Hot composting with chicken bedding and garden waste

[vehve]

Morning temp was 22C today.

 

[RichnSteph]

We have an infestation of some kind of little red bug in ours so I'll be pouring a few gallons of hot water into it tonight and wrapping it in black plastic so that it'll start cooking again in the next few days and hopefully kill all those critters. We didn't know about the bugs until we used some of the soil in a house plant..... yeah we had bugs all over the bathroom.

 

[hennible]

Like these?

 

[vehve]

That sound like a nasty surprise. I don't know if I'm going to bring inside any of my compost. I mostly just start plants inside, we don't really have any permanent residents other than one mother-in-laws tongue. But for the plant's I'm starting, I somehow feel it's safer with store bought soil, it won't be as hot as my compost, so I don't risk burning the little plants. Maybe in a few years, if I have some soil that's been allowed to mature for a bit longer.

Outside temp has gone down from +2 to -2, taking the compost down from +22 to +21. It's pretty windy today, so I think it's giving off heat a bit quicker today than yesterday. I hope the heat it's producing still keeps increasing, at least there was a nice warm burn in the middle of all the straw on the left side. The right side still isn't starting on it's own, it's sort of a mess of a lot of moisture, half decomposed matter and a few food scraps. I really don't understand why it never got a proper burn going, but I'm still hopeful that I can piggyback it's bacterial activity into the thermofilic phase with the help of the left side.

 

[aart]

Outside temp has gone down from +2 to -2, taking the compost down from +22 to +21. It's pretty windy today, so I think it's giving off heat a bit quicker today than yesterday. I hope the heat it's producing still keeps increasing, at least there was a nice warm burn in the middle of all the straw on the left side. The right side still isn't starting on it's own, it's sort of a mess of a lot of moisture, half decomposed matter and a few food scraps. I really don't understand why it never got a proper burn going, but I'm still hopeful that I can piggyback it's bacterial activity into the thermofilic phase with the help of the left side.

Will you put some of the active left side material into the lagging right side to help jump start it??

 

[vehve]

Yeah, I usually try to migrate the bacteria between the two compartments. As well as leaving a bit of the previous batch to mix in with new stuff whenever I empty the bin.

 

[RichnSteph]

Like these?

That looks like them. I showed this picture to my wife and she confirmed that those are what are living in the compost bin outside although we haven't seen many of them in the last few weeks. There were much smaller black ones that came out of the compost in the house plant and there were thousands of them along the base boards and wall right behind the plant.

 

[hennible]

Mite spiders (the red) maybe the black ones are spider mite?... Though those are very hard to see... Hmmm...

 

[RichnSteph]

Mite spiders (the red) maybe the black ones are spider mite?... Though those are very hard to see... Hmmm...

We had to look it up and they are indeed spider mites. We've got a plan to eradicate them. I'm thinking that getting the compost to a high cooking heat will take care of it.

 

[hennible]

Those things suck. I hope you cook them successfully.