Composting in your back yard is a great way to not only reduce trash in landfills, lower your carbon footprint, but is also a vital way to improve your organic garden. It is easy, once you start a pile maintenance is simple. Compost is organic material that can be added to the soil to help plants grow. This means that your plants will have much of the nutrients they need to grow bigger, produce more, bloom more, and be healthier plants overall. A healthier garden can be achieved with the use of compost that you can make at home for free, turning your kitchen scraps and more into plant food. 

Great Reasons to Compost:

Composting is one of the most effective ways to minimize the amount of garbage your family puts in the trash, which usually ends up in the landfill. In the average family's home it is so shocking how much food scraps that are compostable go into the garbage. By not putting our kitchen scraps in the garbage, this reduces methane gas in landfills, which is one major contributor to global warming. The bonus of separating your compostables from your garbage is you are then able to create a full circle system when growing your own food. Finishing this cycle by putting the left overs from the foods you’ve grown back into the garden as a rich fertilizer finished product. By using compost in your garden it also greatly reduces the need to use fertilizers. Compost is rich in organic matter, and is a natural soil builder, feeding all the microbes that live in your soil.

What to put into a compost: 

For optimal decomposition, the carbon-nitrogen ratio in a compost pile should be about 30:1 . Carbon-rich (Browns) materials include shredded paper and cardboard, egg cartons,  dry leaves, corn stalks, and sawdust. Nitrogen-rich (Greens) materials include kitchen food scraps, coffee ground, and grass clippings. A more detailed list can be seen further down. 

Key ingredients for composting:

• Temperature: The temperature of most active compost piles are around 44-52 Degrees Celsius. Decomposition drops with the ambient temperature and stops all together if the pile freezes.

• Oxygen: It is important to make sure your compost pile has enough oxygen as it plays an important part in composting, Aerobic (oxygen loving) bacteria do the work of decomposition. When creating a pile poke holes with a long stick into the middle to let oxygen reach the center of the pile. When starting your pile will be small, but a good size to aim for is a 5 x 5-foot pile.  

• Water: A compost should be moist, but not wet. Excess water will decrease oxygen levels, slowing down decomposition. in Winter try to put a tarp over your compost to block out excess rain.IN summer leave it open and spray often with water when dry periods happen.

How to set up a simple backyard compost system:

Composting is basically controlling and speeding along natures decomposition process by recycling organic matter and transforming it into a nutrient-rich soil amendment. When you are creating an outdoor compost system, choose a location that receives moderate sunlight to help with heating up the pile. Make sure the compost will also have access to a water source. If you have a fenced-off area in your yard it would be good to put the compost within the perimeters of the fence to prevent wild life from getting into it. 

What can you put in your compost bin:

Greens

• Vegetable and fruit scraps 

• Fresh grass clippings

• Egg shells

• Nut shells 

• Coffee grounds

• Bread products

• Manure (from cows, sheep, chicken, or rabbits)

Browns

• Cardboard products

• Dead leaves, branches, pine cones and needles

• egg cartons

• Sawdust and hay

• Untreated wood

• Tissues and newspaper

• Shredded paper

What you should not put in you compost bin:

Most compost systems do not reach the internal temperature to completely kill bacteria present in some of the items listed below, so it is best to leave them out. Also weed seed and plant desieses may not be killed if the temperature is not hot enough so its also best to leave them out too.  Adding synthetic components can actually kill the microorganisms necessary for the composting process.

• Meat

• Bones

• Fats and cooking oils

• Dairy products

• Waste from dogs or cats

• Treated wood

• Weeds or diseased plants

• Yard clippings with pesticides or herbicides on them

Choosing the right kind of compost system:

If you have a large yard or a fair amount of space you can simply create an open pile compost in an out of sight area.  Once it has reached a fairly large size approximately 5 x 5 feet, stop adding to that pile and start another.  If you do not have a yard or live in a smaller apartment, perhaps consider vermicomposting, or putting a small bin that fits on a balcony such as a tumbler style bin.

My recommendation for starting a compost system is starting a 2 or 3 bay system made out of wood pallets. These can often be obtained for free, but make sure that they are made form raw wood and not treated, Apparently, pallets from Canada are the safest, since most of them are only pressure- and heat-treated (marked with "HT"), as opposed to being fumigated with the neurotoxin and carcinogen methyl bromide (marked with "MB"), to kill off invasive species like pine beetles). The benefit of using a 3 bay system like this is over time you will always have an actively composting bay with 3 piles at different stages. One will already be cured and ready to us, the second which is partially decomposed and the third that is the current pile being added to.

The Necessary basic steps of composting are:

Layering greens and browns, maintaining the moisture level by watering, turning the compost, and mounding into a pile. Puncturing holes into the center of the pile to allow oxygen to reach the center. Repeat this process every week or two. The more frequently you turn, the faster the organic material will break down. 

The compost is ready when it resembles the color of healthy soil and has a loamy consistency. It should have a pleasant earthy smell. Finished compost can take anywhere between two months and a year depending on what goes into your composts, the ratio you use of browns and greens, and how often you tun it.

With all this being said, don’t get too caught up on all the technical details on “perfect” composting. Just get a pile started, you will see over time how easy it really is, and you can change or tailor your process as you go along adjusting your brown to greens ratio or what you put in it.

Happy Composting! 

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