Making a Cold Compost Pile
Photo courtesy ahminotep/Flickr
How to make a cold compost pile: Throw everything into a pile. Wait.
Yes that’s a bit flippant, but it’s pretty accurate. And, it’s not meant to discourage you from building a hot pile. Hot piles have a couple of distinct advantages over cold piles.
For starters, you get compost much, much quicker.
And, a hot pile will kill weed seeds and pathogens, which won’t happen in a cold pile.
If you have a lot of plant material at once, you should build a hot pile. The benefits make the extra effort worthwhile. Build it all at once, maintain it, but don’t add additional ingredients.
But, if you don’t want to put in a lot of effort, or pay attention to strict proportions, you can still compost in a cold pile.
It takes a lot longer, but nature does most of the work instead of you.
January 2, 2013 - 7:10 AM
Yep, that’s the one.
I do find that locating piles near where I’ll be doing the most weeding, pruning or raking (or at least downhill of those locations for easy wheelbarrow pushing)is helpful. Otherwise, your “throw it on and wait” covers the topic quite eloquently. I’ve been building soil for new perennial beds for the past two years this way. Starting with a cardboard or newspaper layer placed directly on sod, as I have them, I pile on leaves, weeds, pine needles, end of season flower stalks (if healthy) and table scraps. Occasionally I do pull up volunteer growth, leaving those plants on the bed but where their roots will dry out and die. The weed roots have enough soil on them to get the decomposing underway.