Organ­i­cally rich, com­post is easy to make with things you cur­rently just throw in the garbage can. Photo by Kessler Photography

It might be too hot to do much in the gar­den besides the basics, but it’s a good time to start mak­ing com­post if you haven’t already.

Com­post is decayed organic mat­ter that has bro­ken down to a soil like con­sis­tency and it is an excel­lent amend­ment to your soil. Some folks use it for mulch around shrubs and trees. Com­post pro­vides much needed nutri­ents, aer­a­tion and organic mate­r­ial to your land­scape and gar­den. Com­post lets you do away with so many chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers and is nat­u­rally suited for the organic garden.

Besides the obvi­ous ben­e­fits of com­post to your own gar­den and land­scape, there is a larger ben­e­fit.  Com­post saves valu­able room in san­i­tary land­fills, and reduces the methane pro­duced by these land­fills.  Methane has been iden­ti­fied as a green­house gas.

By com­post­ing you are reduc­ing your car­bon foot­print, and mak­ing the envi­ron­ment a bet­ter place.  Pretty impres­sive results for just mov­ing where you send your  kitchen and land­scape left­overs.

Com­post is not that hard to make.   You need a layer of ‘green’ fol­lowed by a layer of ‘brown’.  It’s kind of like a Dag­wood sand­wich in that the amount and kinds of things you can com­post are var­ied and amazing.

For green mate­r­ial you can use yard waste such as leaves & flower clip­pings.  Don’t use wet grass or wet leaves.  They will mat down and will not decom­pose prop­erly.  You can also include food scraps in the green layer.  Fruit and veg­etable peel­ings, old bread, cof­fee grinds, egg shells, and other such scraps that do not con­tain any fats.

Some peo­ple swear they com­post chicken bones, dead squir­rels and who knows what, but the pre­vail­ing opin­ion of the coop­er­a­tive exten­sion ser­vice reports are that ani­mal prod­ucts and fats pro­duce harm­ful tox­ins in the com­post.  Who needs more tox­ins?  Bet­ter to leave fats and ani­mal prod­ucts for the trash.  Also, do not include any dis­eased plant mate­r­ial.  The pathogens may not be killed off if your com­post does not get hot enough.

Brown layer mate­ri­als can include dry grass, dry leaves, shred­ded branches, dry twigs, shred­ded paper, ripped up cor­ru­gated card­board (small pieces only because it’s slow to decom­pose), wood chips, saw­dust (in small amounts, mix in well), card­board egg car­tons, nut shells, hay, straw, and dry gar­den debris.

Use about 12″ of brown mate­r­ial (Car­bon) for every 4–6″ of green mate­r­ial (Nitrogen)

You will have com­post more quickly if you turn the pile.  You can use a pitch­fork, or a spe­cially designed com­post crank.  Turn­ing will give you com­post in two to four months.  Tum­blers will also give you a quick com­post boost with a few turns of the barrel.

Check out some of the great com­post bins and sup­plies at Gardener’s Sup­ply Com­pany I have found them to be one of the best, most reli­able com­pa­nies online for gar­den related products.

They have a com­plete line of com­post­ing prod­ucts from biobags to use in the kitchen col­lec­tion pail, to com­post bins in almost every configuration.

I could go on about this.  I just love com­post­ing, but I will let you check it out for your­self. To read more about com­post­ing, check out the arti­cle ‘All about Com­post­ing’ at Gardener’s Sup­ply Company’s website.

You will also appre­ci­ate their Blog, Gardener’s Jour­nal.

Let us know how your com­post­ing goes!  Share your sto­ries, or leave com­ments.  We look for­ward to hear­ing from you

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A Tum­bler makes mak­ing com­post easy.

I just bought this one and I couldn’t be hap­pier.

This com­post aer­a­tor makes it easy to turn the pile!