The Thermophilic compost pile is built!

Yesterday, I built the thermophilic compost.

There is a fancy spreadsheet from the Soil Food Web School I am using to help record many data points with the thermophilic compost that I am working on.

This spreadsheet has places to record time, temperature, types of materials used and even the pile's total volume among other data points. It even informs me on how to evenly build the pile by making four smaller batches. When building the pile I grouped together a certain amount of High Nitrogen materials, Regular Nitrogen and Carbon materials evenly into four separate batches and mixed accordingly into one bin/ metal cage..

Mixing these thermophilic compost piles is not fun. These materials are soaking over night in water and I have to lug them around the garden to dispense the water and carry the materials to the compost bin. Not for the faint of heart, especially when mixing in the manure. For the entire mixing process I simply dumped each bucket in accordingly and mixed in with a pitch fork. Got to be tall for this process since the cage is 4 feet tall.

I put a tarp over the bin and tented it. This is to help with moisture, heat and in ways bugs/animals.

Another part of this process that is not fun is the cleaning of the 5 gallon buckets and their lids that I used to soak all the materials in. It honestly takes as much time if not longer to clean these buckets, around 3-4 hours.

I am waiting 24 hours to record the temperature but currently it is still fairly low at 112 F around 23 hours in, but it should be ok. I am hoping I am at a temperature of 131-150 F before the end of the day.

This is all for an online trade school I am enrolled in called Soil Food Web School. I got a couple of certificates so far and if I can pull of two consecutive thermophilic compost piles in a row I will get another certificate.

The Girls say high!