Making compost is easy!

Mixing in compost to our garden bed.

Making compost can turn your kitchen and garden waste into a rich organic soil amendment.  Follow my easy steps and have your own compost to enrich your vegetable garden.

Composting Materials:

A ratio of carbon and nitrogen materials are important for each to breakdown. Nitrogen materials will decompose in a few weeks, however will attract flies and have a strong odor. Carbon materials will take months or sometimes years to breakdown.

Carbon Materials

• thick vegetable stems like broccoli, corn stalks
• sawdust
• dry leaves
• wood shavings
• straw
• hay
• twigs

Nitrogen Materials

• cut grass
• fresh animal manure (usually in small quantities)
• vegetable kitchen waste
• green vegetation from your garden organic
• soil fertilizers like blood meal, alfalfa meal and fish meal (these can be lightly spread on each layer especially if the pile has lots of carbon material)

Steps to making compost:

3 bin compost in our community garden.

Steps to building a pile:

1. Loosen the soil about 12 inches deep in the area where you will make the pile. This will help organisms in the soil enter your pile.
2. Lay down about 6 inches of carbon matter - corn stalks, small sticks, straw.
3. Then lay done about 2 inches of garden waste -leaves, grass clippings, green vegetation.
4. Save your kitchen waste (no meat products) and put this over the garden waste.
5. Put on a thin layer of soil. This helps keep away the flies and odour.
6. Repeat steps 2 to 5.
7. Once the pile reaches 3-6 feet high let is sit for 3-6 months.
8. Start building a new pile.
9. To quicken the process turn the pile every 3-4 weeks. The easiest way to do this is move it to a new area.
10. Water the pile regularly, a moist pile will decompose quicker.
11. The pile will reduce to about half the original size.

Now here are the steps to making compost .

Do you have more questions? Are you having problems with your existing compost pile? Here are some answers to frequently asked compost questions.

Laying a layer of compost on the bed. Gently mix it into the garden soil.

Taking the time to build and manage a compost pile is one of the best things you can do for your garden.

Every garden has green waste and we all have kitchen vegetable scraps which makes great compost.   We may have to bring in some straw or leaves, but often we already have these in our garden or have easy access to them so do not let that stop you.

Composting will firstly keep all our green waste from going to the garbage and secondly compost feeds and keeps our garden soil healthy and happy.  Start composting today!

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