Is this a correct way of composting?

1 Comment

1. 

   SuitPrestigious1694 4 months ago

   With water, oxygen and enough nitrogen sources, everything will eventually compost, even if you don’t do anything.

   Even if you don’t add nitrogen, there are specialized bacteria which will introduce it by fixating the N from atmosphere, and it will eventually break down. 

   In a sense, there isn’t a way to do it wrongly. However, what people here are very much interested is in speeeeeed. We don’t want to wait 5 years for our nitrification friends to do the work alone. So we are looking for the best balance of nitrogen, carbon, water and oxygen to maximize the amount of microorganism quantity and quality, so that we may have our compost finised in a few months instead of a few years. 

   Humans are in a hurry, nature doesn’t care much. 

   So if you only have leaves there, then definitely add some nitrogen sources, like food scraps (ideally only plant-based for starters, animal based ones are trickier for a number of reasons) and urine. 

   And it definitely needs water for the cycle to be set in motion, but too much water is bad too, because it might block a good oxygen flow at the bottom of the pile. About oxygen, you should also turn your pile around sometimes in order to oxigenate it, as that helps the best microorganisms to break it down even faster and with a good (relatively) smell