A Recipe for Outdoor Compost

by April Schneider

Composting is my favorite part of gardening. I actually enjoy it at least as much as growing veggies, if not more. It brings me back to the sandbox days of my childhood, mixing and making ’good dirt’. Visitors to my garden always ask how I get so many tomatoes or remark on the beautiful vegetables and flowers. They often comment on how much work it all must be. The truth is I am kind of a lazy gardener. I have lots of energy and enthusiasm in the spring, and tend to my seedlings well. But by mid July they are pretty much on their own, I water and watch things grow. I credit the compost. There’s nothing more satisfying than getting a good batch of compost and it’s so easy! Things can go wrong, but the great thing about composting is that every mistake is easily remedied.

Ingredients:

There are basic ingredients for good compost. Some brown stuff, some green stuff, some black stuff, air and water. That’s it! The brown stuff can be straw, dried leaves, finely chopped wood chips, and sawdust or dead vegetation. I usually save two or three garbage bags full of fall leaves and keep them in close proximity to the compost pile. The green stuff can be any of the following kitchen scraps, fruits, vegetables, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags, untreated grass clippings. The smaller the scraps are the easier they will compost. No dairy, oil, meat, bones or flour products, these attract pests and don’t work well in your compost. I do not put weeds into my compost, as the seeds can spread too easily. The black stuff is dirt, a shovel full from your garden. It has all sorts of microbes and organisms in it that help break everything else down. Add a little water and mix it up to keep it aerated and you’ve got yourself some gardeners’ black gold!

Tools:

The area and the container you use for compost will be a factor in how quickly you can get ’good dirt’. I have three bins, two in a sunny spot and one in the shaded area in my yard. The sunny location speeds the heating process and makes compost more quickly than the shady one. I have more than one on the go at all times. One will be for new material and the other is always full and ’cooking’. I like quick results so my favorite container is one we built ourselves out of a black plastic barrel that gets south exposure. The barrel is supported on its side by a steel rod that goes through the middle of it. We built a simple wooden frame that it sits on, tall enough that I could get my wheel barrel underneath. We cut a small door in the side, screwed some paddles of wood (short pieces of a 2x4) on the inside to help churn the ingredients, drilled small aeration holes, and attached a secure closure on the door. The barrel rotates easily and does all the work of mixing the ingredients. Using this barrel I can get compost from start to finish in about 8 weeks. I also have a black plastic bins that are set on the ground. These require turning by pitchfork or shovel so it takes longer, usually I fill them in one season and get the compost the following year. Black containers work well because they attract heat, but wood or wire containers work too. I’ve seen homemade ones made from building a three-sided structure with cement blocks. The container or pile should be about one cubic meter or 3 feet. Any smaller and the contents will not heat and decompose well. There are all sorts of fancy compost bins on the market, but they aren’t necessary to do the job. You can make a compost pile without the use of any container at all; just heap it up on the ground. These piles can take two or three years to break down. It is a good idea to have some sort of a lid on your compost. It won’t turn into a soggy mess every time it rains if it’s protected.

Method:

So you have a container in a nice sunny spot, what now? It’s easy, just layer brown stuff, green stuff, black stuff. I’ve read that this should be in equal parts but I am not that precise. I try to make the layers no more than 5 centimeters or 2 inches thick. Grass clippings can clump into a solid mat so I try to mix these with leaves. Sometimes I have a whole bunch of green stuff and not a lot of brown. It seems to work out no matter what my proportions are as long as I mix well. The key thing is to wet it, it should have the consistency of a wrung out sponge. If it’s too wet it may start to smell, so lay off the water and add some dried up brown stuff. If it’s not wet enough, the composting process won’t begin, so add some water. Knowing the amount of water takes a bit of practice, but it’s easily adjusted. Your compost shouldn’t stink; if it does you probably have too much water. If it has a good amount of moisture and still smells, try turning it to get more air into it. I empty my handy kitchen scrap bucket into the compost and cover it with a few shovels of dried leaves that I have saved from the previous fall. Once in a while I throw in a shovel of dirt. The more often it’s turned and mixed up, the quicker you’ll get finished compost. The pile will start to heat up as the composting process begins. High heat isn’t necessary to get good compost but the hotter it gets the faster it will work. Heat is created when the little microbes are digesting all the yummy scraps. A hot pile can reach 60-70 C. Once the compost is to cool to the touch, even when you’ve turned it and let it sit, it’s probably done.

Finished compost looks like dirt and smells earthy like dirt and probably tastes like dirt, but I couldn’t say for sure. I have already told you that I am bit impatient so I have added compost to my garden that still had hunks of just barely identifiable green stuff or straw in it and it has not been a problem. You can sift it through chicken wire or a mesh screen and put the big bits back into the compost bin if you want.

I have also made compost with real brown stuff, by that I mean the fresh kind that you find in a field full of cows. I have read several articles on using chicken, horse, and cow manure in the compost. It doesn’t take much and it increases the heat significantly and produces finished compost more quickly. It’s best to let this finished compost sit for a year before you use it in your garden.

With finished compost you can make compost tea. Try adding a small handful of compost to your watering can and water the plants with it. Some gardeners use cheesecloth to make a big tea bag and soak it in the water for a couple of days, removing it before they water. But I don’t mind the bits of dirt in my water buckets. It will start to smell and loose it’s potency if it sits too long.

You can compost all year long, even in the winter. The contents will start composting in the spring as soon as it’s warm enough for the little organisms to start their work.

Why compost? For me, it means a better more productive garden. With a small amount of compost I don’t need to add any commercial fertilizers. I get less pests and plant disease because my plants are all strong and healthy. My soil is very nice. Compost inoculates the soil with all sorts of beneficial microbes (bacteria, fungi, etc.). It increases the nitrogen available to the plant roots. In clay soil it creates holes for better drainage. In other soils it adds organic matter that helps with water retention. I started composting to reduce the amount of garbage we produce. But now I know composting is the real secret behind any fantastic garden!