I got some advice recently to add more wood chips into my mix (2:1 wood chips to leaves for the browns), and that’s helped a ton with heating it up. It’s taken me a while to actually hit 160, but I’ve been hitting 140 easily since that change and the heat comes much faster. It used to take something like a week to actually heat up (this was using primarily oak leaves as browns), and it would usually just hit 130. I still made good compost, but it was not killing weed seeds.
For this recent temperature surge, I added two wheelbarrows full of wood chips next to the end of the pile (which was already at 150°), a wheelbarrow of aged shredded leaves, mixed in a bunch of grass clippings, about 10 gallons of Mexican food scraps and 5 gallons of coffee grounds, and sprayed it all with the hose before piling it up. I think this was two days ago, so it’s possible it’d get hotter. I’ll probably mix it all up again later today though when I collect more scraps.
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A couple other photos of the big windrow-style pile: https://i.imgur.com/oqBerhO.jpeg and https://i.imgur.com/gN6tKQs.jpeg. It’s about 2.5′ high x 6′ wide at the base x 20-25′ long.
I got some advice recently to add more wood chips into my mix (2:1 wood chips to leaves for the browns), and that’s helped a ton with heating it up. It’s taken me a while to actually hit 160, but I’ve been hitting 140 easily since that change and the heat comes much faster. It used to take something like a week to actually heat up (this was using primarily oak leaves as browns), and it would usually just hit 130. I still made good compost, but it was not killing weed seeds.
For this recent temperature surge, I added two wheelbarrows full of wood chips next to the end of the pile (which was already at 150°), a wheelbarrow of aged shredded leaves, mixed in a bunch of grass clippings, about 10 gallons of Mexican food scraps and 5 gallons of coffee grounds, and sprayed it all with the hose before piling it up. I think this was two days ago, so it’s possible it’d get hotter. I’ll probably mix it all up again later today though when I collect more scraps.
It was agonizing watching it creep up from [158](https://i.imgur.com/HvZl91y.jpeg) today until it passed 160!
SCRAM the reactor! She’s gonna blow!
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
🤣
Congratulations on hitting 160! Those weeds will be cooked this time!
Nice job
Achievement Unlocked 🏆