How to Make Compost

Why Compost?

The words composting and organic gardening go together. Compost is a great tool for any gardener but for the organic gardener or no dig gardener it is pure gold. It helps your garden to hold just the right amount of water, makes it the right texture for plant growth and provides it with beneficial natural organisms.

While you can buy this type of product from your local garden centre it is cheaper and more satisfactory to make it yourself. You also get the added benefit of knowing that you are not just throwing your garden and kitchen waste away to be buried in a landfill site, it is actually doing something beneficial.

Making Compost

Before getting started on your home composting pile, you should know what to put in it. To get good compost you need carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water. Kitchen composting waste should not include cooked foods as this will attract vermin. If you add grass clippings to your heap do not add them too thickly as, although they will generate a lot of heat, they also form a thick slimy mess, will starve the heap of oxygen and will not mix in with the heap. It is far better to add thinly and mix in with other more coarse material. You may be wondering how you add oxygen into the mix. This is quite simply done by mixing the pile, preferably by emptying one compost container into another and shaking looses with a garden fork as you progress.

There are two different types of compost heap you can make. A cool pile can consist of leaves and clippings just as they come or break down the leaves by running your rotary lawn mower over them. Leave and stir and shake up occasionally. This is a good option if you do not have much time to devote to composting. However leaves break down slowly and you should not expect useable compost for at least a year, probably nearer two if you want a crumblier finish. This mix will make very good mulch. Do not add diseased plant material or weeds to this mix as not enough heat is generated to kill seeds or disease spores.

If you need your compost sooner than a year, you should try making a hot compost heap. Unlike cool heaps, you need to have a significant amount of garden waste available to start a hot pile; at least 3 feet by 3 feet. This mixture will require mixing much more often. You can mix it anywhere from once every two weeks to once every couple of days. The more you mix, the faster you get compost. This type of heap will kill weed seeds and diseases because it reaches a much higher temperatures (about 160°), but may also kill beneficial bacteria.

When your compost heap has broken down it is ready to use. Some of the woody material, which helps to keep air in the mix, will not have broken down. If you are using the compost as mulch or to add to planting holes when planting trees and shrubs this is fine. For other uses you may need to pass it through a coarse garden sieve.

Organic Compost

Most organic gardening tips include a section on producing organic gardening mulch. To produce true organic gardening mulch you should only compost material that has been organically grown. If you wish to comply, search the Internet for organic garden organisations and you should be able to find free instructions for composting.

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