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Old February 25, 2012   #6
Petronius_II
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Albuquerque, NM - Zone 7a
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The main rationale for "hot composting" as in a compost pile is to achieve a good healthy balance of beneficial microorganisms. When you start with a nice moist piece of organic matter like a banana peel, and leave it out in the open air to decompose, every kind of microorganism under the sun can and will settle on it and set up housekeeping, and some of them are bound to be microorganisms you don't want in your garden soil.

But hey, it's a microorganism-eat-microorganism world, and for some reason the really nasty microorganisms like fusarium and verticillium don't tend to survive the composting process very easily. The "hot composting" process tends to leave an end product that is chock full of nice friendly bacteria, the kind you want in your garden soil.

Having said that much, there is also "cold composting," which happens all along the bottom layer of a layer of mulch that you lay around your plants. Like Ruth Stout with her spoiled hay mulch.

Cold composting can also be achieved by burying fresh organic matter. In alkaline soil, a thin layer of coffee grounds buried about 3 to 5 inches deep will decompose very quickly, lower the pH a teensy bit (hence not necessarily recommended for acid soil,) and also attract earthworms from all over, which is exactly what happened several years ago when I buried coffee grounds in one bed and planted cucumbers on top of them. I checked the soil after harvesting, and there were earthworm tunnels all over.

This technique for cold composting is also a good way to distribute smallish quantities of bone meal. I wouldn't for a moment hesitate to add a little pureed banana peel to the soil. A few little bits of finely chopped or pureed citrus peel are pretty good also.

Last edited by Petronius_II; February 25, 2012 at 12:20 AM. Reason: basic proofreading and addendums
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