How to Make Compost

Composting is a method of making the natural process of decay go faster. It converts organic waster to a kind of mulch that is useful for soil conditioning and fertilizing. It takes about two years for leaf waste to decompose naturally. However, composting can take as little as fourteen days under close human supervision. Most people choose to let their compost work a little more naturally, but it's still a shorter time to the finished product when you use a compost pile or bin than if you simply allowed the organic materials to decay on their own.

There are lots of things you can compost, including yard waste like plant stalks, twigs and branches, leaves, and grass clippings, as well as food leftovers like scraps from fruits and veggies, coffee grounds, and the shell from eggs and nuts. You can also compost straw, bone meal, manure from vegetarian animals, and even shredded paper. Avoid putting materials that can attract pests or promote disease in your compost pile. That include manure from people and carnivorous pets like dogs and cats, weeds that have developed seeds in them, and infected plants. Avoid putting in too much of materials that will change the chemistry of the pile, such as sawdust, ashes from the fireplace, plants that have been chemically treated, and newsprint. A good mix of materials that provide a lot of nitrogen (green materials), like food waste, and materials that hold moisture and provide bulk (brown materials), like grass clippings, is important. Too much of one or the other, and your compost pile will slow down a lot.

You can use an unprotected pile for composting, or enclose your compost to save space and protect it. Be sure that your pile can still be turned, and that you can remove finished compost. Don't make your enclosure too big (no taller than six feet high, or oxygen loss will occur) or too small (less than three cubic feet of compost will not decompose correctly.) Then, add your materials, well mixed. If there's not a lot of moisture in them, water the pile to get things going. Maintain your compost by mixing routinely, and occasional watering if it gets drier than a damp sponge. Water keeps things working properly.

After a while, your compost pile will become warm, decompose, and produce great finished compost for use on your garden, lawn, and other areas. How do you know when it's done? Finished compost is brown and crumbly, has no odor of decomposition, and the individual components aren't recognizable. If you've ever dug around in forest soil, you'll recognize a similarity between the top layer of that and compost that's ready to use. Depending on conditions, finished compost will usually be ready in a few months. However, if you don't attend the pile and turn it regularly, or use a lot of unshredded material, it can take as much as a year.

Composting Related Article

How to Build a Compost Bin
If you've been thinking about taking up composting, one of the things you'll need is a container to keep your pile in. There are almost as many ways to create one as there are people with compost piles, including wooden...

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