Composting is an awesome way to turn your kitchen and garden waste into wonderful nutritious soil to fuel your garden. There are many options of composting equipment available from different garden and hardware stores, but for the purposes of today, we’re going DIY and focusing on how to start a compost pile or a compost heap without any equipment.
The Most Basic Approach to Composting
A simple form of composting consists of simply piling up organic waste (garden clippings, kitchen scraps, stock manure, etc.) in a corner of your property. Leaving it for a long period of time, and eventually, finding it turn into compost or soil.
This approach is fine and does get the job done, but it’s certainly slow, often not well balanced in terms of nutrient content and can result in seeds from your last season prunings sprouting up where ever you lay your compost.
Making Compost Faster
In order to speed up the process from organic waste to usable compost we need to generate heat. Hot composting is a much faster process, which also kills many weed seeds and parasites, for a cleaner and lower maintenance compost result.
A word of caution! Because of the heat factor, hot compost piles should not be left unmonitored near a building or a field where it could reach too high a heat and cause fire. To avoid too high a heat being generated, we need to monitor regularly and turn or add water.
Consider the Location of Your Compost Pile
You want your compost pile somewhere it will not dry too quickly, or become sodden. Part shade is a good option. If you have some large branches or a pallet to act as the ‘base’ for your pile this will help with aeration.
The approximate size of pile you’re looking to build is between 1 – 1.5 metre squared. This is a good size to generate heat inside the pile, but not too big to hold too much water.
What goes in my compost pile
To get a balanced compost result, we want to balance what we are adding to our compost pile. This is not a perfect science, more a guideline. We will alternate layers of “browns” which are carbon rich and “greens” which are nitrogen rich.
Carbon rich browns
- Wood chips and small twigs
- Shredded cardboard
- Sawdust
- Corn stalks
- Straw
- Some types of dry leaves
Nitrogen rich greens
- Grass clippings
- Garden waste
- Weeds
- Food scraps
- Used coffee grounds
- Horse, cow, or chicken manure (avoid manure from carnivores)
As you build your pile, alternate layers of nitrogen and carbon materials, with each layer aiming to be around 10cm thick, until you reach the top of you pile height or you run out. Lightly water each layer as it is added, firming it down but do not compact. You should end up with a compost pile that is moist, but not soggy.
Turning my compost
Every couple of weeks turn the compost, mixing everything together. Mixing provides aeration and oxygen to the microbes involved in the composting process. A garden fork works well for this.
Leaving a few weeks between each turning allows the center of the pile to “heat up” and process the waste into nutritious rich compost. It is this heat which can kill weed seeds and other pests.
Things to avoid in the compost pile
Until you get really confident with running a hot compost, there are some things to avoid putting in.
- Animal products such as bones, dairy and meat
- Very fatty or oily products
- Carnivorous animal waste
- Garden waste which has been sprayed with pesticides
- Garden waste which is diseased
- Plastics
- Large branches