Should You Add Dirt To Your Compost

Compost is the single most important supplement you can requite your garden. Information technology's a elementary fashion to add nutrient-rich humus to your lawn or garden that fuels plant growth and restores vitality to depleted soil. It's as well free, easy to make, and good for the surround. But composting likewise has other benefits.

Composting Benefits

Soil Conditioner

With compost, you are creating rich humus for your backyard and garden. This adds nutrients to your plants and helps retain soil wet. They don't call it "black aureate" for goose egg.

Compost is the single most important supplement you can give your garden.

Recycles Kitchen and Yard Waste

Composting can divert as much as xxx% of household waste matter away from the garbage tin. That's important because when organic thing hits the landfill, it lacks the air it needs to decompose apace. Instead, it creates harmful methane gas as it breaks down, increasing the rate of global warming and climate change.

Introduces Beneficial Organisms to the Soil

Microscopic organisms in compost assist aerate the soil, intermission down organic materials for plant use, and ward off institute disease.

Practiced for the Environment

Composting offers a natural alternative to chemical fertilizers when applied to lawns and garden beds.

Reduces Landfill Waste

Near landfills in North America are apace filling up; many have already closed down. One-3rd of landfill waste is fabricated up of compostable materials. Diverting this waste from the landfill ways that our landfills volition last longer (and so will our wild spaces).

Related: Best Compost Bins and Tumblers Reviewed

What to Compost

What you tin put into your compost will depend somewhat on what kind of composter you have, simply some general rules do employ. All compostable materials are either carbon or nitrogen-based, to varying degrees. The secret to a healthy compost pile is to maintain a working balance betwixt these two elements.

The Secret to a Salubrious Compost Pile: Carbon/Nitrogen Ratio

Carbon
Carbon-rich matter (like branches, stems, dried leaves, peels, $.25 of wood, bark dust or sawdust pellets, shredded dark-brown paper bags, corn stalks, coffee filters, java grounds, conifer needles, egg shells, straw, peat moss, wood ash) gives compost its light, fluffy body.

A good for you compost pile should accept much more than carbon than nitrogen.

Nitrogen
Nitrogen or poly peptide-rich matter (manures, food scraps, green lawn clippings, kitchen waste material, and greenish leaves) provides raw materials for making enzymes.

A healthy compost pile should have much more carbon than nitrogen. A unproblematic rule of thumb is to use one-third green and two-thirds brownish materials. The bulkiness of the brown materials allows oxygen to penetrate and attend the organisms that reside there. As well much nitrogen makes for a dense, smelly, slowly decomposing anaerobic mass. Good composting hygiene means covering fresh nitrogen-rich material, which tin can release odors if exposed to open air, with carbon-rich material, which often exudes a fresh, wonderful odor. If in doubt, add more carbon!

This table details how the items in your compost are likely to exist classified:

Textile	Carbon/Nitrogen	Data
Wood fries / pellets	Carbon	High carbon levels; utilize sparingly
Forest ash	Carbon	Simply use ash from make clean materials; sprinkle lightly
Tea leaves	Nitrogen	Loose or in numberless
Table Scraps	Nitrogen	Add with dry carbon items
Straw or hay	Carbon	Straw is best; hay (with seeds) is less ideal
Shrub prunings	Carbon	Woody prunings are dull to break down
Shredded paper	Carbon	Avoid using glossy paper and colored inks
Seaweed and kelp	Nitrogen	Apply in thin layers; good source for trace minerals
Sawdust pellets	Carbon	High carbon levels; add in layers to avoid clumping
Pino needles	Carbon	Acidic; use in moderate amounts
Newspaper	Carbon	Avert using glossy paper and colored inks
Leaves	Carbon	Leaves break downwardly faster when shredded
Lawn & garden weeds	Nitrogen	Merely use weeds which have not gone to seed
Green comfrey leaves	Nitrogen	Excellent compost 'activator'
Grass clippings	Nitrogen	Add in thin layers so they don't mat into clumps
Garden plants	--	Use affliction-complimentary plants only
Fruit and vegetable scraps	Nitrogen	Add together with dry carbon items
Flowers, cuttings	Nitrogen	Chop upward any long woody stems
Eggshells	Neutral	Best when crushed
Dryer lint	Carbon	Best if from natural fibers
Corn cobs, stalks	Carbon	Slow to decompose; best if chopped up
Java grounds	Carbon	Filters may also exist included
Chicken manure	Nitrogen	Splendid compost 'activator'
Cardboard	Carbon	Shred material to avoid matting

Is There Anything I Definitely Shouldn't Put in My Compost?

Do non compost meat, bones, or fish scraps (they will attract pests) unless you are using a composter designed specifically for this purpose. The Green Cone Solar Waste material Digester is 1 expert example.
Avoid composting perennial weeds or diseased plants, since y'all might spread weed seeds or diseases when spreading your compost.
Don't include pet manures in compost that will exist used on food crops.

Banana peels, peach peels, and orange rinds may contain pesticide residues and should exist kept out of the compost.
Black walnut leaves should not be composted.
Sawdust may exist added to the compost, only should be mixed or scattered thinly to avoid clumping. Be sure sawdust is clean, with no machine oil or concatenation oil residues from cutting equipment.

Related: The Easiest Fashion to Start Composting Now

TIP: Storing Compost in the Kitchen

To store kitchen waste material until you're ready to transfer it to your composter, go on a container with a lid and a handle nether the sink. A stainless steel compost pail with an carbon filter or a ceramic model will cut downward on odors. If y'all don't mind occasional smells, utilise an sometime ice-cream pail. Chop up whatever large chunks before y'all toss them in.

A Give-and-take About Yard Waste

With one thousand and garden wastes, dissimilar composting materials will decompose at dissimilar rates, only they will all interruption downwardly somewhen. If you want to speed up the composting procedure, chop the larger material into smaller pieces. Leaves and grass clippings are too excellent for compost but should be sprinkled into the bin with other materials, or dug in to the center of the pile and mixed. Avert putting them on in thick layers – they will mat together and reduce aeration, which slows the composting procedure.

Calculation garden soil to your compost volition assist to mask any odors, and microorganisms in the soil will accelerate the composting process.

Composting Leaves

If you have also many leaves to incorporate into the compost bin, you tin can simply compost the pile of leaves by itself. Locate the pile where drainage is adequate; a shaded expanse volition help keep the pile from drying out.

The foliage pile should be at to the lowest degree iv′ in bore and 3′ in height. Include a layer of dirt between each pes of leaves. The pile should be clammy enough that when a sample taken from the interior is squeezed by mitt, a few drops of moisture volition appear. The pile should not be packed too tightly.

The pile volition compost in 4 – 6 months, with the textile being nighttime and crumbly. Leafage compost is best used as an organic soil amendment and conditioner; it is not normally used as a fertilizer considering it is low in nutrients. For more information, read Use Autumn Leaves to Keep Your Compost Working Through the Winter

TIP: Foliage-Mould Tea

Utilize leaves to make a nutritious "tea" for your plants. Simply wrap a small pile of leaves in burlap and immerse in a garbage can or large bucket of h2o. Leave for iii days, then remove the "tea bag" and dump contents into the compost. Scoop out the enriched water with a smaller saucepan and use to water your plants and shrubs.

Related: x Pro Composting Tips From Expert Gardeners

How to Compost

Beginning your compost pile on bare earth. This allows worms and other beneficial organisms to aerate the compost and be transported to your garden beds.
Lay twigs or straw beginning, a few inches deep. This aids drainage and helps aerate the pile.
Add compost materials in layers, alternating moist and dry out. Moist ingredients are food scraps, tea bags, seaweed, etc. Dry materials are straw, leaves, sawdust pellets and wood ashes. If yous have wood ashes, sprinkle in sparse layers, or they will dodder together and be tedious to break downward.
Add manure, green manure (clover, buckwheat, wheatgrass, grass clippings) or whatsoever nitrogen source. This activates the compost pile and speeds the process along.
Keep compost moist. H2o occasionally, or allow pelting practise the task.
Cover with anything you have – wood, plastic sheeting, rug scraps. Covering helps retain moisture and heat, 2 essentials for compost. Roofing also prevents the compost from being over-watered by pelting. The compost should exist moist, but not soaked and sodden.
Plough. Every few weeks give the pile a quick plough with a pitchfork or shovel. This aerates the pile. Oxygen is required for the procedure to work, and turning "adds" oxygen. You can skip this pace if you have a ready supply of coarse material like straw. One time you lot've established your compost pile, add new materials past mixing them in, rather than by adding them in layers. Mixing, or turning, the compost pile is key to aerating the composting materials and speeding the process to completion. If y'all want to buy a composter, rather than build your own compost pile, you lot may consider a buying a rotating compost tumbler which makes it easy to mix the compost regularly.

Related: How to Apply Finished Compost

How to Choose a Composter

Choosing what type of composter will work best for you involves considering 3 main factors:

Where you live
What you'll be composting
Whether you want to turn your compost manually or not

Where do you live?	What will you be composting the most?
	Composting mostly kitchen scraps	Composting kitchen scraps plus some yard waste	Composting lots of yard waste
Urban (no outdoor infinite)	Worm bin (vermicomposting)
Urban (some outdoor infinite, patio, or balcony)	Worm bins or Compost tumbler	Compost tumbler
Suburban (with m)	Enclosed bin or compost tumbler	Enclosed bin or compost tumbler	Enclosed or DIY bin
Rural (with yard/acreage)	Enclosed bin, or compost tumbler	Open compost pile, enclosed bin, or tumbler	Open up compost pile or multiple enclosed bins

If you lot're prepared to plow your compost every ane-2 weeks and yous live in an area with admission to outdoor infinite and carbon rich materials, enclosed bins or open compost piles could work for you. If y'all live in an urban environment or your back isn't fix for all that turning, compost tumblers or a worm composter are options worth considering. Read on to learn more about each of these compost systems and other composting tips.

Related: Worm Composting Basics for Beginners

Simplest Composting Methods

"No-Turn" Composting

The biggest task with composting is turning the pile from time to time. However, with 'no-turn composting', your compost can be aerated without turning.

The secret is to thoroughly mix in enough coarse material, like straw, when building the pile. The compost will develop as fast equally if it were turned regularly, and studies show that the nitrogen level may be even higher than with turned compost.

With 'no-turn' composting, add together new materials to the tiptop of the pile, and harvest fresh compost from the lesser of the bin. This tin can be easily done in an Aerobin Composter, or a Eco Rex compost bin. Which brings the states to …

Enclosed Compost Bins

For pocket-sized-scale outdoor composting, enclosed bins are the most practical. Enclosed bins include:

DIY Compost Bin

The least expensive method is to build one yourself from a heavy-duty garbage can. Simply drill 1.v-cm aeration holes in rows at roughly 15-cm intervals around the can. Fill the tin can with a mixture of high-carbon and loftier-nitrogen materials (see our table higher up). Stir the contents occasionally to avert anaerobic pockets and to speed up the composting process. If the lid is secure, the bin can exist laid on its side and rolled; a length of 2″ cedar ( use a ii×2 or a 2×4) can be bolted to the within, running top to bottom, to help flip the material. Without this, the contents tend to stay in identify while the bin is rolled.
Standard Compost Bins/Digesters

Some other option is a compost bin, sometimes called a 'compost digester'. Compost bins are enclosed on the sides and top, and open on the lesser and then they sit directly on the ground. These are common composting units for homes in residential areas where bins tend to be smaller, still enclosed enough to discourage pests. These bins are inexpensive, but information technology is hard to turn the compost, so information technology tin can have several months to produce compost. These bins are sparse-walled plastic, and may chip along the edges, especially during a freeze.
Food Waste Digester

These countertop 'composters' grind and dehydrate food waste matter rather than decomposing information technology. The process takes equally petty every bit 3 hours, leaving you with an odor-gratis material suitable for garden fertilizer. When finished, coffin the resulting material below the soil surface, where the decomposition process kicks in–to the benefit of your plants.
Tumblers

The almost efficient enclosed bin method is the compost tumbler. It's possible to maintain relatively high temperatures in pulsate/tumbler systems, both considering the container acts equally insulation and because the turning keeps the microbes aerated and active. Some designs provide an interior "paddle" or "aeration spikes" which help bring air into the compost and prevent clumping of the composting materials. Other designs have holes on the ends for aeration. This profoundly speeds upwards the composting process.

An enclosed 'tumbler' system offer the post-obit benefits:

Speeds upwardly the composting process
Composts year-round due to higher internal temperature
Can't be accessed by rodents, raccoons, dogs, or other critters
Keeps compost neatly enclosed and odor-free; well-suited for residential areas and large apartment terraces or patios

To larn more than, see Compost Tumblers: Comparing different compost tumbler models

Visit our shop for more than information or to buy a compost tumbler.

Tips for Successful Composting

Activate Your Compost

'Activators' tin exist added to your compost to aid boot-start decomposition and speed up composting. Common compost activators include: comfrey leaves, grass clippings, immature weeds, and well-rotted chicken manure. Yous can likewise buy inoculant at your local garden center, though a shovel total of finished compost from another pile works just as well.

Flying Insects Attracted to Your Compost?

Pocket-sized fruit flies are naturally attracted to the compost pile. Discourage them by roofing whatsoever exposed fruit or vegetable affair. Keep a small pile of grass clippings side by side to your compost bin, and when you add new kitchen waste material to the pile, cover it with i or 2 inches of clippings. Adding lime or calcium will also discourage flies.

Unpleasant Odors from Your Compost Pile?

This tin can be a business organization in urban and suburban areas with small lots and neighbors living close past. Reduce or eliminate odors by following two practices: showtime, remember to not put basic or meat scraps into the compost; second, encompass new additions to the compost pile with dry out grass clippings or similar mulch. Adding lime or calcium volition also neutralize odors. If the compost smells like ammonia, add together carbon-rich elements such as straw, peat moss, or stale leaves. Meet seven Signs Your Compost is Struggling and What Yous Can Exercise Nigh It.

Is Your Compost Pile Steaming?

No problem. A hot, steamy pile means that you lot accept a large community of microscopic critters working abroad at making compost.

Is Your Compost Pile Soggy?

This is a mutual problem, especially in wintertime, when carbon-based materials are in short supply. To solve this problem, you'll need to restore your compost to a salubrious nitrogen-carbon balance. To learn how restore your compost pile, read our article How to Fix a Soggy Compost Pile.

Matted Leaves, Grass Clippings Clumping Together?

This is a common trouble with materials thrown into the composter. The moisture materials stick together and slow the aeration process. There are 2 simple solutions: either set these materials to the side of the composter and add them gradually with other ingredients, or break them apart with a pitchfork. Grass clippings and leaves should be mixed with rest of the composting materials for best results.

Issues with Raccoons?

If at that place's a population of raccoons in your area, they volition exist naturally attracted to your compost pile. The best solution to this problem is to bar their entry to the compost. (Traps and poisons are more than trouble than they're worth.) A wood or metal lid can be easily hinged to the bin described above on this page, or y'all tin buy a commercially-fabricated compost bin with secure fitted lids which are pest-proof, such as the Aerobin or Jora JK270.

A Moveable Feast

The soil beneath a compost bin becomes enriched as nutrients filter down with successive waterings. You tin can place your bin on a plot of earth that you plan to use for a future vegetable or flower bed, or fruit tree. Each year, you can motility the bin to a different area; you'll get a double benefit – the compost from the bin, and a bed of food-rich soil prepare for new plantings.

Have Advantage of Autumn's Compensation

The biggest challenge for modest backyard composting is finding enough carbon-rich materials to balance the regular input of nitrogen-rich materials from kitchen scraps, fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, grass clippings, and other fresh materials.

To learn how to make the near of fall's bounty, read: Autumn Composting Tips

What Virtually People Living in Urban Locations, Tin We Compost Indoors?

Even if you live in an flat or other urban location, you tin still reduce your organic waste and produce your own compost for potted plants, balcony planters, or your plot in the local community garden. There are several dissimilar methods for composting indoors which are smell-free and compact enough for even small apartments. For more information about these and other indoor composting methods, read our commodity: How to Compost in an Flat

What About Weed Seeds?

A liability in composting is the unexpected introduction of new weed seeds to your garden. This is caused by tedious or incomplete composting that didn't generate enough heat to kill whatever and all weed seeds. Weed seeds in compost are a nuisance because one time the compost is transferred to your garden beds, the compost acts to fertilize the weeds and make them even more persistent! With home compost bins or piles, the manner to eliminate weed seeds is twofold:

Make sure your compost is hot enough.
Reach your manus into the center of the pile – information technology should be almost likewise hot for comfort. Specifically, the temperature should exist 130 – 150 degrees F. It takes about 30 days at 140 degrees to kill all weed seeds.
Mix your pile.
While your compost may be hot in the centre of the mass, the outside of the pile is cooler, giving seeds a chance to survive. Mixing brings cooler fabric to the warmer area and also increases aeration, which helps accomplish the higher estrus levels. Compost tumblers are very useful for this.

If you are ownership bedding for animals, or using mulch or carbon-rich material to bulk up your compost pile, be aware of introducing seeds to your garden via the compost. For example, make sure to go straw, and not hay, since straw is generally weed-free. Enquire the sales staff if at that place have been any complaints about seeds in these products.

Related: The Best Compost Tea Recipe to Help Your Plants Thrive

Buy a Compost Bin

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