How To Make Garden Compost

Making your own garden compost is good for your garden, wallet and environment. Using our waste is a great way to recycle.

Compost is the left over material that you get when organic waste items decompose. Creating a bin or pile in your backyard saves our waste from being in a landfill where they can take longer to decompose. Creating a compost pile for your garden helps the waste items to decompose faster all while recycling.

Most of the raw materials that go into your pile or bin, come directly from the yard and or garden. By using this material, we cut back on the amount of waste that we send to the landfill, and this is an excellent way to reduce yard waste while producing a valuable material for improving your soil. This is both good for the environment and good for our wallets.

Yard waste accounts for more than 20 percent of all trash in landfills and food scraps make up ten percent of your waste. You can even purchase a kitchen bin to collect your kitchen scraps.

Depending on your preferences, you can have a pile or a bin. As simple or elaborate as you want.

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The Ultimate Garden Compost should be a balance between greens and browns.

Greens

* Tea bags;
* Grass cuttings;
* Vegetable peelings;
* Old flowers;
* Fruit scraps;
* Nettles;
* Coffee grounds & filter paper;
* Old bedding plants;
* Pond algae & seaweed.

Browns

* Egg shells - crush them first;
* Egg boxes;
* Cereal boxes;
* Corrugated cardboard packaging;
* Newspaper - scrunched up;
* Toilet & kitchen roll tubes;
* Garden prunings;
* Dry leaves, twigs & hedge clippings;
* Straw & hay;
* Bedding from vegetarian pets;
* Wool;
* Ashes from wood, paper or lumpwood charcoal;
* Cotton threads;
* String;
* Tumble dryer lint - from natual fibre clothes such as cotton or wool;
* Shredded paper.

Some things not to use in your Garden Compost

* Bones
* Grease and Oil
* Dog & Cat Manure
* Cheese
* Chicken
* Fat
* Fish scraps
* Milk
* Meat
* Noxious weeds

A properly made compost heap will reach a temperature of 140 degrees to 160 degrees F in one to two weeks. At this time, you will notice the pile settling-a good sign that the heap is working properly.

Five to six weeks later, transfer the materials into a new pile. When doing this, turn the outside of the old heap into the center of the new pile. Add water if necessary.

The compost material should be ready to use in your yard or garden within three to four months after you first constructed the pile. A heap started in late spring can be ready for use in the autumn. Then you can start another heap in autumn for use in the spring.
ready to use compost

Compost is ready to use when it is dark, brown, and crumbly, with an earthy odor. Let it stabilize a few extra days, and screen it through a ½-inch screen if you want the finest product. To use the compost, turn your soil, apply a 1- to 3-inch layer of compost, and work it in well.