Re: Compost
 

As you found out,...large compost heaps with a lot of shavings, and little moisture can lead to spontaneous combustion. This approach does not lead to good compost, and can burn your house down. Using heat from a "normal" heap?: Mannny moons ago, I knew an enterprising guy who grew all his early veggies in a "hot bed". He piled manure several feet deep in a framed pit, keeping the topmost level a couple feet below grade. Covered all with old glass windows that could be raised partway on warm days. His diligence in opening/closing the cold frame resulted in some very nice crops. The North Shore of the St. Lawrence River would dip to 30 below. These kinds of cold frames/"hot beds" were often known to Old Timers, who used the heat from the manure, long before the invention of heat cables, etc.

Re: Compost
 

A thorough plant propagation book will discuss this and provide drawings, for example: Plant Propagation by Alan Toogood

Re: Compost
 

Don't start your compost pile under or near any trees, or the roots will find it and grow up through it! If you already have established banana plants, I would just mix and spread the ingredients around the plants, and use as a mulch. It will break down slow and feed the plants at the same time.

Re: Compost
 

I visited one of the stately homes in england a few years back and they had re-created their walled garden as it was 150 years ago.

A part of the garden was a green house and outside the greenhouse were stone boxes?? about a metre X metre X metre with a double glass top - the old gardeners used to grow their pineapples in there and fill with horse manure - the manure heated up and kept the pineapples warm and helped warm the greenhouse

Re: Compost
 

When I make my compost piles, I'll add things as I generate them. I also do the green/brown mix, but then I'll add a shovel of dirt every so often for the microorganisms that will start the works a cookin'. Something like green-brown-green-soil-green and then start over. I'll also use concrete reinforcing wire with 6'x6' squares for my cage.

Another thing that'll work is a green compost of clover, legumes, or vetch, grown right in the beds, to add nitrogen to the soil and then till it under to add further nutrients to the top layer.

This is a great thread! Thanks!:woohoonaner:

Re: Compost
 

Yup, F.J. Haydn had a hot bed in his Austrian garden, 240 years ago.