Composting Basics: Feed Your Garden Naturally

Composting garden and kitchen waste not only saves landfill space but also gives you handy organic fertilizer for your plants. A well-run compost pile does not smell bad or attract pests.

What Is Compost?

Compost is a partially decomposed plant material. A home compost pile takes yard waste, such as leaves, grass clippings, twigs, chipped wood, and kitchen waste, and converts it into humans.

How Does Compost Help Plants?

Finished compost, or humans, provides nitrogen and other nutrients to plants. In clay soils, compost breaks up the soil so water and air can soak in and feed your plant's roots. It also makes the clay easier for roots to penetrate. In sandy soils, compost helps slow water penetration so plants can absorb the water before it leaves the soil. The many microbes in compost help plants absorb nutrients.

Building A Compost Pile

Think of composting as farming microbes. Before you start, you need a place the compost can "cook" until it is ready to spread in your garden. A 3 feet by 3 feet space that is 3 feet tall is ideal. You can pile your compost raw materials in a pile by the fence, but your compost will be of better quality if you make a compost bin. Using plywood to build three 3X3X3 spaces works best. If that takes up too much room, a single 3X3X3 space will work. You will need a gate on the front of each section so you can maintain the compost.

How Composting Happens

Bacteria start decomposing organic material by digesting it. As the organic material breaks down, filamentous bacteria, fungi, and protozoans go to work. The heat of the microbes' respiration increases the temperature in the pile's center to 110-149 degrees in about five days.

After the microbes have finished and the pile cools, centipedes, millipedes, sowbugs, and earthworms finish the job. The pile, which is quite acidic at first, will finish with a pH of 7-7.2, the sweet spot for many plants. While the center of the compost pile is hot enough to kill weed seeds, the edges do not. Turning the compost with a pitchfork or shoveling it into the next bin helps ensure that all parts of the pile are hot enough.

Safety First

Wear a mask when working with the compost pile. Dust can irritate your respiratory system. In addition, spores from fungi can set up housekeeping in your lungs and cause significant problems.

Compost Recipe

Compost is a series of layers, each 6-8 inches wide.

Use a layer of browns such as chipped wood, leaves, or spent plant stems on the bottom. The next layer should be greens, such as grass clippings, kitchen waste, or freshly cut leaves. After this, add an inch of soil to add microbes to the pile. Add a 2-3-inch layer of animal manure or some nitrogen fertilizer. Water the layers as you pile them on so each layer is wet but not soaking. Repeat the layers again and again until the pile reaches about three to four feet high.

Some Things To Leave Out

Not every bit of organic waste should be composted. Do not put weeds that have seeds in them on the compost pile.

Leave out grease, fat, meat scraps, and bones. They do not compost quickly, smell bad, and may attract wildlife to your compost pile. Do not compost dog feces, cat feces li, litter, or human feces,, as they can carry diseases that can make you sick.

Never compost diseased plant material. Doing so will spread the disease throughout the garden when you use the compost. Large logs and branches should be chipped first, or they will take too long to compost. It is not wise to compost plant materials with pesticides or herbicides. Most such chemicals will be broken down during composting, but not all will. A new pesticide was withdrawn from the market because it survived the composting process and killed the trees, shrubs, and perennials it spread around.

Compost Pile Maintenance

Once a month, turn the compost pile from the middle bin into the third bin. Then, turn the compost in the first bin into the second bin. Keep the compost bin moist but not soggy. Strive for a moisture level consistent with a rung-out sponge. Microbes need moisture to live, so unwatered piles don't compost much unless it rains.

When Is Compost Ready?

The time it takes organic matter to become compost varies with the stuff you put into the pile, weather, temperature, how moist the pile stayed, and how much you turned it. Some hot piles compost in six weeks, while others take a year to finish. The compost is ready to use when it is dark brown. If you grab a handful, it should be uniform and smell like good earth. It isn't prepared if you can pick out components of the materials you placed in your compost pile, such as a lump of manure or a leaf. Using compost that isn't ready can burn your plants and spread diseases from the manure.

How To Use Compost In The Garden

Compost is more of a soil conditioner than a fertilizer. Its nutrients are released slowly over many months. Adding an inch of compost once a year in the spring can give plants as diverse as chestnut oak and creeping buttercup a boost and help them start spring growth.

You can place it on existing mulch in landscape beds with perennials such as blanket flowers or bugleweed before you add new mulch for the spring, spread it before planting and till it into the soil in the vegetable garden, or spread it on your lawn. When spreading it on turfgrass, use a leaf rake to rake the compost.

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Since 1959, Garden Plants Nursery has been providing direct-to-consumer plants. We not only carry the best native plants but also answer gardening questions so you can grow a landscape you will enjoy. Give us a call at 931.692.7325 to ask questions or order plants.