Your "base pile" is the main housing unit for all of your symbiotic creatures and cultures. With all of the ingredients to make living soil in place, these workers will break down the minerals and nutrients, and transform it into living soil.

When first constructing your base pile, layer the different ingredients in 6-inch carbon layers and 1-inch mineral layers...

The diagram above shows a 3-ft by 4-ft area* with cinder blocks on the perimeter and a pond liner covering the bottom. From there, you're piling 6-inch of carbon material (cardboard, newspaper, hay, wood chips, dry leaves...) between 1-inch layers of mineral material (sand, rock dust, local crushed rock...), until you have a 3-ft high pile.

You will be burying about 5 gallons of food scraps into your base pile every couple of weeks in different locations in the pile, as shown in the next lesson.

* The area is flexible, depending on how much space you have, and how much material you have to compost.