"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...
"hob" wrote in message
. ..
Hi

I have been gardening for nearly 40 years, and two years ago I started a
compost bin for my lawn clippings.

I have two bins - one is a cylinder made of garden wire, 4 feet across
and
stands about 5 feet high.
The other is made of open-spaced planks and is 3 feet by 6 feet by 4
feet
high.

Both were filled again last year, the rectangular one with primarily
grass
clippings across the year; the cylindrical one with about a 50-50 mix of
finely shredded dropped maple leaves and grass clippings with a
hand-held
spread's worth of 10-10-10 every three inches of depth, watered to be
sure
it was moist around mid-September. They were turned once and twice last
year.

This early spring, I go out in the cold and check, expecting them to be
frozen solid, and they were loose and warm inside - they were busy
cooking.

But now, a few weeks later, they are definitely cold and moist inside,
and
the mix still looks like partly moldy grass and leaf shred. It
definitely
isn 't dark compost.

Since the microbes had fertilizer, moisture, no packing down, and time,
I
would have expected more breakdown, or at least the mix to not be warm
at
the end of winter and then cold now.


Any ideas as to why they stopped working, and/or what am I missing and
what
should I change, if anything ?


It's supposed to be built up in layers. The grass bin, in particular, is a
problem because a pile of just grass tends to seal its own insides, and
you
get anaerobic decomposition (relative absence of air).

Thanx for the input - some more background -
It was not "sealed" this year - I had had that the previous year where
too much "just grass" made it "heavy" and sealed it, as you say. So I kept
if from packing down when I put the mower's bagfuls in, and I mixed in some
of the previous year's dried shredded leaf I had kept in bags for mulch, etc
(my mower shreds dried leaves into bits about half the size of a dime).
And being in the garden cloth seems to keep it from getting soggy.

I did not layer it per se, as it was mixed with a pitchfork about once a
month.

Re-mix it all, making
alternating six inch layers of green & brown matter (dried leaves &
stems),
with whatever kitchen scraps you want to add within the layers. The brown
matter is difficult at certain times of year, obviously, since you don't
always have falling leaves. One way around this is to save surplus dried
leaves in OPEN bags in the garage, so you have a supply to add later.