Hot or not - Food for Thought

Like prolly a lot of folks here, I've made truckloads of hot compost as well as boatloads of vermicompost over the last 30 years or so. But as I was looking out over the field and into the woods it occurs to me that mother nature has built amazing topsoil and never built a single hot pile. Leaves and needles fall where they fall and grass and weeds die and fall over and all slowly decompose to feed the soil food web. I wonder if hot piles don't "burn up" some of the goodness that might be gleaned if we just were more patient and let things slowly rot and feed the soil. I'm also remembering one year I piled all my leaves from the yard in the garden inside a 12' piece of snow fence that formed a circle. The following spring as I tilled the garden, when I got to the spot where the leaves were, the tiller sank effortlessly to it's full depth - no small feat in my tough soil at the time. Coupled with everything I've been reading about "no till" Gardening/farming...perhaps just piling on organic matter in the garden is better than making hot compost? Food for thought.

And don't forget that the fungus helps break it down in the forest!

I find myself making less compost piles. I spread the chicken manure on my future beds, then try to mulch on top, months in advance before planting. Gotta plan ahead and have a sense of what crops can grow in stage 2 compost. Might want to keep some hot piles for specific crops.

Michael Vormwald wrote:perhaps just piling on organic matter in the garden is better than making hot compost?

That's the way Mother does it.


Leaf mold from hardwoods is considered the finest compost by some people. It's essentially a pile of leaves, kept moist until it's broken down. Which depending, can take up to a few years. With the low levels of N and high levels of C and lignin content, you can really get some nice humus going.

Mother Nature works on a different time line than we humans . I do not know whether "better" is a useful term here, as it is more an issue of "different" without value judgment. There is also the question of what we are growing and which sort of soil will work best for the plants in a given situation.

I expect that much of it is a matter of time and timing. We are not nearly so patient as the ecosystem surrounding us.

I may or may not be undecided, I don't know....

I kinda prefer the hot method. I figure that I want to fool those weed seeds and burn them up.

To each their own!

Best, T

Ruth Stout the mulch goddess, would have agreed with you. When she spoke of the work people did to build and turn their compost piles, I think she said she needed to go lie down with a drink thinking of all the wasted work. This was before worm farming. She advocated that you take your kitchen scraps, weeds, and anything that you might like to compost, and just tuck it under the thick mulch and forget about it.

I have read reports that suggest that much of the carbon is released into the atmosphere (instead of the soil) during hot composting. Many experts seem to be beginning to agree that slow composting may in fact be "better"not just different. Perhaps animal manures are 'worse' than green/brown vegetation...I'm unsure.
http://appliedmythology.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-shocking-carbon-footprint-of-compost.html

Peter Ellis wrote:Mother Nature works on a different time line than we humans . I do not know whether "better" is a useful term here, as it is more an issue of "different" without value judgment. There is also the question of what we are growing and which sort of soil will work best for the plants in a given situation.

I expect that much of it is a matter of time and timing. We are not nearly so patient as the ecosystem surrounding us.

I think another benefit to hot composting is the final product, if you have a huge amount of N and C to start with, has been heated up away from the garden beds instead of in the garden beds.

Hi Michael
I agree that longer term hot composts result in a large amount of carbon being lost to the atmosphere. This 18 day method seems to be the best of both worlds.
http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/

Today is day 18 of my first try using this method and it has worked very well.
Interestingly enough, my grandmother never composted but placed food scraps just below the soil surface.

Well, you can lead a horse to drink but you can't make him water!