It should jump-start all right. Nothing like fish soup and well-sweetened coffee to get things going! Seems an awful lot of water, though the excess should run off or evaporate quickly.

Pine needles can take quite a while to compost, there seems to be a wax-like coating to them that resists breakdown. In my heaps the little twigs broke down more quickly.

Right now I'm cleaning out the standalone freezer in the basement, so the compost is getting a lot of stuff I never thought to throw on before. Better compost than trash, right?

Yes that should do something but I hate to see people buying new stuff to put into a compost pile.

The can of fish was something that has languished in the pantry for almost 2 years and was getting ready to be out of date. And I only used the blender to break it up too fine for a rodent to really find. (not a normal procedure)

The pile is roughly 8x8x4 so the 5 gallons of water was to really get the bulk wet.

monk, what's it looking like? Did it help?

Certainly starting to warm up. The slugs,worms,and beetles are enjoying it greatly. Certainly smells like something cooking under the pile.

This might have been a try and failed adventure. (it'll eventually rot away)

Try urine. That should get the pile hot right away.

..
No bad experiments. Just more data.

Concurrence: don't buy stuff just to throw in compost & urine helps.

To sense
..

Well I rolled it over early this morning and it's HOT... (tons of heady,earthy steaminess) Smells just a bit fishy but not nearly bad enough to cause concerns. Some of the pine needles near the center heat are already barely recognizable. I'm thinking that by dousing pine needles with "near boiling" water might help cut the waxy coating?

Seems their moving on MUCH faster than usual.

Don't use boiling water. You will cook your microherd. Messing with compost is not rocket science. Be patient and turn for more oxygen. I think you have a good thing going there. You may need to adjust a bit but the basics seem about right. Don't overlook the use of urine. It is factually a very good additive in reasonable amounts. Your molasses and fish were excellent thinking. Black Strap Molasses in cattle grade is the finest if you can find it. It is usually found where cattle feed is made.

Oh no no boiling water on the pile. I've found that when your piling the pine needles pre-pile a nice fat drizzle of really hot water seems to speed the breakdown in the pile. Once the pile is assembled

I heard that large amounts of sugar not good for the growth of plants. I would put it in if I was going to throw it out, but I would not go out and buy sugar for the compost pile. Have you considered adding equal parts used coffee grounds from a coffee shop and something like bagged shearred wood? That always heats it up for me.

I posted this the other day under the topic "Spruce Chips" but I'll copy it here for you.

Did you get hit by the Nor'easter and lose a tree 2 weeks ago? I called it a hurricane in my post, only because we had hurricane-force winds and the tree damage all over the island and beach erosion was as bad as during Hurricane Gloria.

Anyway, as you will read, that pile of needles and twigs would have heated up within a week on it's own. Mine has been shrinking as I've been using it to amend my clay soil, but even so, inside the pile there is more fungus than needles at this point.

my original post:

We had a freak spring hurricane blow through Long Island, NY two weeks ago and our giant 65 year old Blue Spruce was uprooted. I had the tree removal company cut the bottom 9 feet of the trunk in half for me so I can strip off the bark and make 4 benches, and they chipped the rest of the tree up and I had them leave it for me as a mulch. Is was left in a giant pile over three feet high and 9 feet in diameter. The mix was layers of all wood chips in some areas and lots of needles and twigs in others. I have been separating it as best as possible, keeping the chips as mulch and and the green twiggy stuff as an amendment for my clay soil that is as hard as a rock.

Less than a week after the pile had been sitting there the green areas started steaming (I walked by at night and the cloud of smoke was so vivid that I thought it was my cat sitting on the pile). The chippy areas did not get hot, but the green areas did. As I dug into the pile a fungus (grey/blue in color) was beginning to develop. Now, just over two weeks later the inside of the pile is completely covered in this powdery fungus and when I move it huge puffs of dust blow out (it smells like cotton candy). I LOVE this stuff! I plan to dig down into one of my raised beds and bury it in the lower level beneath the dirt. I put a layer on top of a raised bed that I started last year with shredded leaves and grass clods; that should be awesome by spring 2011.

So far I have been mixing lime into it as I amend the soil, but now I am thinking that may kill the fungal activity. Does anybody know if this is the case? In the raised bed that will be planted this year I will have to add lime because it will otherwise be too acidic for veggies, but for the newer raised beds I can wait until fall to add lime, and in the clay soil the lime was only supposed to help break up the clay particles.

Anyway, this stuff is great as a compost, so I will be adding a bunch into my stupid plastic composter that doesn't seem to work (I think that the lid on it may be preventing the fungal spores in the air from getting inside, so I am hoping this will help). If it works I'll try to get some more from the tree removal service (since almost every single large pine tree on LI was knocked down during the storm).

Checked the pile again to day, and wow it's already broken down by 1/3 in size. Flipped it over and dug out the bottom layer and it's beautiful stuff. Added a couple of heavy handfuls of lawn clippings and plenty of blackberry canes chopped into 2-3" pieces.

Nat, I bought a gnarly chipper/shredder and I'm learning that ramial mulch (from fresh tree chippings) is a superior type of organic matter. I'll be chipping more this weekend. It does heat up rapidly.

Give it a good, long chance to decompose before burying it in the soil. You want to give the bacteria a chance to decompose as much as they can. Unfinished compost is hard on roots and seeds. But I think the lignin that remains can be broken down in the soil. As you have observed, lignin is broken down by fungi, and fungi live in deep soil.

Opened up the "fish pile" and moved things about. Found dozens of earthworms that are rather "short" but extremely fat (in ratio to length) the bottom 4-6 inches are black and fairly crumbly. the soil beneath the pile is dark black and the sweet. Worked a couple big shovelfuls of gourd hull shavings into the pile and re-configured it. Got about 2 gallons of usable compostings.