Making Compost: What To Do If Your Pile Isn't Heating Up!

We've got a problem in the garden. This compost pile right here, it's not heating up anymore. We're in the steady range. This is the RioTemp compost thermometer. It's very, very long, so it can get deep in there and you can see how hot it is in the middle. And so, you know, steady is not bad, but it's not hot composting. We can see you've got steady up to about a hundred degrees. A hundred to 130 is the active range and then 140 to 160 and you don't want to go over 160 is the hot range. And so we're not in a good spot here. So there are a few different reasons why this could be going cold. There's the fact that maybe the compost in the interior is finished and I need to turn it a little bit more. Maybe it's too dry and there's not enough moisture for all the biological activity to take place. Maybe it's too wet and there's too much moisture and it's starting to go anaerobic. There's not enough airflow going on. And so we need to figure out first what the problem is and then we need to fix that problem. So let's figure it out. I forgot one more thing. We could just simply not have enough material because if you're going to hot compost, you need about a cubic yard of material for it to even get to those hot compost temperatures. So that's problem number four. All right, let's figure it out. Initially, what I thought I'd have to do is just incorporate some of the straw you see at the top here into the middle, water it down a little bit more, and then we'd be good to go. But as I dug down, I realized really, the middle was more or less finished compost or very close. And so I started to deconstruct the compost pile. Fortunately I have one that comes in three sections and shovel off some of the straw. You can see there's a ton of non-mixed straw in there that I needed to incorporate. And I'm going to wet it down a little bit. And you can see, I'm getting into that black gold that we like to call it. The finished compost in the middle that's looking actually pretty good. We can see it right here. And so I said, you know what, I'm going to do a full mix. And so I started to really deconstruct the bed and get all this stuff well mixed. There's some organic fertilizer I had in there, some, some cardboard, and I wanted to make sure that I mix it all. So you're going to add it back on layer by layer, trying to go brown, green, brown, green, if you can. I'm going to dump some extra food scraps in here. Cause I had an inkling that maybe I didn't have enough greens, which is actually the rarer case. Most people have a hard time finding browns, but because of that straw bale, of course, I had an unlimited supply of browns. So we got some tomato cuttings in there. We're going to wet it down each layer and then just keep on filling and filling and filling. And you can see, I'm trying to keep it alternating. So greens, browns, greens, browns. I've got some bougainvillea that I'm adding in here. And as we finish this off, we really want to just check in a day what happened. So we'll put the thermometer back in and let's see what happens tomorrow. So it's been just about exactly 24 hours. And in that time the temperature has gone from around 80, 90-ish to 120 in the center. And that's just from doing the process you just saw in this video, which is mixing it back up, moistening every layer as you put that layer down, making sure you have enough greens, enough browns, the right ratio, and making sure that you have that delicate balance of air, moisture and the right ingredients. And I mean, look, it rained yesterday here in San Diego, which is rare. And so the temperatures were lower. If there was any time where the pile wouldn't have started, it would have been in that rainy period. And we're sitting right in that steady zone or sorry, that active zone pushing into hot composting. We'll see if we can get there. I think I might need a little more material to get there though. So that's how you do it guys. It's that simple. Composting, you know, used to be a challenge for me. It's become a lot simpler since I just started understanding the science of it all. And there we go. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll do more on composting in the future. It's a topic I haven't touched on as much as I would have liked to. And so I'll see what I can do for you on that. But until next time, good luck in the garden and keep growing. I'll see you in the next video.