Making Great Compost

Last year, our church did something called a "Garden Tour." They arranged a walking tour of the best gardens in the neighborhood and pointed out things that each gardener did well. One woman focused on great soil, and emphasized the use of compost. She said, "No garden is complete without a compost pile!" 

Matt and I have been putting all of our yard waste into the city's "Yard-Waste Recycling Program," which uses the waste to make and sell compost. We also find ourselves buying bags of gardening or potting soil each year. It occurred to us that we could stop spending a fair amount of money on both the recycling can & and the bags of soil if we put our yard waste to better use in our own compost bin.

Compost is a soil conditioner, mulch and fertilizer all wrapped into one. It feeds the soil microorganisms that help plants stay healthy, adds nutrients to the soil, and helps clay soil drain better and sandy soil retain water. Plus, composting reduces your contribution to the local landfill.

We found this large 80 gallon, rotating, composting bin at Costco for about $100. We picked up a composting agent at the IFA, and we also bought some worms to through in the composter too.

I'm new to this whole process, so I've been reading up on how composting is done. These are the tips I've found...

7 Steps to Great Compost
*Breaks down fast and never smells bad.

1. Buy or create your compost bin, and choose a site that's handy to your garden and kitchen, yet out of plain sight. *Because my garden and kitchen are at opposite ends of our property, we put the composter on the edge of the garden.

2. Add the right ingredients: The two basic elements that make up compost are green garden debris (grass clippings or old annuals) and brown garden derbis (dry leaves). Green ingredients are high in nitrogen and brown materials are high in carbon. Adding too many greens can make the pile smell bad. You can also add vegetable and fruit waste such as banana and orange peels, potato peels, scraps, etc. DO NOT add animal waste, meats, oils, dairy, diseased plants, weeds that have gone to seed, or plants treated with pesticides or herbicides to your compost.

3. Have the right balance of ingredients: Compost piles with a balance of one part green to two part brown materials break down fastest. Continue adding greens and browns until the pile is about 3 cubic feet (3 ft. x 3 ft. x 3 ft.). Piles of this size heat up quickly and break down faster. You can also speed up the process by breaking down materials before adding them to the pile. For example, if you run over that pile of dead leaves with lawn mower before composting, it will break down to compost more quickly.

4. Add in a shovelful of finished compost or garden soil to help kick start the microbial activity in your pile. *This is where we also added the worms and the composting agent.

5. Add the right amount of moisture: Compost also needs the correct amount of moisture to breakdown. Compost with the right moisture level should feel like a damp, wrung-out sponge. Too much moisture can cause temperatures to fall within the pile (and make it smell). Too little moisture slows down the decomposition rate and keeps the pile from heating up. Check your compost pile's moisture level once a week and adjust it if necessary by adding water to increase moisture or more browns to help dry the pile out.

6. Turn the pile once a week to move material from the outside of the pile in. Turning also keeps the pile from compacting, which reduces airflow and slows down decomposition.

7. Use it when ready! You should have finished compost in about two months (60-70 days.) You'll know your compost is finished when it no longer heats up, and you can't identify any of the original materials. The compost should be dark brown, moist and earthy smelling. Compost at the bottom and middle of the pile typically "finishes" first. Dig finished compost into your garden's soil. You can use partially composted material as mulch.


*Final Note: Right now, our composter is largely filled with dead leaves (brown waste) and very little green material because the weather isn't suited to mowing the lawn. I added water, worms and composting agent today, but I'm hopeful that spring will get under way so we can add grass clippings soon. However, in the future I'm anticipating a shortage of brown waste. Maybe we can become the "nicest" neighbors by offering to rake up the neighborhood leaves and take them off everyone's hands. ;D