Composting at Home

Home composting is a simple way to boost your soil, increase your produce and help keep wasteout of the landfill.

How to start a compost pile:

• A pile of leaves can be raked into a corner and allowed to sit for a year. 
• Another easy way is to get a barrel for yard waste and food scraps. (Compost that contains food scraps must be in a container with a lid. Food scraps should not contain animal meat scraps, vegetative only.)
• This barrel can be easily turned to help stir the compost and make the process quicker. 
• There are many other ways to begin a compost pile.

All compost piles need three elements to complete the composting process: Heat, Water and Air.

Heat:

Heat causes the elements in the compost pile to break down faster. The inside of a pile will be much hotter than the extremities. This is why the pile should be turned regularly if possible.

Sunshine is usually just fine to heat up a compost pile. A barrel or other container will keep it much hotter.

Water:

Water is important to the compost pile. The pile should not be soaking wet, but should be moist. Most places say it should have the consistency of a "wet sponge."

Air:

Air is the biggest thing. The materials that go into a compost pile are made up of two things: Carbon and Nitrogen. Items such as wood, dry leaves, hay, wood ash, pine needles and paper are carbon based. Items such as table scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, manure and tea leaves are nitrogen based. One easy way to remember these is that carbon is usually brown and nitrogen is usually green. Below is a table of nitrogen and carbon based items.

A good mix for the compost pile is about three times as much carbon (brown) as nitrogen (green). However, given enough time, a pile of leaves (carbon) will decompose with the help of any nitrogen products (it will get nitrogen from the air).