Compost Bin Fire - Dry Material Burned in Late Winter - February 2024

I was feeling pretty good about my prescribed burning of tiny piles of leaves and some perennial litter from last season.  I posted the details of it yesterday.  Over the weekend, I went out and did a little bit more burning.  I used my small hand rake to pull together a pile of (mostly) oak leaves - creating a little burn break from other leaf litter - and use my small propane torch to light-it-up.  

But, I think I got a little too cocky.  Burning and burning and burning.  And feeling good about returning the carbon to the soil via little ash piles.  All the while...cleaning up the beds a bit.  I was puttering around the beds making little piles and burning them.  They light up, then expire on their own when they exhaust all the material.  A little smoldering for a minute or two, then the piles of ash go dark.  And leave behind some white, burned out material.  

I found myself back by the compost bins, where I recently filled-them-up with a bunch of ornamental grass cut-downs that I piled on top.  A bunch of those reeds and dry, light-brown blades spilled out the front of the bins and ended up on the ground.  I used my rake to pull them into a little pile and started to burn those grasses.  They went up.  F A S T.  Pretty nice, I thought.  So, I pulled a little bit more of those grasses off the top of the bins and kept burning.  And I felt good.  I was reducing the pile a little bit, helping speed things up and...I suppose was feeling pretty complacent.

Why?  Because I was MAKING FIRE.   

A few of the dry flower heads from our hydrangeas (That I had previously piled into the compost storage bin) had fallen out and were hanging around the ground by the bins. I raked those into my pile and - POW - they went up.  

And then....

I made a mistake.

I spotted a layer of those hydrangea heads in the compost bin.  16-18" down from the top.  All tucked in against the frame.  

For some reason....without thinking too much...I took my torch to the hydrangea heads.  And...off the pile went.  I thought the heads would burn up and it wouldn't be a big deal.  But...as fire does...it didn't care what I thought.  It started to spread.  The storage bin is FULL of dry, aged material.  A full season of leaves.  Topped with a layer of dry, paper-like hydrangea blooms.  Topped with a foot-plus-thick layer of dried out ornamental grasses.  

Oh, crap.  

My hoses aren't set up for the season.  The water for the spigot is shut off (in the house, in the basement).  And, the yard hydrant hose (that has the potential to reach back to the bins) is in the garage.  So....there's no way to quickly get water to this emerging, compost-bin fire.  

I dropped my rake and turned off my torch.  And hustled into the house to start filling some bowls with water.  The KotBTs and Nat stepped in to help and we created a little bucket brigade.  The fire was spreading.  But, it wasn't intense.  It was a fire, though.  Ripping through the hydrangea flower heads.   The bins are PACKED in, without a lot of air gaps.  Over the past month-or so, I've filled this storage bin with so much winter-clean-up material that I've had to *push* everything down to fit in.  I think that pushing - and compression - is what helped me from seeing this fire go wild.  

Four-or-five kitchen bowls-worth of water that I both "threw" at the side of the bin *and* poured down from the top and the fire was out.  While I was adding the water, I was also using my rake to sift through the top layer of grasses to try to get the 8-gallons-or so of biosolids that I topped the bin with; in an attempt to smother the fire with dirt.  

With the fire out, what does the bin look like?  Here's the front - showing where the hydrangea flower heads burned out.  And, then the second photo shows the side, where the fire burned longer/wider. 

In the back of my head, I was (I think) figuring that burning a little bit of the compost bin isn't a bad thing - it is a form of decomposition.  But, I didn't think that the fire would get a little out-of-control.  Fortunately....this didn't quite reach 'out-of-control status', but I could see how it could end-up that way.  

This bin is my 'storage' bin - full of leaves.  And...a couple of seasons (Fall + Winter) of our kitchen scraps.  See this post/photo that shows a layer of kitchen scraps including egg shells, coffee grounds, vegetables, onion peels, avocado skins and more.  This layer is RIGHT above where the burning took place and I can't help but wonder if the inclusion of those greens (nitrogen) is what kept a lid on the fire from spreading upwards.  

The smell of burning compost isn't....super pleasant.  Perhaps it is the burning of biosolids along with food scraps that created a unique odor.    When everything was wrapped up, I stayed with the pile for another 10-15 minutes to make sure the fire was actually out (and not silently burning on the inside).  Nat came out to survey the damage and noticed the smell.  

And delivered a PERFECT line from Uncle Buck.  

I don't turn my compost enough, but maybe this fire will be enough to get me to turn the bins in the next few weeks - before Spring arrives - to see if I can get some decomposition going early this year.