Not hot anymore!
Our big pile of stuff has cooked down into some nice compost! Thank you so much to Brett and to Michelle and her friend, for turning this compost with me. It sure was a lot of work, but compost is the heart and soul of the organic garden. It provides organic matter and beneficial microbes. I don't think we will be doing this very often, so get this compost while you can. We need some volunteers to top up and to turn the compost on the East side.
This compost was a hot compost, done California-style. We turned it every three to seven days, three times. I layered brown and green matter, then finished it off with our leftover sheep manure. I should have used quite a bit more chopped leaves to balance all the fresh green garden clippings and manure. It was a very hot compost - we could feel the heat radiating off of it as we turned it. (Thank you, Mike Monell for all those leaves as well as the manure!) Every layer of green matter should have a bit of manure or finished compost and a covering of dry brown matter like leaves. The manure or compost adds a little ecosystem of live microbes and the leaves balance the carbon/nitrogen ratios. (Also they make the compost less attractive to mice and flies.)
So please use leaves to cover your additions to the compost pile and chop everything up. Do you see all the sticks and things in the compost? Even a hot compost like this cannot digest big items.
