Does anyone hot compost?

[fleariddenmoggie]

I am thinking about a hot composter and just wondering whether they are worth it.

Following as I.rhinking about it too.

We have one. We only got it in June, so early days.

We were having some work done on our garden so put it in the garage (its not recommended but we wanted to get it started). You have to mix cardboard pieces and bark chippings with the 'green' if you have no 'brown' material which we didnt. Ours went striaght up to 20 degrees then up to 40 for a while then back to 20, where it has stayed.

Earlier this week I pulled out 4 bags of mulch like material which I put on the garden, but it wasnt actually compost.

Not sure really how to get it to make proper compost. The jury's out at the moment. We never put in food waste which I know you can. No worms either of course.

Watching this thread with interest!

My Gran swore by Garotta - it gets things warm apparently.

www.gardenhealth.com/garotta-compost-maker

I don’t have one, we do normal compost. But my friend is trying to convert me to a hot composter. She puts alL food waste in the hot bin and gets amazing compost. Fish bones, leftovers, the lot. They do use cardboard to mix in. It gets to a really hot temperature and the turn over is really quick.

We have a hot bin and it’s greasy if you’re short on space. We don’t run it entirely as a hot bin as we’re up north and it can’t maintain temp in our winters. However, it gets over 40 degrees in summer and composts much faster than a normal bin. We use it for food waste but only veg based foods. We tried meat and ended up with foul smelling grimness. We put a huge amount of veg peel, cooked veg etc in. The design works well to prevent pests and strong odors. It took some time to get used to but we love it now. Doesn’t make fine compost so I still buy in stuff for seed planting but we get loads that we use on our beds and in pots. It’s very rich so good for veg growing! Get loads of tiger worms in there in summer too, guess they like the heat!

*great, not greasy

I haven't really had any success with mine. But, reading the above, posters seem to be using household waste, whereas I have loads of garden waste eg peas and bean plants, flowering plants cut back at end of season. Maybe household waste is drier than garden waste as I always had juice running out the bottom.
I never had enough dry matter though now buy the odd newspaper so maybe I should try again. But I did wonder how much good all that newspaper ink would be doing to the soil as it seemed to need more newspaper than green waste.
I have 2 other ordinary bins on the go one of which is covered so I hope it's ready for use in the spring.

My friends cut up loo roll tubes are add them to the hot bin. Apparently it helps.

Egg boxes too

A hot composter has a 200 litre capacity - that's an awful lot of eggboxes/loorolls.
I'm sure they are good but you would need to be very committed to filling it with the right things. There's only me and DH so would struggle to fill it. Maybe people gradually top it up but then it wouldn't have the speedy result. I'm a disappointed user - maybe I need to try harder.

We put all our food waste in ours, except bones. I mix it with finely shredded paper, leaves, weeds, some garden soft cuttings, not twigs.

The best thing to get is up to high temperatures is some grass cuttings, but not too much.

Mine is cool at the moment, but I dug out all the compost a couple of months again and restarted it.

We’re not particularly dedicated which is why our doesn’t run as a true hotbin- it was a lot of faff to maintain the temperature as specified. We just shove veg waste, garden waste and leaves in with the odd bit of paper/cardboard when I remember. It’s still quicker than a regular compost bin and we can have it close to the house without too much worry about smells. If I was really short of space I’d go with a bokashi.