PSA: compost

Beautiful weather, the miracle of March and daylight savings have combined to allow me to enjoy the garden after work earlier in the year. But today I am dreading it, because I should really turn the compost, and I'm feeling lazy.

Doesn't matter: I did a little research because I was worried about composting some big box store paperwhites, and this is what I found out from a recent review of the literature [Noble and Roberts, "Eradication of plant pathogens and nematodes during composting: a review," Plant Pathology 53 (2004), 548–568.]

1. For 27 out of 32 pathogenic fungi, all six oomycetes, seven bacterial pathogens and nine nematodes, and three out of nine plant viruses, a peak temperature of 64–70°C and duration of 21 days were sufficient to reduce numbers to below, or very close to, the detection limits of the tests used.
2. Several plant viruses were temperature-tolerant. These were CGMMV, /Pepper mild mottle virus/, /Tobacco rattle virus/, ToMV and TMV. TMV requires a peak compost temperature in excess of 68°C and a composting period longer than 20 days for eradication. However, TMV is degraded in compost over time, and can be eradicated after a composting period of 26 weeks, even at low temperature (31°C). ToMV in infected seeds can withstand over 70°C in an incubator for over 20 days. [TMV= tobacco mosaic, TomMV= Tomato mosaic; 31 C= 87.8 F; 70 C = 158 F]
3. It is clear that the detection limits in most studies were quite poor, with infection levels of up to 5% likely to be undetected regularly.

My compost will never get hot enough no matter how much I turn it.