Composting: Your Complete Guide in Three Steps

Taking the Ew Out of Compost

One of my favorite things to do is to walk out into my garden and pick and eat. It is one of the most rewarding feelings of instant gratification to pick a cucumber off the vine and pull a few radishes up then take them to my kitchen and cut them up for a snack for my family. But then I’m left with radish tops and the ends of a cucumber, instead of throwing those away and adding to the garbage pile I get to take those back to my garden and add them to my compost pile where they will break down and give new life. Composting is a wonderful thing and if you’ve been around with us for a bit then you know we love our soil! Healthy soil supports abundant plant growth, it reduces pests, diseases, and weeds. It is the base of a good garden, and compositing is a fantastic way to take care of your soil and reduce your waste production. By composting, you can grow a more sustainable garden and participate in one of nature's most powerful processes, decomposition. We love the old saying “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” It's so true eggshells are my gold!

If you have tried before and failed, ending up with a pile of stinky rot, or thought about it but you got lost in the scary world of rotating composting bins, here is your guide to successful and easy composting. In three steps you can reduce your waste and create nutrient dense food for your gardens. One: set up your compost bin, two: add your organic material, three: aerate the compost.

The Set Up

First, we are going to break down what composting to its most basic level and key ingredients. Composting breaks down organic material into a form that plants can use, you want it to occur faster than it would naturally happen. Your perfect compost pile will consist of 5 ingredients: Browns, Greens, water, air, and heat! 

• Browns are the dead stuff: dead leaves, branches, shredded paper, cardboard etc. Browns add carbon to your compost pile. 
• Greens consist of the fresh stuff: grass clippings, vegetable waste, fruit waste, and egg shells all fall in to into the greens category. The greens are what add nitrogen and other minerals to your compost. 
• Water is just water; it is very important to speed up the process of decomposition that the organic matter stays damp. If you think about it, it’s like when you lift a big dead branch and underneath the soil is damp, there are lots of bugs, and the bottom of the branch has started to decompose because the conditions are right. 
• Air is one of the lesser talked about ingredients but also important because the hard-working microbes that are breaking down the organic material require oxygen from air.
• Heat is the other less discussed ingredient because if you have a healthy compost pile you will not have to manage the temperature at all, it will heat up naturally. It’s important to know that a hot compost pile is a happy compost pile.

Next let’s discuss the tools you’ll need. You don’t need much for healthy compost but the basics are vital for success. 

• The right location: a shady spot that is dry but near a source of water because you might need to add a little extra water.
• A large container of some kind: this could be a square space on the ground with a wooden fence around it, a wired in space, or a specially bought plastic bin with a lid. Any of these will work, your management of the pile is more important than the bin.
• A stick for aerating your bin: this can be a wing-digger, a strong straight stick, or a corkscrew tool.
• Organic Material

Now you should be ready with a compost bin of your choosing in a shady dry spot of your yard within reach of your hose and in your tool shed a tool for aerating the soil. You are ready to start step two! 

Adding Organic Material

Try to have separate containers for your brown and green material that you fill and then empty into your compost bin in layers. In your compost bin start with a layer of sticks and branches on the bottom for 4 to 6 inches. Once you have a layer of brown add a few inches of greens on top, grass clippings are great for this but also garden waste. If you're anything like me there is at least one basil plant you let go to flower and that plant is perfect for your compost bin, once the pollinators have had a chance to enjoy the flowers! Remember to try to add brown and green ingredients in equal weight, which will mean that your green layers are smaller than your brown layers. As you add brown layers dampen it with some water from the hose as needed. End your compost with a carbon layer (brown layer) to retain the heat and keep bugs away.

So to review two containers one for browns and one for greens then as they fill dump them into your compost bin in equally weighted layers with water to dampen them in between as needed. Tip: If your compost gets too wet you can add more browns to absorb the extra moisture.

Now that you have that going onto the last step, aeration! 

Aeration

After about 3 weeks of adding organic material your compost pile should be in full swing. You want to give the microbes time to work before you need to intervene. As they work, they break the material into smaller and smaller pieces, these small pieces can start to get compacted leaving no room for air bubbles. This is the reason compost piles stink! To avoid suffocating your microbes you need to get your aeration tool of choice out of the tool shed and get to work on your compost pile. Working the compost and punching holes or twisting into the pile will add much needed air pockets and breathe new life into the microbes encouraging them to continue breaking down your organic material! Continue to do this every 3 to 6 weeks at least, but feel free to do it more often! A well-managed compost pile shouldn’t stink, be slimy, or moldy, it should be earthy and rich smelling with a humid heat radiating off of it and a rich color. Compost that is ready to be spread in your garden should be unrecognizable, just like your garden will be if you start using compost to fertilize it!

For lots more about compost and troubleshooting we have a great lesson in our garden academy and a conversation with Alana Altman, a composting professional!