5 Hot Composting Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to composting, there are so many reasons to do it. But as a beginner, it can seem a little intimidating, especially hot composting, which is what this bin is doing right now. So in this video, we're going to go over five common mistakes you'll run into and how to avoid them. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening, where it's my goal to help you grow a greener thumb. And generating compost on your property certainly is part of that. Here's a design that I built for the new homestead. It's a three by three by three. So a cubic yard or a cubic meter-ish of space. I have these nice little slatted two by sixes here that you can use to kind of tell how full your bin is, as well as access the bin easier. So if you guys want, I'll do a video on that. But this is about the mistakes. We need to avoid them to get amazing Epic compost. Speaking of, cultivate that Like button for Epic compost and let's get into the video. Mistake number one, not so much an error of knowledge, but more one of omission. And that would be not turning your compost pile. This is an aerobic process. That means with oxygen, all the microbes, bacteria, all that stuff down in the middle of this pile, needs oxygen to keep reproducing. And that reproduction is what's causing the heat. So what you like to do is come in, get your shovel in there, give it a nice turn every so often. In a perfect world, once a day. But we're not doing that. I'm certainly not doing that. Once a week minimum I would say is probably your best bet. I have a better tool than this that I just found. So let me show you that real quick. This right here is a compost aerator. It's very clever. What you do is you just put it down, twirl it. It'll bore itself down there into the soil, into the compost mix. When you get deep enough, pull up and you've released some of the material in the middle up to the surface. And of course, the stuff on the surface will fall down. Doom, pull up. Look at that. Get a nice core of compost out of the middle. Nice hot leaves here. We know that that process is working. So again, once a week or so, just make sure you turn your compost pile. Mistake number two is putting the wrong things in your compost pile, but also the right things in the wrong amount. So it's just an overall mistake of putting the wrong stuff in. Now, as far as the wrong actual ingredients to avoid in general, would be things like bones, meats, dairy, oil. It will break down so don't get me wrong. It's possible, but it's just not ideal. There's other ways you can do that. And in a bin like this, you don't want to attract vermin or pests. So I would avoid that. But then even the right stuff, let's say you just moved along, you have a bunch of grass clippings. If you put those in in a high enough amount all at once, it's going to mat and go anaerobic and rot and not be a good ratio. So what I would do is layer in different things. You want different textural elements. Leaves, great, nice and fluffy. These little bits of material here, these are like shredded redwood fines. These are very, very small. And so there's not a lot of gapping between them. So you don't want to just layer a huge amount of those. So leaves, some wood chips, some food scraps, just pepper it up, mix it up. I like to go about two to one on my brown ingredients to my green ingredients. Brown being your carbon rich, green being your nitrogen rich. I wouldn't stress too much about achieving that perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio. Like many will say, I think roughly two to one brown to green by volume is a good amount. Just avoid those problem things and you're good to go. Mistake number three is not managing how moist the compost pile is. It needs to be at that appropriate level. Too dry and all the microbes, bacteria, everything in there is not getting the resource it needs to reproduce. Enough water, too wet. And of course you run into a similar problem where it goes anaerobic, starts to rot and get just really kind of gucky. So what you want to do, what I like to do is every time I add a new layer of ingredients, I'll just come in, give it a little watering. Every time I turn the pile I just spruce it up with a little bit of water just to keep it nice and managed. This is a feel thing. You want to get it the consistency of maybe a damp sponge where you can squeeze out maybe one or two drops at the absolute most. You don't really need much more than that. And that's it. I mean, it's more of a management thing than anything, but you do want to make sure you get your moisture correct. Mistake number four is not adding enough material in the first place. So like I mentioned at the beginning of the video, this is three by three by three foot, roughly a cubic yard, a cubic meter-ish. And that's enough. I mean, that's what we need. You need a certain bulk of material for the process to really kickstart, at least in hot composting. Remember, we're speeding up what is the normal decomposition process. Normally all this stuff would just fall on the ground. Eventually, things like beetles, insects, worms, all of these things would break it down, be a lot slower. In hot composting, you have to force that process to speed up. And one of the ways to do that is get enough volume. What I like to do on mine is I have these slats, like I mentioned, and I know that roughly by the fifth slat, that process should kickstart. And so that's how I know. But again, just building the right size bin and filling it up is your best bet. I see a lot of people get a lot of questions saying, Oh, why is my compost pile not heating up? And they have a very small amount of compost. Well, there's your answer. The fifth and final mistake I have for you in this video is remembering that what goes in eventually does go out into your garden. So consider that. And what I mean by that is you've got things like weed seeds, you have even your standard vegetables, your tomatoes, your eggplants, your peppers. If you don't get the pile hot enough to render those sterile, they will probably germinate in your bed. So let's say I did a bunch of vegetables in here and leaves and things like that. And then I wanted to prepare a flower bed using some of this compost. Well, I would probably have a ton of either foxtail barley or I would have some tomatoes and peppers start to germinate in that flower bed. So unless you're bringing your pile up to about 160 degrees Fahrenheit three, four times to really kill it out and you're mixing well, then you might get a little bit of germination, cause yourself a little weeding problem. So just keep that in mind. If you want to avoid that, then of course, don't put too much of that into your mix. Composting is one of the most rewarding things you can do. It almost feels like you're an alchemist where you bring in your food scraps and your garden trimmings and leaves and such, and then magically turn them into something that then grows more for you. So it's fantastic. Hopefully these five tips helped you. If you have a mistake of your own that you've either made or you see people make, drop it down in the comments below. I'd love to know it. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.