Question

I know that you probably get the same result in the long run whichever method you choose, but hot composting gives you something else. A real sense of achievement when you get the pile to heat up.

Glenn, I thought of you when I saw this question! :-) I hope to hear more from you here. I also think of you whenever I see Parsnip seed. :-) I will be back with a considered response soon. Spent the blue sky morning biking around town to get wholesome fresh green grass clippings to designer-mulch my upcoming milpas garden plot. There's something satisfying about biking along looking absolutely Asian with three giant bags of grass clippings hanging off the handlebars & its easy because they're so light. :-)

Although the method must be selected depending upon your objectives and needs but Hot composting in general is much better. It offers many advantages like works for whole year, free from odors, rich compost basically etc.

Alan, those good attributes & more are true of advanced methods of cold-composting! I plan to write a blog post in the foreseeable future about my ten-years' experience with *so-called* cold composting - plus recent research findings - since the comment/software truncates comments randomly. Today they cut the same organic grass again as above & Angel delivered it to the gardens - with a promise of more from him & his brother!

Roger, I am new to this forum, but love the information and collaboration. I have been composting commercially for over 20 years and consult with large scale farms and backyard composters. My belief is that getting a pile hot does a few things. 1. It kills pathogens that can be put back into your soil and eventually end up in your food. 2. It will speed up the process and also weed out harmful microorganisms. 3. When making a hot compost pile and turning it often it provides consistency to the end compost product so when you plant in it or put it around plants it will preform the same from one plant to the next. Love the forum and the process of composting!

Welcome seangardener ! Your point 1. is timely for our community food bank garde, but I am thinking of plant pathogens rather than human pathogens. Last year they were given a big box of compost that is now known to have carried tomato leaf curl into the garden - where it also affected rhubarb, beans & peas to some extent. I have a private plot there in a program for people who do not currently have their own land. My garden will still be beautiful & productive with diseased Scarlet Runner Beans, because I have planted many good crops that are not susceptible to tomato leaf curl. For the moment, I am experimenting with adding microbial soil innoculant & surround-planting with innoculated Dutch clover to see if we can make any difference via the microbial life in the soil. And I have a query in to Paul Stametz @ Fungi Perfecti on that topic which will be answered in due time. Here is a question for your history of expertise in composting >>> the garden director has said they may excavate the beds that got this bad compost. Have you ever had experience with solarizing soil to eliminate a specific pest? The process has always looked cumbersome & iffy to me. Any cues toward a cure or a good experiment would be most welcome. :-)

Hi folks, first post from me here in down under South Africa. I never put any decease plants in my compost. I will put weeds in a hot compost pile which kill the seeds. I have a question though regarding onion and citrus waste that is not supposed to go into a compost heap wether hot or cold I don't know and also if this is only applicable to earth worms in the pile. Any suggestions?

There’s more to home composting than leaves, grass clippings, and kitchen scraps. In a handful of brown-black matter exists an ecosystem of fungi, bacteria, enzymes, sugars, and nutrients. While millipedes, earthworms, and sow bugs make their way through the organic soup of garden refuse, it’s the unseen army of microscopic creatures that does most of the work of breaking rough stuff into compost. It’s that finished black gold and its benefits to our garden that we clearly see. A cold composting system is one in which organic waste is simply dumped in a pile to decompose. The gardener expends little or no energy managing the pile and just waits for it to decompose. Hot composting requires a system that raises temperatures high enough and for a long enough time to destroy weed seeds and plant pathogens. This requires some work on the part of the gardener, either up front with careful layering of materials, or later on with maintenance of pile temperatures. In between the two techniques are numerous degrees of intervention.