New compost pile

Thermophilic composting is the practice of breaking down biological waste with heat-loving bacteria.
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Klaassen
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Hi. I have a few questions about building a compost pile and maintaining it throughout the year.
We live on a small city lot so space is limited. But we are wondering how much material you would need to make 5 yards of compost each year. What do you start with in your course you say 50/50 but then i heard in a zoom 1/10 if your using chicken manure. Wood chips and chicken manure isn't a problem to get ahold of for us. And if that wasnt an option then how much cow manure is needed. Could we just use bokashi waste instead of manure. We hope to make the same hot bed as Dan showed us in a video.
And also once the pile is at temperature and composting, can you add leaf scraps from your garden to use it up. Or is it best to leave it alone once you've got it to temp. And if you need to leave it alone. What's the best thing to do with the green scraps you accumulate from the garden over the summer. Will be to much for the vermicompost bin I'm assuming.
PeasIntheRain
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Thanks for asking this question; I'm keen to hear the responses. What I'm hearing from the videos and webinars is to leave a pile alone after getting it to temp. But that doesn't resolve the practical issue throughout the year.

What I've always done (whenever I was not living in an apartment) is cold compost, having a pile that continually receives new inputs. Once it gets large enough, turn and start a new pile somewhere else. But that isn't as effective at killing weed seeds and so on, like a hot pile.

All we're hearing for food scraps is to use bokashi (which I'm struggling mentally with because of the sustainability issues with requirements for additional resources: plastic buckets and bokashi bran) or vermicomposting. For yard scraps throughout the year, I can't figure out anything to do other than set aside in a cold pile.

To make 5 yards of finished compost per year, you'd need about 10 yards of starting material (expecting a pile to shrink by 60%).

It's tricky to make that much. We have chickens so use their manure and straw, but that's not sufficient. I've been receiving food scraps from our local pizza restaurant, which helps to bulk up the limited amount of food waste my household produces and is the only way we'd have enough to keep a worm bin happy. We're a close to zero-waste household and compost every thing we can, but just don't have enough to build large piles regularly.

Yet the idea of buying in compost each year for a home garden is so strange. (A market garden, where you're sending biomass off the farm regularly, requiring inputs makes sense.) A system in balance does not require external inputs...

More questions than answers! :)
Danoost
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It's hard to be prescriptive when giving instructions on composting. But here's a general approach for building a patient persons compost.

We're big on woodchips since they're readily available in our area and they make great compost.

Make your pile choosing a mixture of greens and browns, 50 / 50 is recommended but it's fine to go heavier on carbon rich compost. Go a little lighter on supercharged nitrogen products like chicken manure or you'll be turning your pile ever day to reduce your temperatures.

If you have a compost pile that is too hot, cool it with more carbon rich materials.

Once you've arrived at your target temperatures, your pile shouldn't be touched anymore and you shouldn't add to it. Leave it for 12-18 months and you'll have a biodiverse, fungal dominant compost ready for your garden.

I see a massive input of material like this a onetime thing to give starving soil the food it needs. This would not be a yearly requirement. Once you build up the soil in your garden, you can amend with small amounts of compost that's produced using household food scraps.
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