Keep Your Compost Cookin'....

July's heat will keep your compost bins cooking.
It's important to keep air circulating within it, so if you haven't purchased a pitchfork yet, put together a roll of quarters and head to the hardware store to pick one up.

Here are some tips taken from Organic Gardening Magazine that is always worth reviewing:
1. Shred and chop.
Shred or chop materials as finely as you can before mixing them into the pile. For example, you can chop fallen leaves by running your lawn mower over them. The same strategy applies to kitchen scraps and the like. “The smaller, the better” is the rule for compost ingredients. (This is an important consideration for the worm farmers.)

2. Mix dry browns and wet greens.
The two basic types of ingredients for making compost are those rich in carbon and those rich in nitrogen. Carbon-rich materials, or “dry browns,” include leaves, hay, and straw. Nitrogen-rich materials, or “wet greens,” include kitchen scraps and grass clippings; these work best when used sparsely and mixed in well so they don’t mat down. Your goal is to keep a fair mix of these materials throughout the pile.

3. Strive for size.
Build the pile at least 3 × 3 × 3 (or 4) feet so materials will heat up and decompose quickly. (Don’t make the pile too much bigger than that, though, or it will be hard to turn.) Unless you have this critical mass of materials, your compost pile can’t really get cooking. Check the pile a couple of days after it is built up—it should be hot in the middle, a sign that your microbial decomposers are working hard.

4. Add water as needed.
Make sure the pile stays moist, but not too wet. (It should feel like a damp sponge.) You may ned to add water occasionally. Or, if you live in a very wet climate, you may need to cover the pile with a tarp to keep it from becoming too soggy.

5. Keep things moving.
Moving your compost adds air to the mix. You can open up air holes by getting in there with a pitchfork. Even better, shift the entire pile over a few feet, bit by bit, taking care to move what was on the outside to the inside of the new pile, and vice versa. Or consider using a compost tumbler, a container that moves the materials for you when you turn it.