Compost Education

The Perfect Pile was a major feature of the Compost Fest 26 last weekend. It's is a demonstration of the wide variety of materials that can and should be composted. It’s also a demonstration of good composting technique. It’s unusual in that rarely do composters assemble such a large variety and amount of ingredients for assembling at one time. The greatest number of composters are backyard composters who attend their pile when they have materials to add, often 2-3 times/wk. The Perfect Pile is rare in that it’s all there, including the helpers to shovel the ingredients. This allows micro layering (mixing small quantities of major and minor materials including water). This means the pile will be ready to break down all the way without the need to turn the pile. In such a small pile one turn or mix of the pile would be ideal to incorporate the dry “skin” where composting will be very slow.
In the photo are food scraps, (rotten romaine lettuce) , ground leaves, coffee grounds, brewers grains, human hair, sheep’s wool, Biochar, cotton blue jeans, blocks of mushroom substrate, etc. Compost, the word, derives from composite- a mix of many ingredients.