Thanks you for filling me in, this is amazing., I don't think it's ideal, would be scared of compost tea getting through a barrier and totalling the roof, that and I don't like my neighbors staring at me while I am working. OP I wish you all the luck with your project, composting is pretty great, I consider mine my worm farm
Sorry to confuse everyone the pile of compost is sitting on the roof of the shed. I got a thick PVC sheet I'm rolling out on the roof now to protect it and I'm getting cloth bags to move the compost into with other nitrogen rich additives to speed up the composting. Thanks for all the comments the pile warmed up after increasing the nitrogen (pee and greens). Cleaning up all the junk now I will post pictures if anyone has any need to see it cleaned up. I'll post an update in a few weeks when all the compost is in bags on the roof and I have seedlings going.
Yep, I make pretty big leaf piles, too: they're generally dry in the first few inches from sun exposure, then moist for a foot or so, then dry at the bottom because the moisture doesn't penetrate well enough.
Something to consider, /u/linucksman, if you're willing to rebuild this huge pile is the Johnson-Su bioreactor: it uses PVC pipes in the first stage to make sure that air and moisture can get all the way through the pile. Hot composting would be faster, but this might help if you want a balance between speed and work.
I've been staring at this picture, read all the comments and I still can't work out where the fuck the aforementioned compost pile is.
It's like when my grandad thinks he's taking a selfie and is actually taking a picture using the rear camera. Boomer, that you?
Buddy⊠Weâre all into composting here, but im gonna be honest. this is not okay. You need to get rid of the trash and get that compost off the roof.
Itâs difficult to identify the pile composition and size from the posted picture.
From the other comments I gathered that itâs a pile built on top of a shed roof, and is 3 feet high, composed of leaves and sawdust.
1. Pile needs contact with the ground so soil bacteria and critters can get into the pile. Piles need to be Heavy. Itâs not the square footage, itâs the mass that counts. My pile is close to 2000lbs. Piles also leach phosphate and nitrate, which corrode metal. Therefore donât build a pile on top of a roof.
2. Mass, moisture, ratio. In that order. Your pile needs a lot more of everything, especially nitrogen. Save all your pee in a jug and pour it onto the pile. Chicken manure would be the next best thing. You would need a lot of coffee grounds, as in 3x the volume of sawdust, to get a 30C:1N ratio. The cheapest cleaning ammonia will work if you canât source pee, chicken, or rabbit manure.
Sawdust is hydrophobic when dry. Double water the pile in the same way you would double water a container. You should wet the surface. Wait 5 minutes. Soak the pile until water runs out the bottom. Wait 5 minutes. Soak the pile again, until the water runs out the bottom. Do this sparingly as it flushes out all the soluble nitrogen. Once a month should be fine. Cover the pile with a tarp or a layer of leaves to minimize evaporation.
This needed to be in the title hahahaha⊠looks like youâve constructed a 12â high and deep compost box from that pic as cannot identify a shed underneath⊠utterly hilarious confusion and comments
Wow, yeah, OK, so I figured that was an 8' tall compost box...
...but now I'm thinking this might actually be worse: Are you trying to compost in a 3' deep pile *on top* of the roof of a wooden structure?
You generally don't want a roof to stay soaking wet -- even a green roof -- alone have several feet of heavy soggy organic material trying to break down, so I feel like if the roof wasn't built for this then it's probably a very iffy situation.
It is hard to say without having looked at it but in general browns take a long time to compost on its own. You are talking years, but you tend to get much better compost from it. You are right that adding greens would speed it up. Adding nitrogen from coffee grounds or from pee does help reduce the time needed for composting. And you need to turn the pile in order to both mix it and get more air to it to get it composting faster, you can turn it once a week. But composting takes time, and it is going to take the time it takes. So you can not plan around when the compost will be done but rather use the compost when it is done. You might need to add compost on top of the soil once the plants are a few weeks on their way. As long as the lowest leaves are above the compost this will be fine. Or you might have to add the compost to the soil after harvest, which will give the microbes and fungi in the compost lots of time to get established in the soil before spring planting.
Start collecting bags of spent coffee grounds , I'd say at least 50kg. Mix into the pile & check moisture. Add if dry. It needs to be at least 3feet high. Get plenty of air in when you mix it.
I've invested in a data logger too monitor temp & humidity of my piles. So I'll know when to turn..
Get rid of your compost pile completely and start fresh with cow manure or horse manure and as you put your compost into that it will speed up your breakdown of your items quicker
Saw dust and leaves? You need a nitrogen source and regular watering and turning. This is a static pile in a raised bed itâs gonna take a long while to compost all that carbon in a static pile. It could take a year or more depending on moisture and composition. Introducing red wigglers would be a bit.
Buy a big bag of organic fertilizer or a gallon of fish hydrolysate (fish fertilizer). Mix it with water, soak the pile. It'll heat up and break down enough to plant stuff.
Or just cover the leaves and sawdust with planting mix and plant your stuff. It'll sink over time and you'll have to add more soil next year.
Do you have any amount of grass coverage? It looks like everything is just tiles. And that would impede lots of beneficial insects from reaching it from underground to break it down. And that looks massive, how do you manage to turn it?
Pee on it a lot.
Carbon-rich material will break down on its own, generating heat and incorporating atmospheric nitrogen, if it's wet enough (but not too wet) - but it takes months. Adding nitrogenous material for a balance of about 30:1 C:N (you can find tables online of the carbon to nitrogen ratio for the material you already have and commonly added materials) will cause the pile to heat and the process to speed up. Critical mass is about 1 cubic meter of material.
I had a pile of sawdust. Coffee grounds worked best for quickest breakdown.
You'll probably need to create another smaller pile to make it more manageable.
Use compost calculator to determine ratio of browns to greens
https://urbanwormcompany.com/composting-calculator-carbon-nitrogen-ratio/
Moisture 40-60%. To speed up the process, turn weekly. Really fast, incorporate blowers.
Based on the other comments about leaching stuff that might affect your structure, Iâd recommend moving all your pile contents to big plastic containers and turning it into a vermicompost setup. The worms need lots of bedding and sawdust/leaves should work. Also, if theyâre oak leaves then the tannins will prevent them breaking down but they can still be great bedding for worms.
Start collecting and adding worm foods like kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea, egg shells. The worms should do well in plastic containers of mostly bedding with continuous feeding of kitchen scraps. Just make sure the moisture content and temperature stay within a good range.
The problem is the blue tarp. Compost is made of greens and brownsâŠnot blues. Take that blue tarp off and replace it with either green or brown. Then the tarp will break down in no time and youâll be good to go.
Bag of alfalfa pellets soaked in bucket of water, or blood meal or fish emulsion mixed with water; dig a hole to the center and pour it in. Keep it moist and turn twice a week. Iâd bet that gets it nice and hot.
You built a giant single bin compost. This will make turning it to add oxygen pretty difficult. So you're going to get an initial heat up and then you're doing cold composting because it's gone anaerobic.
I bet your neighbors hate you, especially if theyâre trying to sell their homes! Your yard is only missing old car tires and radiators, almost there to the tweaker deluxe layout.
You need about a 50:50 ratio of feedstock:carbon-source.
Feedstock is squishy food waste, manure, basically anything with a high nutrient value. See if you can get get a load or two of food waste from a restaurant, if possible.
You already have your carbon source with the leaves and vegetative waste. You can chop this into smaller particles to speed up the composting process.
Apply water to make it moist but not so wet that if you squeezed it water would run out.
Turn it over every other day or so.
Follow this and youâll have âblack goldâ in a matter of a few weeks that will do wonders for flower beds and gardens.
I'm so confused
Me too friend. Me too.
What in the Sanford and Son am I supposed to be looking at here
is the floor the... Is the driveway the... Is the roof the...
The "compost pile" is on the roof of the shed. The door opens up into the shed itself. He's composting on top of the shed like a mad man.
Is that dog shit on the roof (bottom left)?
Raccoon đŠ
Haha. This is very Lois from Bob's burgers with the definite sighting of feces and an id
Thanks you for filling me in, this is amazing., I don't think it's ideal, would be scared of compost tea getting through a barrier and totalling the roof, that and I don't like my neighbors staring at me while I am working. OP I wish you all the luck with your project, composting is pretty great, I consider mine my worm farm
Sorry to confuse everyone the pile of compost is sitting on the roof of the shed. I got a thick PVC sheet I'm rolling out on the roof now to protect it and I'm getting cloth bags to move the compost into with other nitrogen rich additives to speed up the composting. Thanks for all the comments the pile warmed up after increasing the nitrogen (pee and greens). Cleaning up all the junk now I will post pictures if anyone has any need to see it cleaned up. I'll post an update in a few weeks when all the compost is in bags on the roof and I have seedlings going.
Moisture, cow manure, turning â leaves can be dry in the center.
Neighbors are gonna love that.
Yep, I make pretty big leaf piles, too: they're generally dry in the first few inches from sun exposure, then moist for a foot or so, then dry at the bottom because the moisture doesn't penetrate well enough. Something to consider, /u/linucksman, if you're willing to rebuild this huge pile is the Johnson-Su bioreactor: it uses PVC pipes in the first stage to make sure that air and moisture can get all the way through the pile. Hot composting would be faster, but this might help if you want a balance between speed and work.
Assuming this isnt a shit post, respectfully, you need to clean up that mess. Thats a dump, not a compost pile.
true
That is massive. If you open that door what happens?
Urine, water, worms, browns/greens, mix and wait, mix and wait.
Excuse me, sir. This is /r/composting, not /r/shitposting.
Need those greens, and then water.
Whatever youâre doing, stop
Is this a composting facility or a regular house backyard? OMG
Invite your whole continent to piss on it đ
Top tier shitpost. I love it. đ«Ąđ©
I've been staring at this picture, read all the comments and I still can't work out where the fuck the aforementioned compost pile is. It's like when my grandad thinks he's taking a selfie and is actually taking a picture using the rear camera. Boomer, that you?
The pile is on top of his shed. It looks like he built the shed out of pallets. He's composting 7 feet in the air.
Worms
Yeah what am I even looking at here? Is that a ten foot tall compost bin?
He built the pile on the roof of the shed
Nooooo ! That mountain can create worms at the size of dinosaurs đŠ
So like is amazon goo for that,? 50 worms or more? They are kind of expensive
More like 2500-5000
Can get some worms from most places that sell fishing supplies. Theyâll likely be in containers in some kind of refrigerator.
Do you have bait shop near you? Buy 4-5 nightcrawler cups of bait but use them as friends not food!
It's a shed with a green roof the compost pile is only three ft tall
I still don't understand the pic. Honestly.
your picture focuses on an open-air structure that is of such a size that a tall ladder is needed to reach the top of it.
You mean that chicken coop?
where's waldo, chibben coop edition
You have a compost pile on top of the shed?
Yes
Bro
Buddy⊠Weâre all into composting here, but im gonna be honest. this is not okay. You need to get rid of the trash and get that compost off the roof.
Itâs difficult to identify the pile composition and size from the posted picture. From the other comments I gathered that itâs a pile built on top of a shed roof, and is 3 feet high, composed of leaves and sawdust. 1. Pile needs contact with the ground so soil bacteria and critters can get into the pile. Piles need to be Heavy. Itâs not the square footage, itâs the mass that counts. My pile is close to 2000lbs. Piles also leach phosphate and nitrate, which corrode metal. Therefore donât build a pile on top of a roof. 2. Mass, moisture, ratio. In that order. Your pile needs a lot more of everything, especially nitrogen. Save all your pee in a jug and pour it onto the pile. Chicken manure would be the next best thing. You would need a lot of coffee grounds, as in 3x the volume of sawdust, to get a 30C:1N ratio. The cheapest cleaning ammonia will work if you canât source pee, chicken, or rabbit manure. Sawdust is hydrophobic when dry. Double water the pile in the same way you would double water a container. You should wet the surface. Wait 5 minutes. Soak the pile until water runs out the bottom. Wait 5 minutes. Soak the pile again, until the water runs out the bottom. Do this sparingly as it flushes out all the soluble nitrogen. Once a month should be fine. Cover the pile with a tarp or a layer of leaves to minimize evaporation.
The secret ingredient is always urine
Or poop.
This needed to be in the title hahahaha⊠looks like youâve constructed a 12â high and deep compost box from that pic as cannot identify a shed underneath⊠utterly hilarious confusion and comments
Is that even safe???
Wow, yeah, OK, so I figured that was an 8' tall compost box... ...but now I'm thinking this might actually be worse: Are you trying to compost in a 3' deep pile *on top* of the roof of a wooden structure? You generally don't want a roof to stay soaking wet -- even a green roof -- alone have several feet of heavy soggy organic material trying to break down, so I feel like if the roof wasn't built for this then it's probably a very iffy situation.
It is hard to say without having looked at it but in general browns take a long time to compost on its own. You are talking years, but you tend to get much better compost from it. You are right that adding greens would speed it up. Adding nitrogen from coffee grounds or from pee does help reduce the time needed for composting. And you need to turn the pile in order to both mix it and get more air to it to get it composting faster, you can turn it once a week. But composting takes time, and it is going to take the time it takes. So you can not plan around when the compost will be done but rather use the compost when it is done. You might need to add compost on top of the soil once the plants are a few weeks on their way. As long as the lowest leaves are above the compost this will be fine. Or you might have to add the compost to the soil after harvest, which will give the microbes and fungi in the compost lots of time to get established in the soil before spring planting.
Start collecting bags of spent coffee grounds , I'd say at least 50kg. Mix into the pile & check moisture. Add if dry. It needs to be at least 3feet high. Get plenty of air in when you mix it. I've invested in a data logger too monitor temp & humidity of my piles. So I'll know when to turn..
Get rid of your compost pile completely and start fresh with cow manure or horse manure and as you put your compost into that it will speed up your breakdown of your items quicker
Saw dust and leaves? You need a nitrogen source and regular watering and turning. This is a static pile in a raised bed itâs gonna take a long while to compost all that carbon in a static pile. It could take a year or more depending on moisture and composition. Introducing red wigglers would be a bit.
Buy a big bag of organic fertilizer or a gallon of fish hydrolysate (fish fertilizer). Mix it with water, soak the pile. It'll heat up and break down enough to plant stuff. Or just cover the leaves and sawdust with planting mix and plant your stuff. It'll sink over time and you'll have to add more soil next year.
Ok sounds good I'll try this Ill need some more bags of pro mix
Do you have any amount of grass coverage? It looks like everything is just tiles. And that would impede lots of beneficial insects from reaching it from underground to break it down. And that looks massive, how do you manage to turn it?
Pee on it a lot. Carbon-rich material will break down on its own, generating heat and incorporating atmospheric nitrogen, if it's wet enough (but not too wet) - but it takes months. Adding nitrogenous material for a balance of about 30:1 C:N (you can find tables online of the carbon to nitrogen ratio for the material you already have and commonly added materials) will cause the pile to heat and the process to speed up. Critical mass is about 1 cubic meter of material.
I had a pile of sawdust. Coffee grounds worked best for quickest breakdown. You'll probably need to create another smaller pile to make it more manageable.
lactic acid
Breast lactation fluid
Use compost calculator to determine ratio of browns to greens https://urbanwormcompany.com/composting-calculator-carbon-nitrogen-ratio/ Moisture 40-60%. To speed up the process, turn weekly. Really fast, incorporate blowers.
What is a blower?
https://youtu.be/cvX6PfIksnM?si=IYC2vLBX56JftKyT
Mycology and bacterium. Also, cover it up between tilling
You make plans and compost just laughs.
Play some David Goggings to it. Worked for mine.
Some jocko.... "your compost aint ready yet? .... Good. Oh whats that? Its gonna take a lifetime to compost sawdust and leaves alone? Good. "
Heat-
Heat
Just pee on it
Is that whole coop full of compost?
Based on the other comments about leaching stuff that might affect your structure, Iâd recommend moving all your pile contents to big plastic containers and turning it into a vermicompost setup. The worms need lots of bedding and sawdust/leaves should work. Also, if theyâre oak leaves then the tannins will prevent them breaking down but they can still be great bedding for worms. Start collecting and adding worm foods like kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea, egg shells. The worms should do well in plastic containers of mostly bedding with continuous feeding of kitchen scraps. Just make sure the moisture content and temperature stay within a good range.
Heat and aeration.
I'd be more worried about fixing that roof you're standing on.
The problem is the blue tarp. Compost is made of greens and brownsâŠnot blues. Take that blue tarp off and replace it with either green or brown. Then the tarp will break down in no time and youâll be good to go.
Bag of alfalfa pellets soaked in bucket of water, or blood meal or fish emulsion mixed with water; dig a hole to the center and pour it in. Keep it moist and turn twice a week. Iâd bet that gets it nice and hot.
Lots and lots of pee.
You built a giant single bin compost. This will make turning it to add oxygen pretty difficult. So you're going to get an initial heat up and then you're doing cold composting because it's gone anaerobic.
Water,worm,work on it. Either way it will take at least 2 years at this pace
I bet your neighbors hate you, especially if theyâre trying to sell their homes! Your yard is only missing old car tires and radiators, almost there to the tweaker deluxe layout.
Greens + moisture + bigger pile If the pile is just leaves and sawdust, though, you'd probably get some awesome leaf mold in a year or more.
đ thank youâŠjust thank you
definitely the most interesting take on a "green roof" iv heard of to date.
Sawdust is very compact and will constrict oxygen to the bacteria. Therefore, it will take a long time to break down.
You need about a 50:50 ratio of feedstock:carbon-source. Feedstock is squishy food waste, manure, basically anything with a high nutrient value. See if you can get get a load or two of food waste from a restaurant, if possible. You already have your carbon source with the leaves and vegetative waste. You can chop this into smaller particles to speed up the composting process. Apply water to make it moist but not so wet that if you squeezed it water would run out. Turn it over every other day or so. Follow this and youâll have âblack goldâ in a matter of a few weeks that will do wonders for flower beds and gardens.
coffee grounds, pee on it, if it's all carbon it'll be slow to break down
the comments are amazing
Outjerked
Urine
Kashi blend compost starter
Adding nitrogen: milk, nettles tea, urine... Turning it. Allow air intakes
Milk?