[Tania]

OK, the pile has cooled down to 90F 4 weeks after it was started. Mushrooms and plasmodium (aka slime mold) appeared overnight.

I am a bit disappointed, as it did not hold heat as long as I hoped for. Plus the slime mold is not something I wanted there. LOL.

The second pile that Stan keeps adding coffee and another wood chips layer once a week keeps warm on the outside and hot inside. It did not show any cooling down trend (3 weeks and counting). However, this pile is already 3' tall and getting larger.

The first pile did not receive any additional material after the end of the first week.

The conclusion so far -

I can probably expect about 3-4 weeks of 'hot bed' effect after building the initial 2' tall pile. This means that the seedlings can be brought outside in early March and left there for the night. (as opposed to early April when we can usually do that).

I can probably leave my potted pepper plants outside in such 'hot bed' up until early November. We usually bring them indoors in early October.

Makes me wonder if we could be more successful with building the hot beds with straw bales or hay bales... The only issue with these is we will not be able to incorporate coffee grounds into the bales (as they are all compressed), and will have to use expensive blood meal (although urine is another option)