How to Make Hot Compost (Start to Finish)

It might look like it's a cool fall day, but in fact, it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 70% humidity. And today Jacques and I are going to show you how to make your first compost pile. So Jacques, I've been living here for about two years, actually. Yeah, it's actually a two-year anniversary. It might be right now. So September. In that whole time, we have just basically done the lazy man's compost, which to be clear, works, my friend. It does work. But that being said, we have a lot of gardening here. We want to do some more sophisticated activities such as proper hot composting. That's what today's video is about. And something we want to share is you don't have to do composting any particular way. Exactly. There's so many different ways to do it. And like here we have a pretty good starting point and we'll talk exactly about how to build the perfect pile. And you can go really as deep down the rabbit hole as you want. You can try to optimize for the perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio, et cetera. And we'll get into that. Or you could literally do this and it actually works somewhat well as long as you get down into the middle. So let's take a look at this pile. We'll take a look at the compost bin and let's talk about how compost happens. Building your first pile, you need to know about four key ingredients. First you have your classics, your browns and your greens or your carbon and your nitrogen. So kick it off with nitrogen, Jacques. Nitrogen is your fresh plant material. So think fresh grass clippings, tomato cuttings, anything that's alive and green, like everything here. Everything you see here in its current state would be a green. Then you have your browns like straw or dried leaves or dried grass clippings or all the mulch that you see right here. It is very, very high in carbon. Then you have your air and your water. You need air because this is an aerobic process with air. So you can do bokashi, which is anaerobic, which is what I used to do back in the day in my old space. Great for apartment gardeners, but that's not what we're talking about here. So you need air, good airflow, which is why this design has some slats in the side. And then water. Water. Without water, you don't really have life. And just like us, the microbes need the water to survive. So as they're kind of all reproducing and replicating, that's generating all the heat. So if your pile dries out, they die and your compost dies with it. Exactly. So how much volume do you need to start a pile? Common recommendation is three by three by three or one cubic yard. This is a little bit bigger than that. I'd say honestly, pretty good recommendation. Can you get away with less? Yeah, it just requires more management. So let's go back to the pile and we'll talk about how to actually construct your layers in your very first bin. So back here at the pile, there's two ways or philosophies I think to go about building and layering, trying to hit the perfect carbon to nitrogen ratio. You get really intense. You get really intense. So Jacques, why don't you lead us off with the simpler way? So the simplest way and the way that I usually go with is just 50-50 browns and greens. So you put in a pile of tomatoes, put an equal pile of brown in via straw or whatever you have. That's the easy way. Sometimes you can even skew towards a two-to-one of brown to green, but the scientific holy grail, so to speak, is 30-to-one carbon to nitrogen ratio. And this is where we have to enter nerd mode. Okay. Now here's the wrinkle that most people get confused about when building a pile. It is the fact that you want to hit this magical 30-to-one carbon to nitrogen ratio. So 30 parts carbon by weight, one part nitrogen. But here's the trick. Grab something from the pile, just anything, whatever you want. Okay. So you have a sunflower stalk and I'm going to grab, I think this was some mint. Okay. Actually, this is a watercress. And you see this big old root from the pond. Now these have different carbon to nitrogen ratios. Even a brown like straw or sawdust or even wood chips, wood chips have a 500-to-one carbon to nitrogen ratio. Whereas grass clippings are something like 20-to-one carbon to nitrogen ratio. And at the end of the day, you don't know what this is and what that is. So you can get really lost in the mix if you think about it too much. You can get lost in the sauce. And some people do. And honestly, they find the holy grail. You actually can create incredible compost. If you are that precise. Hats off. Hats off. I've never done it myself. I have to be honest with you guys. I try to just go, not necessarily chill mode, but just like, Hey, let's be reasonable. I'm not hitting Excel and calculating my volumes and stuff. So we put a chart up for you so you can kind of nerd out on it if you want. But let's just start to move this over there and talk a little bit about surface area, which is weirdly important. So you could put these sunflower stalks directly in the compost. You could even break them up and put them in. And yes, it would break down. The question is how long would it take? Very long time. Yeah. And what's the reason for that? It's because the microbes are what break it down. So the more surface area, the more action for the microbes to get onto the material and break it down. Yeah. So if you shred it up or chop it up in some way, you certainly don't need this behemoth that we have here, but it's just going to increase the overall surface area of this material, which means more microbes across more of the surface, eating it up quicker, reproducing, breaking it down. Yeah. And a quick tip, if you don't have a chipper shredder, just throw all your stuff on the ground and get a flathead shovel and just chop it up. Just stab it. Yeah. Just stab it and you're good. So we're into chip shred mode and then this all goes over there to build the pile. So take a look at what we have broken the sunflower stalk down into. Actually kind of weird. It almost looks like a manufactured product with the sort of cellulose squishiness in there. Sunflower is a weirdly interesting plant, but you can just see how much easier this is going to be to break down. So we have a lot more to do. We'll see you over at the pile. A little bit of chipping, a little bit of shredding, but we have a lot of material here. So we have some of that pre ground down browns mostly with a sunflower stalks looking really nice. We have some kind of floaty greens and browns here with some vining cucumbers and such. Then we have an input that we bought basically for like 10 bucks, right? Just a bale of straw. Just an old bale of straw. So that's a pure brown. Most homeowners have a hard time getting browns. We especially have a hard time here in San Diego cause we don't live in an area with deciduous trees that the leaves fall. So Jacques. Yeah. Layers. Talk to me. Layers. So the first, most important layer is actually soil in my opinion. It allows water to infiltrate somewhere. And it also is where all the soil microorganisms live. So then they're already here and ready to start your pile. Next up, you need something chunky to help allow airflow at the bottom. This is perfect cause it's not broken down. Surface area is good, but too much surface area leads to a wet pile that doesn't breathe. So at the beginning, having a nice chunky layer is perfect. Yeah. We talked about surface area. That doesn't mean you should grind everything to a fine powder and then put it in. And of course you'd be making like organic cement at that point in time. So this is a really good way to start. Typically you're thinking two to six inch layers, brown to green. This is very fluffy. So this will sort of compress down. So I wouldn't worry too much about how high this is. So I'm just getting a base layer in here. I like to start with brown, green, brown, so that you have the sandwich to soak up all that extra moisture. Yeah, I agree with you. Speaking of, you do need to have a hose on hand. It's true. You want to be wetting this down as you go. Nothing, nothing wild, but just like enough in each layer that you're giving those microbes something to actually act upon. At the start, it's a little looser, but basically you want the pile overall to feel like a damp sponge. So this shouldn't be filled with water, but it should be at least damp. In my opinion, tomatoes are the best thing to start a compost pile with. They're very high nitrogen, which means that it's going to heat up the pile very quickly, very fast. And this time of year and the fall or end of summer, I should say, you probably have a lot of tomatoes and you're wondering what to do with them. Best time to start a compost pile, get some fresh nitrogen into that pile and get hot real fast. So when you're adding a material like straw, you don't really want to add it in, in this big old clump like this, because it's matted. It's going to be a big block that's kind of kind of have an anaerobic pocket. So I like to come over, hopefully you don't have allergies, and just kind of brush it off into the pile like this, break it up a little bit because it's such a flat material. It really can compress and mat and you just don't want that to happen. So this is the final layer of my browns before I go back to the green layer that Jock's got with those toms. I've got my shears out. So I have one of my favorite uses for shears. You come through and just quickly cut these down just a little bit. You don't have to be precise or anything like that. Just come in, just give it a little bit of this, just to kind of break it up a little bit. These go in, if you've been counting, as green layer number two, we'll take one of our slats and actually slide it in here. So I guess it's another nice moment to mention that the best compost pile is the one that's made with the most ingredients. So alternating your brown source, your greens is going to just make your pile have the most nutrients and it'll just be better in the end. And you've got basically fresh leaves from your place. Yeah. What's cool is you actually can make leaf mold from that, which is its own, that's its own beast. Yeah. I've never gone down that road just because I basically don't have enough leaves. Neither do I. And again, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can build like perfect sandwich layers, four inch, four inch, four inch, but you're going to mix it eventually. Right? So as long as your ratios are right, you're pretty good. Yeah. Well Jacques has a cool method too, because he's not going with that super precise model. So basically what happens if you add too many greens? If you add too many greens, it'll start smelling bad and it'll probably be wet. So then you just add more browns. If you have too many browns that means it's probably not heating up and it's probably very dry. Very dry. So you get that perfect balance. You don't have to worry about it. If it smells, add more browns. If it's not heating up, add more greens and just make sure it's moist enough. Like we said, basically like a damp sponge. And that's all there really is to it. What do you, what's your opinion Jacques on those compost activators? I feel like I've had success with them. I was going to say I've used one in the past when I struggled to get it really hot. Cause I didn't have tomatoes basically. And it worked. I think it just basically a bunch of alfalfa meal and it gives that boost to your pile. I've also heard people put Coca-Cola cause you're adding sugar. And then the microbes break it down and they heat it up. That makes sense. So really it's, don't worry too much about it. It's about learning. And it's just fun to kind of do this. Yeah. And honestly, I have an experiment I want to run. I want to throw some squash directly in what will eventually be the middle full on. And actually pro tip, if you're putting kitchen scraps in your compost pile, putting it right in the center is the best cause it'll decrease the chance for rodents that'll find it on the edges and start eating it. If you put it in the middle and get hot really fast and break down. Yeah. So if I put it on the edge there, right, I'm never going to see that look anything different than the way it looks right now. It's really not going to break down. So I threw about six in there. That's probably enough. Gave me the old I call you Ratatouille. Fruit Ninja. Oh wait, reaction time, reaction time challenge. Too early. Right here though. Ready? Do you think I have the accuracy to 50% cleave it right down the middle? If you throw it perfectly. Who's doubting? Problem solved. Why am I doubting? Problem solved. So we've built it up pretty dang high. Jacques giving the final water. I'm just kind of moving some stuff around here on the top, but you got to know what to do once you actually built the pile. For the most part, it's sort of sit and wait, but we do have this Rio Temp compost thermometer actually up on our store. One of my favorite compost thermometers, long, long, long guy. Jam it down in. You want that bottom to be right around where the middle of the pile is. Pretty sure I just hit a squash there. But what you're waiting to see is roughly about 120 degrees by the next day, Fahrenheit. Really perfect compost is above 140. But as long as you start seeing the heat climb, you're in a good spot. So you know how to build your compost pile, but there's a lot of mistakes you can make when composting. So this video right here will show you the mistakes to avoid. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.