I poured some water on them and covered back over with the thick black polythene that they already had over them. When I returned the next day to deposit some vegetable off cuts, these fine gentlemen/women were in the compost heap!

- Who are they and is there anything I can do to help them?
- Can I continue to add food scraps and garden waste to the compost heaps without bothering them?
- Do they need a pond?

I've looked over subsequent days and there are more and more appearing every day! Just chilling on top of the compost.