Compost: Your Guide to Making Black Gold
- In This Quick Guide:
- What You Need
- Putting It All Together
- Composting Speeds
- When Is Your Compost Ready?
Making compost is easier than you think! Of course, as with any recipe, adding too much or not enough of an essential ingredient makes a difference in the outcome of the product. But if you add the right ingredients, layer them, keep them moist but not wet, and avoid putting in ingredients that could sour your compost, you’ll end up with black gold that is far superior to anything on the market.
What You Need
One of the most important parts of creating compost is choosing the right ingredients. Compost pile ingredients fall into two categories, the “browns” and the “greens.”
Brown Materials
Brown materials are high in carbon and provide energy. The most common browns to add to your compost pile are:
- Leaves
- Soil
- Woodchips and sawdust
A few words of caution if you’re using wood chips and/or sawdust:
- Compost wood materials separately, if possible. Wood takes a while to break down and pulls nitrogen from the soil, which means the nitrogen is not available to the plants that need it. Let wood materials sit in their own compost pile for a whole year before using them.
- Never compost material from walnut trees—they contain a substance that inhibits growth in many plants, and does not break down or go away in a compost pile.
- Hay and straw
Hay is great (especially spoiled hay because the weed seeds are more likely to be nonviable) but straw is even better. It’s higher in carbon, slow to decompose, and helps open up the soil structure after you have added the compost to your soil. If you can, use straw that’s been used as bedding or has gotten wet.
- Paper, paperboard, and cardboard
Cut paper, paperboard, and cardboard into small pieces first. Worms love shredded paper, and using this material will encourage them to make a home in your compost bin. Avoid papers that are high gloss or highly colored and cardboard with a glossy or waxy finish or with plastic tape on it.
- Eggshells, coffee grounds, and tea bags
Eggshells contain high amounts of calcium which is great for compost; but they take a long time to decompose. Do not throw whole eggs into your compost pile—rotting eggs will attract pests. For best results, crush only the shells and add them to the pile. Coffee grounds are high in nitrogen and can really get a compost pile cooking.
Green Materials
Green materials are high in nitrogen and provide protein for the microorganisms. The best and most common greens for your compost pile are:
- Grass clippings
Do not save grass clippings if you’ve recently applied fertilizer or weed killer to the lawn.
- Hedge trimmings
Small cuttings from shrubs break down easily, but shred larger branches before adding them to the pile.
- Kitchen scraps (mostly fruit and vegetable peelings)
Vegetable and fruit peelings are great for a compost pile. If you’re worried about critters finding them, simply dig them into the center of the pile and bury them. It’s best to use raw, uncooked peels in your compost as cooked fruits and vegetables may contain other ingredients, such as oil, that slow down decomposition. If you do compost cooked fruits and vegetables, do so in a covered compost pile. When choosing kitchen scraps, avoid meat and dairy products because they’re high in fat and can cause an unpleasant odor and could attract unwanted critters to your compost pile.
- Livestock manure
When adding fresh manure to your compost pile, cover it tightly with a tarp or plastic and keep it that way for about a month to help kill the fly larvae. Many farmers have a manure pile behind the barn, and manure from there—rather than fresh from the barn floor—would be partly aged already, which helps minimize the weed seed and fly problem. Do not compost dog or cat feces or litter box material. Waste from meat-eating animals contains organisms that pose a threat to human health.
Air and Water
Microorganisms need air to help the decomposition process. By turning the pile weekly, you allow air to reach different parts of the material. The easiest way to turn compost is to create a second pile so you can just flop the material from the first pile onto the second.
Do not allow your compost pile to dry out, but don’t soak it with water, either. If it seems a bit dry, give it a quick spray with a garden hose or empty one watering can onto the surface. Depending on where you live and the climate, you may need to give your pile a sprinkling as often as once a week.
Activators and Additives
A compost activator helps speed up the composting process and maintain a perfect pH balance in your compost pile.
From the feed store, cottonseed meal or soybean meal work just as well as commercial activators in most cases. If the compost is not intended to be purely organic, a great inexpensive activator is ammonium sulfate. If you use this, sprinkle it on twice a year. Another option is to use kelp or even cracked corn as activators.
Some great additives used to add bulk to the compost pile include prepackaged manure. Often at the end of the growing season you can find bags of manure, topsoil, potting soil, or other prepackaged soil additives such as kelp or dried blood meal on clearance. This is a great time to stock up. If you don’t have a compost pile set up but come across a great deal, simply set the bags aside, unopened in a shady spot. The manure will turn into compost in a few months, and then you can use it straight from the bag if you wish.
Putting It All Together
There are many ways to confine compost, but the easiest is a small, portable, premade compost bin. Once your bin is in place, you can begin tossing in your materials. There is no particular order in which this needs to be done, but it can be beneficial to adjust your composting materials depending on the needs of your soil. For example, if your soil is lacking in nitrogen, add more green materials to your compost bin.
Composting Speeds
Temperatures inside a compost pile can vary quite a bit, reaching as high as 160¡F. The hotter the pile gets, the faster it breaks down into compost, but the ideal temperature is between 110¡ and 140¡F. To check this temperature range, use a composting thermometer or an outdoor thermometer with a wire to bury in the pile.
Fast Compost
If you want to get on the fast track to making compost, remember that shredded or chopped materials break down faster than large chunks of materials. Avoid adding branches to your compost pile unless you chop them up or your compost pile is quite hot.
It can take anywhere from two weeks to several months for your compost pile to be ready to use. To speed up decomposition, turn it at least once a week. A pile of tightly packed materials decomposes more slowly than one that is loosely packed. Also, make sure the pile remains hot enough to keep the raw materials breaking down quickly. The more air that is incorporated into the pile, the hotter the pile will get and the faster the material will break down.
Slow Compost
Creating slow compost is the easier way to go. Choose an area that is out of the way, in full or part sun, keep the pile moist, and wait for it to turn into compost. Using this method, the process of going from raw materials to usable compost could take up to two years. The composting action is that much slower because the pile does not get turned.
When Is Your Compost Ready?
Compost that has finished breaking down is cured. It is okay to use compost that’s not fully cured as long as it isn’t hot. Compost that is too hot can “cook” plants’ roots. The only time hot, unfinished compost should be used is to warm the soil in the spring if there are no plants or seeds already planted in the area.
Compost that has a slight organic aroma may not be fully cured. An easy way to finish the process quickly is to put small amounts of the compost into gallon-size buckets with holes in the bottom and let them sit for several weeks. When the aroma fades, the compost is cured.
The curing process can take four to eight weeks while the pile maintains a temperature between 80° and 110°F. The appearance of the compost tells you when it’s cured; it should look dark and crumbly.
Finished compost is dark, crumbly, and easily scooped or shoveled. (Donna Chiarelli Studio)
As you can see, not only is making compost easy, it is economical and a great way to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Being green while making a green garden–what could be better!
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Year-Round Gardening by Delilah Smittle and Sheri Ann Richerson
