I built my composter going into fall and have been filling it with any vegetable and fruit scraps from our kitchen, but mostly shredded cardboard and coffee grounds from my local Starbucks and Pilot gas station. I get 5-15lbs of spent coffee grounds a day. To offset it I use my shredder to shred cardboard and add it to the mix. I have tried to keep it damp but not wet. I think maybe it got too dry because today when I took my pitchfork to turn it there were some gray and white ashes I was turning up. I keep a thermometer in my pile and it has been consistently at 140-150°. I have never seen it hotter. Can it produce ashes at those temperatures? I soaked it really well today when I turned the pile. The temperature shot right back up to 140° when I was done despite being 27° outside today! Are the ashes something I need to worry about?
by CReisch21
8 Comments
It can actually catch fire. Not unheard of. I would turn it more often.
Too much nitrogen in one place will do that. If you would have mixed it a little more, and köpt it slightly more wet it would not do that.
I dont think it is very harmful, so i just accept that it sometimes happen in my pile.
You sure that’s ash and not mycelium?
Not ash, spores. Probably from actinomycetes, which is a bacteria that works like a fungus. Not particularly harmful to humans, but you don’t want to inhale huge amounts. Completely normal for the compost, but the spores are hydrophobic and can prevent water from reaching the center of the pile, if you hadn’t turned it.
Others can correct me, but I think I read it’s an anaerobic bacteria. It’s not harmful and will just break down as you turn it, but it’s an indication of the pile needing more oxygen in places.
I’m gonna disagree with the others here. At those temps, it’s not mycelium in the traditional sense. In my opinion it is an actinobacteria. If you google “actinobacteria in compost” and look at the images, you’ll see a familiar site.
It’s signs of a low oxygen environment. You have high, low, and no (anaerobic) oxygen environments. When it’s over 6 ppm oxygen, that high. Between 6 & 4 is low. Below 4 is anaerobic.
It’s good you’re flipping it. I compost with an elevated pile to help oxygen get in from underneath, plus it’s a good insect habitat. You can also use a tomato stake to poke some vertical chimneys into the pile. This will allow oxygen infiltration, but also will lower your pile’s heat.
The actinobacteria is not the end of the world. It’s not anaerobic. It’s just on its way. You can flip it in another 4-7 days depending on heat and things. I dunno. I compost with all my stuff up front (freeze my scraps until I have my ratios, then build my pile all at once). For me, if my pile runs hot for too many days, the middle will get so much biological activity that it’s like stuffing 20 people into a cab and only cracking the window. Even if your compost isn’t compacting (another reason for reduced oxygen), if it’s booming too good, there can be more mouths sucking oxygen faster than it can get in there. With your temps, that’d be my bet.
With adding the extra water, you run the risk of overwatering it. Ideally, you should squeeze a handful of your compost and maybe get a drop out, while it should also clump together nicely in your hand and fall back apart at a little touching/poking. If it’s all sucked together or you squeeze out a tiny stream, that’s too much water.
It’s probably spores from some kind of mold, don’t breathe it in as you don’t know what it is. I get aspergillus in my compost and that’s quite dangerous to breathe in.
Looks like fungus, be careful breathing that, it can grow in your lungs and/or make you very sick!