Compost pile in a plastic bin / Wikimedia Commons
Do you garden? Then you need compost. You can either buy bags of it at a store or make compost at home, which saves both money and valuable landfill space. Gardeners call compost “black gold.” It creates rich humus that provides nutrients for plants and helps soil retain moisture. And making it yourself can divert as much as 30% of household waste from landfills.
I once showed my finished compost to a neighbor, who exclaimed, “It looks just like dirt!” Yes. Brand new dirt. In fact, the youngest children are older than dirt! Nature makes it all the time. The natural lifecycle begins with plants. Animals eat plants, either directly or indirectly by eating other animals.
Eventually, everything dies. Trees and bushes live a long time, but they shed their leaves every year. All that dead stuff rots, which only means that something else eats it: worms, insects, fungi, and microbes. Think of compost, including whatever nature makes without human help, as worm poop, except it’s not as disgusting or unsanitary as other poop.
In simpler times, people would just toss food scraps on the ground somewhere. Nowadays, we can’t just let them just lie around on the ground. There are too many of us too close together. We don’t want critters digging through it close to our homes, either.
Eventually, we invented the sanitary landfill. Once the waste gets buried there, no air gets to it. It can take decades for organic matter to rot in those conditions. Bacteria that live in airless conditions produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Landfills are America’s third largest source of methane.
Because composting uses air, it produces carbon dioxide instead of methane. And it doesn’t count in calculating greenhouse gases. Nearby plants can handle it all.
What to compost at home—and what you can’t do yourself
Unfortunately, composting is not as easy as piling up all the organic matter you can find. Only a municipal or commercial composting operation can handle some of it. So you need to know what you can’t compost at home:
- Animal products: meat, skin, bones, dairy, or anything else your dog or other critters will dig up and eat. For that matter, dog poop doesn’t belong on a home compost pile.
- Fats, oils, and grease, including salad dressings. Your compost pile needs water to do its thing. Fat repels water. (Don’t let any in the sewer, either. It wreaks havoc there.
- Weeds or diseased plants. They have to go with yard waste. Home composting may not kill all the seeds or whatever caused the disease. You don’t want to plant weeds when you use your compost.
- Tree branches or shrubbery trimmings. Unless you have a chipper, they’ll just get in the way and take too long to rot.
Some sources say that rhubarb, walnuts, and hickory contain harmful chemicals you don’t want in your compost. But the links lead to instructions for composting them safely.
On the positive side, you can compost leaves, grass clippings, non-animal food scraps, and some other things that may not be obvious:
- Coffee grounds
- Tea bags (provided they’re made of paper and not polyester)
- Egg shells (the one exception to the general rule of not composting animal products)
- Used paper napkins, paper towels, wax paper, and basically any paper you can’t recycle (except cash register receipts, which have to go in the trash)
- Saw dust
- Ash from your fireplace
- Hair (yours or your dogs’)
- Fingernail clippings
- Fabric scraps—so long as they contain no polyester, nylon, or other plastics. For that matter, if you can avoid using plastic fabric entirely, you can compost dryer lint.
Collecting food scraps and other materials for composting
My compost bucket / my photo
Collect kitchen scraps, compostable paper, and other items in a compost pail. You can choose from different materials, such as plastic, stainless steel or ceramic. They come with filters to cut down on odors.
In my experience, mold soon grows in them. I live alone, so the pail doesn’t fill as quickly as it would in a family. Therefore, I don’t empty it as often. I have started to let things dry out on the counter before putting them in the pail. (As I said, I live alone. I have no wife to tell me I can’t do that.)
Slow drying stuff like apple cores, melon rinds or corn cobs gets moldy on the counter. I just toss them behind shrubbery in the back yard. If you guess that I make composting as easy on myself as possible, you would be right. But take heart. I have consulted with experts to give the more ambitious of you thorough instructions.
Composting basics
Two basic kinds of materials belong on a compost pile. “Green” matter (lawn clippings, green leaves, a lot of kitchen waste) provides nitrogen. “Brown” matter (twigs, dried leaves, woody materials such as saw dust or ash, paper, coffee grounds, and more) provides carbon. A good compost pile needs about twice as much brown matter as green matter.
As for how to make compost at home, there are two broad categories. Cold composting simply means piling up materials and waiting for them to compost. It can take a while. Hot composting requires mixing green and brown matter and then turning the compost regularly. You can only do hot composting in warm weather, but the compost will be ready in three months or less. It’s hot composting that requires instructions
If your compost pile starts to stink, it has too much green material. Add more brown material. The pile should eventually become hot in the middle. If it doesn’t, it needs more green material. I’ve seen compost starters for sale, but you don’t need them. Just mix a little finished compost, or even some dirt from the ground, in with the fresh material to provide enough microbes to start the process.
How to make compost with a pile
You can make compost on the ground with or without a bin––some kind of frame on the ground. Put it in a shady spot so it won’t dry out. It needs rainwater, but put it in a place with good drainage. If you go without rain for a while, you’ll need to water the compost with a hose. You can buy frames in the store with a lid, but the lid only makes more work, as it keeps rainwater out.
Start the compost on bare earth. You want worms in your compost pile, and they live in the dirt under your pile. Their casings form an important part of the finished compost.
Standard instructions say to start with a layer of twigs or straw a few inches deep. They will aerate the pile and make water drain away faster. Then add layers of different materials—wet and dry, green and brown—on top.
It seems to me that these instructions contradict other standard advice—often found in the same sources––to mix everything thoroughly. In any case, you’ll need to turn the pile with a pitchfork every few weeks. It aerates the pile and to gives everything a chance to be in the center where it’s warmest.
Your compost needs water. It should be moist but never soggy. If you use a compost bin, dispense with the lid. It will retain heat and moisture, but it will also keep rain away, and you’ll have to water the pile with a hose more often.
It helps to maintain three piles. When you start a compost pile, it makes little sense to add fresh new materials after it starts to work. So at that time, start a fresh pile. So you’ll have one pile of fresh materials, one pile where composting is making good progress, and a third one with finished compost you can use.
How to make compost without a compost bin or pile
Trench composting / Farmers’ Almanac
Some homeowners’ associations don’t allow compost bins or piles. That doesn’t have to stop you from making compost at home. You can at least bury household wastes.
In any case, if you don’t want to turn compost, you can simply dig a hole and bury your kitchen scraps. Add leaves if any are handy. Then pile the soil you dug up on top of everything.
The next time you empty your kitchen compost pail, you just have to remember where you buried the last batch and dig somewhere else. Besides being less work, it has the additional advantage that you can bury pet poop and other materials that don’t belong on a standard compost pile. If you compost meat and bones in a hole in the ground, put it at the bottom of a hole so deep that critters won’t smell it and dig it up.
For serious gardeners, trench composting is a more strategic alternative to simply burying stuff. You will be digging your trenches in the garden. Don’t put plants directly over the compost. Their roots shouldn’t get into rotting material.
Instead, conceive of three kinds of rows in your garden. One has the plants. Another serves as the path. Dig your holes for making compost in the third. The following year, use the old path as the new trench area. Plant over last year’s compost. Use last year’s planting row for this year’s path.
Other composting methods
Homemade compost tumbler, made from recycled materials / Wikimedia Commons
You can also make compost in a rotating tumbler. It’s above ground, so you don’t need to be concerned about critters getting into it. It’s also great if you don’t want to turn a pile manually with a pitch fork. Plus, it doesn’t take much space. It’s a goof alternative for people with little yard space.
A composting tumbler also provides some insulation against the cold, so you can make compost at home all year round. The bacteria in the compost will keep it warm without much help. Just make sure not to pack the tumbler too full. It needs plenty of room for everything to fall freely and mix.
I have mentioned the importance of earthworms in compost piles. You can buy other equipment—and worms—for vermicomposting, that is, putting compostable material and worms in a bin that does not sit on the ground. Therefore, people who have no yard space for a compost pile can put a worm composter on a patio or porch. Or even inside. Vermicomposting requires a particular kind of worm. You can find them at a garden supply store or online, and they don’t cost much.
Sources:
Composting: how to make nutrient-rich, garden ‘gold’ in the composter that will help your garden thrive / Eartheasy
How to compost without a compost bin / Jonathon Engles, One Green Planet.
How to make compost / Better Homes & Gardens. August 10, 2020
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