Starting A Hot Compost Pile (Berkeley Method)
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- čas přidán 29. 05. 2021
- Today I'm using the Berkeley method to start a hot compost pile! I'll be layering together leaves with fresh and old grass clippings, along with a few buckets of finished compost from the tumbler and food scrap pile. With luck I'll have homegrown compost from the garden in 18 days. All music by yours truly so let me know if you like it
I can’t wait to visit the Farm Cousins!! Yes!! Tyler!! Compost!! ❤️🔥💫
i like ur 2 5 gallon bucket tumbler thing
thanks i think i might actually turn it into a sifter at some point
Oh, I forgot to add: When your pile is really hot and cooking, don't be afraid to throw the stuff in they tell you not to, like meat and stuff. I added moldy mashed potatoes and gravy to mine last night. It was already smelly and breaking down, so it was perfect. Old food will work too; like pancake batter or oatmeal that you never got around to using. It's good for charging biochar too, so when you get ready to try that route, drop me a line.
i have not forgotten this and will be dropping you that line at some point when i start the next pile/chimney. and thanks again for these comments they're packed with useful info.
@@HomegrownHavenFarm Glad I could help. As you can see, I'm starting a gardening channel as well, so at some point (after I get a good camera and other equipment), I'll be able to demonstrate some of it. My pile hit 165 and then maintained around 157 for a few weeks, before dropping down to 118 for quite some time. Its all gone cold now, and will break down the rest of the way over the winter. Just in time, the leaves are falling from the maples - which break down super fast - to make a new hot pile to experiment with in cooler temps.
I just made something like this out of my dogs old crate. It’s inside my greenhouse keeping it warmer & the snow is here.
I'm doing something similar with water jugs! Using them as thermal batteries for our greenhouse.
Fresh grass and shredded leaves will get super hot, super quick. If your stuff is a bit bigger and/or older, you can increase the nitrogen by adding a cup of ammonia to the watering can.
It did seem to have a kind of burst of heat at first that went away as time went on, like it burned out or something. Thanks for the tip, we're still pretty new to this so any advice is more than welcome.
@@HomegrownHavenFarm Okay, I just went back and re-watched this, and I see what happened. Your stuff was too dry to begin with. Your greens were already becoming browns. Plus, your leaves were too big. So yeah, the atomic bomb went off, but it failed to ignite the thermonuclear weapon you were actually going for. It's okay; this happened to me last year and I ended up letting it cold age after it fizzled. So two things: First, run your leaves over with a mower and and chop them up or run through a shredder. You want this material as fine as possible. That covers your carbons. Second, your grass will also want to be as fine as possible, but FRESH!!! I cannot emphasize this enough! Choose an area that is big enough to mow, that will produce your pile at one shot, along with your browns. Once it starts drying out, you've lost a lot of the nitrogen. See, I was picking mine up on the side of the road last year. This year, I bought a bag and frame for the mower, and made my own.
This year, I did this: I mowed grass and fallen leaves and mixed two loads of leaves for each load of grass, and this was perfect! Mine should be complete in ten days; fourteen at the latest. I just turned it yesterday for the first time, and even though it was 92 outside, this stuff was steaming like a nuke plant. It had to be close to 150 in the middle. You can save your old stuff by treating it as brown only. Add your grass to it as I suggested, but get some fresh browns in there too. Oh, and don't layer it. I don't care how they do it in the movies. Mix it in as you go. Imagine a layer of grass heating up without the carbs in contact, and it's going to ash or fizzle. Also, drop $30 or so on a compost thermometer. It'll let you know if you are lagging. Also, no wire hoop for me this year. Rake this as high and skinny as possible; like a fat termite mound. Heat rises, so a cage lets a lot of heat escape out of the sides and the short, flat top. Taller and skinnier lets this work like a chimney. As the heat rises, it's still heating, with less area to heat outside the core. Throw a tarp over it too. That'll actually add about ten degrees to your pile if it's cooking properly.
If you have any questions, I'll be glad to help. I don't have a channel (yet), but I am considered one of the leading experts in the world, on the critically endangered dawn redwood, so I know a couple things. ;-) You can email me through the Crescent Ridge Dawn Redwoods Preserve contact link at dawnredwood.org. I'm Doug (D.A. Hänks)
Thanks very much! I hadn't thought about the pile like a chimney stack, that makes a lot of sense. Mix as you go, got it. Use ultra fresh grass, ok check. There's definitely going to be an update video lol. I'll get a compost thermometer as soon as I can. I do have a few questions though! Like, does the color of the tarp matter much? Does sunlight need to be on the pile at all? I started keeping the fresh cut grass in sealed plastic bags, will that help lock in the nitrogen? Does the same thing happen to the leaves over time if they're exposed? Uh I think that's all I have for now, but I'm sure I'll have more later if you've got the time. I really appreciate the info.
@@HomegrownHavenFarm First off, let me add this about a thermometer: In the meantime, you can use a candy/cooking thermometer instead. It'll just start to cool immediately when you pull it out, but it will give you a rough idea until a real one can be had.
Don't seal anything! It will turn anaerobic on you and start to smell like vinegar. If you cover it, cover loosely to keep O2 in there. The color doesn't matter; it's really there to lock in heat and trap moisture from escaping, but it will help absorb some as well. In the winter, it may make a difference to put it in the sun with a black tarp, but I tend to like mine in a shady spot during the summer to help keep evaporation in check, especially if you are leaving it open.
Your concern is really with greens; leaves are your carbons, and if left alone will break down into humus over time, so the fresh greens can be added whenever you want.
@@HomegrownHavenFarm I just got my compost thermometer and stuck the pile. Ten days in, and still 120F at the core at the base, but 140F in the top 18," so that's 20F that would have been lost, if I used the cage method. Again, this is ten days in. It's maintaining a nice, hot, cook.
Great video, this was my first year making compost . So far it’s been a success. Liked the music. New sub. Happy Composting 🍁
thanks a lot! heck yeah man keep up the good work!
Would you like some advice? To bad I'm going to give it to you anyway. Whenever you start a new compost pile go ahead and screen the old one clean. Deposit the larger and undigested pieces into you new compost pile. It not only cleans your compost for this year's planting, but it will also helps to get the new pile started composting, and most importantly it clears the old compost pile and makes it ready for use. I use a manual screen because I have such a small yard, but you might need an electric one. I've seen a video where I guy made a nice one from a harbor freight concrete mixer and a screen trash can with the bottom cut out and welded to the mixer as the cleaning screen. It looked nice.
I did that in a follow up video actually! I used an old box fan front and some 2x4s to make a screen and ran the finished compost through that. What ever didnt go through just gets thrown back in to the next round. I might make one of those turned over trashcan sifters at some point in the future as well!
Yooo thanks for sharing! Gonna try this out I wanna know how you made that roller contraption because that’s awesome
The green layers don't need water because there full of moisture the dry leaves is the layers that need water & a lot of it to get it to heat up properly
There's nothing like finished compost! I'm hoping your warmer weather will get the compost going faster. I started with the Berkeley method is a gigantic container and it still wasn't big enough to get hot lol. Did you compose music for the whole video?
I literally used all the material I have but I'm working on getting that gathering process more efficient. It was just hot enough to not be able to touch, I don't have a thermometer but I think that's somewhere around 140 degrees. We'll see what happens lol and yes I do compose all the music! I actually have a whole portfolio of fl studio music I've made since I was like 15. I'm sure it's a little weird 😅
@@HomegrownHavenFarm Not weird at all! I just really liked the background music and wondered if it was original.
I wanna see a follow up!
Workin on it! It's been kinda wierd with all this rain but I have flipped it a few times already. We're just gonna have to see what happens.