Making Your Own Compost

It’s probably become clear that adding cured compost is the best way to increases your soil’s fertility and grow amazingly healthy and productive plants. It has all of the macro-and micro-nutrients plants need and contains the organic matter and humus needed to feed soil microbes, assist in aeration, and increase the water-holding capacity of your soil, making it more drought-tolerant as well. Consequently, for almost all intents and purposes, the more compost you have the better. 

So how can you make it and cure it yourself?

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Making Cured Compost

There are mountains of books on composting, many of which offer very specific methods. That’s fine. There’s a place for them. Each specifically prescribed method works just fine and has its own pros and cons. If you desire one specific, precise method, those books give all the details you’d want and then some.

In truth, however, with so many valuable specific methods, one cannot say one is better than another.

I find it more useful, therefore, to teach aspiring composters about the constants all methods have in common. These are the most important lessons for all of us, no matter what method we use. And they’re all we really need to know and will eventually guide us in devising our own method that works best for our specific situation, which is truly the point. If anyone ever gets too big for their britches about a particular method, remember, the materials would decompose into cured compost if we were to just leave them outside in the elements. We’re just speeding the process. Besides, it matters less how you get it, as long as you’re adding loads of cured compost to your garden.

The Basics

The basics: Throw a layer of “brown/dry” and a layer of “green/wet” materials on the ground or in a bin and cover them with soil. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. 

The “brown” or “dry” are your carbon-rich materials. They’ll likely be mostly old, dried, “brown”(really often tan or grey) garden plant stalks—or other plant material that isn’t green anymore. After they dry and lose their green hue, they no longer have much nitrogen in them and are mostly carbon—the “C” value you’ll see referred to in many sources. 

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The “green” or “wet” are your fresh, green vegetation and kitchen scraps. They’re rich in nitrogen—the “N” value you’ll see referred to in many sources—which is needed by the microbes to break everything down. 

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The dirt provides the microbes that will do the actual decomposition and curing and keeps the smell down. Most piles don’t smell, however, even sans dirt on top.

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What’s That Smell?

Household composts are often associated with a particular smell, but they don’t have to be. The smell ironically comes from our attempt to keep it contained: the lid. 

When I was a child, our household compost always stunk with a very particular smell. I was shocked, therefore, to find a friends’ compost not smelling at all. It turns out our efforts to limit the smell caused it. That particular smell is anaerobic decomposition. My friends just used a bowl on the counter, an open-air compost container. We’ve done the same since and have lost that smell. 

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Typical Prescribed Thickness of Layers

The typical, prescribed layering is three inches of “brown,” three inches of “green,” and then a half an inch of soil—continuing like this until the bin (or pile) is full (or too high). The reason for this prescription is that the microbes do their best work if things are evenly mixed, and this layering is the maximum thickness you’d want of each to still get a natural intermingling of the layers. In reality, even if your layers aren’t perfect, they will still rot and become cured compost, perhaps just not as quickly or efficiently. 

Heat

If you’re worried about your pile getting hot enough to kill weed seeds, the pile needs to be at least three feet cubed and built all at once. The pile acts as its own insulator, heating up sufficiently in the middle of the pile to kill many weed seeds. Piles up-to-four-feet cubed heat up increasingly well but start to lose their needed breathability (see in “A Few Tricks” below) and can become increasingly anaerobic on the inside of the pile beyond four-feet cubed.

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If you don’t have enough material around at any one time to fill an entire bin, don’t worry. Your compost will cure fine. You just can’t be sure it’ll get hot enough to kill weed seeds. Therefore, just keep weed seeds out and fill it as you get material, keeping roughly the prescribed layering as you fill it. And, remember, this will all rot if you just leave it in the elements anyway. We’re just speeding that process. If yours takes a little longer because you fill it slowly, it’s not going to hurt anything.

Mixing

Your next step is mixing the bin or pile. If you fill your bin or build your pile all at once, after a few weeks, it will have shrunk and reduced its heat (If you’re interested, there are compost thermometers you can buy, but you can also get a great feel for it by just keeping a long piece of rebar inserted into the pile.). If you fill your bin or build your pile slowly over time, just wait a few weeks after you’ve filled the bin or added your highest layer. You can also decide it’s time to mix when you notice most of the material has broken down somewhat and the layers are harder to distinguish as unique. Either way, when it’s time to mix it, just dig it out, turn it over with a digging fork, and pile it in a new spot—probably right next to the old one. The digging and re-piling provide enough mixing for the next round of decomposition. The new pile will heat up again, you having provided both a new meal and the required nitrogen for breaking it down in the proximity of the microbes with your mixing, and be ready to apply to your soil in three-to-six months.

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Moisture

Keeping the contents moist is also very helpful—about the moistness of a damp sponge. Placing a bin under a tree can help—oaks are said to be especially good—as does regular waterings.

A Few Tricks

One
If you’re regularly short on “brown, dry,” carbon material, shredded paper, cardboard, and leaves can help fill some bulk, and it’s a great use for junk mail (just don’t use the glossy stuff). Shredding cardboard and leaves can be more difficult. Adequate shredders are expensive, but running over leaves several times with a lawnmower does a pretty good job, increased labor substituting for expensive equipment. If using solely any one of these, it’s probably a good idea to decrease the thickness of that layer to no more than two inches just to try to avoid matting in the pile.

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Two
If you find yourself regularly short on “green, wet,” nitrogen material, blood meal, feather meal, chicken (or other) manures, and urine work well. They’ll cure during the composting process as well; they actually benefit from the carbon-rich materials to decompose well. Yep, you and pee on your pile. I’ve even known friends who’ve collected urine in a milk jug and added it to their pile. They said it works great. Well, it adds both nitrogen and needed moisture, so….

Three
Compost piles need air as much as they need moisture (the microbes need it—they’re aerobic). Piling the straight stalks you have available in a cross-hatched pattern, a little bit on each layer, goes a long way to allowing in air. Keeping the sides of your bin as open as possible does the same. Both are needed.

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Four
The commercially-available, compost boosters aren’t necessary, but they don’t hurt (Our pile seemed to do a little better after we’d used one.), and, once you have those microbes there, you can keep growing them by adding some of the cured compost as your dirt layer for your next pile. 

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That’s It

That’s it! You now know as much about curing compost as you need, perhaps more (“throw it outside; it’ll rot”—is really all you really need), and you should now be able to pick out the common constants in all methods you see.

Enjoy it—enjoy the dirt you build and the massive productivity from your garden plants that comes with it, enjoy the decrease in “waste” products taken off of your property, enjoy experimenting with different methods and bins—and remember it’s just that simple. Anyone can do it! And, perhaps, everyone should.

Next: To Bin or Not To Bin | To Mix or Not to Mix