How to make a hot compost pile by Gary MacDougall

Have you thought about making your own compost? Or have you made your own compost and it was a slow process, or in spreading it, you had weeds and volunteer veggies pop up. These are some of the reasons for building a hot compost pile.


Hot compost is an alternative to food waste ending up in landfills and producing lots of greenhouse gases. Instead, we can keep our green waste and hot compost it with free and local ingredients that make an amazing free amendment for our entire yard.

Hot compost ensures you are killing weed seeds, veggie seeds, and especially a disease that spread the season before. We saw diseases like powdery mildew on squash and downy mildew on our onions due to the cold wet beginning to summer. Getting your compost pile above 130 degrees ensures all weed seeds and disease will die.

You will need green waste like veggie scraps, fresh grass clippings, and chicken manure to build your hot compost. We also pick up horse manure adding volume to the pile. Brown materials or things that are high in carbon are leaves and woodchips. I prefer using leaves mulched up as I find they help heat the pile up best.

If you don’t have chickens that is ok. I encourage people to collect their green waste in a green bin. When it is full it is time to make a hot compost pile.

Check out the upcoming video on when we flip the compost.

And join our Facebook group Grow the food you love.
facebook.com/groups/growthefoodyoulove