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Compost Horror

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

Dear friends,

Thre must be something terribly wrong with my compost, and I hope you can
help me.

I have a nice composter:  It's a kind of well-insulated redwood half-barrel
with dirt and crumbly black peat on the bottom, and a plastic dome that
goes on the top to conserve heat and moisure (greenhouse effect.)  I'd been
putting in lots of crushed dry leaves as well as a modest amount of kitchen
scraps, keeping it a bit moist, stirring it up regularly for aereation, and
admiring how nicely it was heating and how quickly the leaves were
"disappearing."

Now all of a sudden it is crawling with a horrible life-form of some kind. 
It's not worms, or wood-slugs, or wood-fleas or even maggots (I know them
when I see them) but clumps of hundredfold-wriggling things, so many and so
squimy it looks like something from a horror movie.

My guess is that it's the larva of something I do NOT (!) even want to see
the adult form of.

I thought, "It's just not gettting hot enough in there anymore" so I added
a commercial compost-heater-upper which contains the right kind of
microbiostuff plus high-nitro nutrient ingredients like peanut meal.
Some of it I poured right onto the ---ugh!  horrible squirm-clumps!--- then
added crushed leaves and water, and stirred a lot.

That seemed to help some, but there's still a LOT of survivors.

I thought compost piles were supposed to get hot enough to kill insects and
insect eggs.

What am I doing wrong?  I don't want to use an insecticide, of all things! 
Help!

Julianne the Squeamish


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