January is the month for plans, and this year's plan is the compost heap. Last season it was mostly pine needles, and a year later it still looked like pine needles.
Why needles are slow
They are coated in wax, low in nitrogen and very tough. On their own they can take two or three years to break down. The acidity is not the problem — as the needle mulch experiment showed, it mostly disappears as they decompose.
The new plan
- Two bays instead of one. One being filled, one resting, turned into each other in spring.
- Needles as a minority. At most a quarter of the volume, mixed with kitchen scraps and grass from the neighbour.
- Shred first. Running needles through the mower with the bag on makes a big difference.
- Cones go elsewhere. They make excellent kindling and do nothing useful in compost.
What I expect
Usable compost by late summer, not in two years. If it works, the finished compost goes into the planting holes under the pines — the needles going back to where they fell, just in a more useful form.