Compost piles may be planned or they may just happen. In one very real sense the forest floor is a compost pile. Dig below the top half inch or so and you find compost formed and forming. What we think of as the compost pile is in its best form the carefully thought out imitation of what has been going on in nature since before the beginning of time.
There are both planned and unplanned compost piles around my home. The area where I prepare wood for burning and for wood turning has several pile of shavings and chain saw chips from cutting the wood. Some of these piles have been there for five years or more. At the bottom of these piles it is rich and dark and earthy smelling where the compost has formed. People think that it takes long years for wood shavings to break down but for many species of tree that is not so. At the lumber mill where piles of sawdust are high and the bottoms are compressed from the weight of tons of material, it may take a long time for composting to happen, but many trees are designed by God or nature, depending on your interpretation, to rot quickly. These are trees like the poplar and birch that come quickly after a fire and die and rot quickly to enrich the forest floor.
Some of these unplanned compost piles get used for mulch on the gardens. The rest are moved to the formal compost pile out back. This is a three compartment bin and what most would think of as a compost pile. Actually, it is more planned than strictly necessary. A pile of plant material will gradually rot into compost as long as it has moisture available. The bins simply make the organization easier and the appearance keeps my wife happier.
An organized pile composts quicker and may make better compost if it is ever possible to have bad compost. At the side of the bins is an informal pile of shavings from the wood turning to be used as brown material for the pile. Autumn leaves collected and piled would do as well as might old straw or the like. The first compartment stores material as it is gathered for the pile. Every addition of green material like garden waste or kitchen trimmings is matched with an equal amount of shavings. Gradually the compartment fills and when it has it is turned into the second compartment. I think of this turning which mixes the materials, adds air and allows for moisture to be checked as the real building of the pile. If I turn the pile from compartment two to compartment three and back again every three or four days, I can have finished compost in two to three weeks. Then it is time to make another compost pile.
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