Many Ways Lead to a Great Compost Pile System for Your Home Garden

There are many ways to make compost. Everyone has their own technique, and every compost pile is different. Composting is done by home gardeners and large agricultural concerns. Methods include the use of homemade or manufactured bins and anaerobic digesters, and sheet composting directly on farm fields. Compost has been occurring naturally since there have been bacteria on Earth - about 4 billion years - and is responsible for the very rich topsoil found in the most agriculturally desirable regions of the world.

The following is a method that has worked for this gardener for many years and is relatively simple.

The important thing is the balance of carbon to nitrogen in the starting materials. Nitrogenous materials provide much of the useful nutrition in finished compost. Nitrogen also helps the working compost heat up, which kills weed seeds and disease organisms. As a rough rule of thumb, about a six-inch layer of carbonaceous material to every two-inch layer of nitrogenous material will do. However, any reasonable combination of ingredients should yield good results. After all, this is about making decomposed organic matter, not mixing rocket fuel.

Spread alternating layers of dry, brown material like leaves or straw, and green, moist materials like green weeds or kitchen waste on the ground. An eight-foot by four foot rectangle is good. Build it up, continuing the alternating layers, no more than about four or five feet high. If you live in a hot, dry area, make the top of the pile concave to catch rainwater. If you live in a cool, moist area, make the top of the pile convex to shed excess rain, or just make it flat on top.

Water every week or so if it doesn't rain. The pile should be kept moist, but not soggy. Air should be able to circulate through pores in the pile. These conditions favor aerobic bacterial decomposition, which is faster and more efficient than anaerobic decomposition (and smells better, too).

The compost pile will heat up inside after a couple of weeks. Thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria and other organisms break down the brown (carbon-rich) and the green (nitrogen-rich) layers into rich compost.

Turning the pile periodically will help it to break down faster. Using a compost fork, spading fork, spade, or rake, strip off the outer layer of the pile and place it in the center of the new pile, right next to the old one. Continue taking off the outermost layer and shaping it around the new pile until the center of the old pile has been removed. Then let it sit at least two weeks (to save your back). Even if the pile is not turned, finished compost will be available in about a year.

Manure is a good, high-nitrogen material for a compost pile, but only if the compost heats up to self-sterilize. Fortunately, manure is some of the best stuff to make a pile heat up. Cow, sheep, and chicken manures are high in nitrogen and other desirable nutrients, but all have the potential to transmit disease if not handled properly. Avoid breathing the dust, and carefully follow the procedure for turning the pile from the outside in. This will assure that all the materials are heated by thermophilic processes. One authority indicates that four months is enough to kill Escherichia coli (intestinal bacteria) if the pile sits without turning. Never use cat or dog feces since these can be dangerous and do not break down easily. Cat feces are especially dangerous to pregnant women since the Toxoplasmosis gondii parasite can infect the fetus.

Leaves are an excellent brown (carbon) material, and should be stockpiled in the fall to serve as the bulk material for the pile. Some gardeners chop or shred leaves by running them over with a lawn mower. Shredded materials expose more surface to aerobic bacteria, making it possible to make compost in as little as fourteen days (with frequent turning). It isn't necessary to shred, however. Maple leaves have a tendency to stick together in sheets, preventing water and air circulation. Dry maple leaves until they curl up, or seperate them from each other with other stuff like straw. Oak leaves are high in tannins and may make the pile too acid unless balanced with some alkaline additive like wood ash or lime. Don't use too much wood ash or lime, or it will make the pile too alkaline.

Straw or hay, spoiled or not, make good brown material additive. Coffee grounds from the kitchen are high in nitrogen. Grass clippings are also excellent green matter, but break them up so they don't stick together.