How to Make a Compost Pile
How to Make a Compost Pile
There are as many different ways to make compost as there are people who do it. The following guidelines will get you started, but soon your own experience will help you tailor a method that best fits your needs.
1. Build or purchase a compost bin. Check to see if your community has a composting bin distribution program, or order from a garden catalogue, nursery or hardware store. Enclosed compost piles keep out pests, hold heat and moisture in, and have a neat appearance. Or, bins can be simply made of wire, wood, pallets, concrete blocks, even garbage cans with drainage holes drilled in them. In urban areas, rodent-resistant compost bins - having a secure cover and floor and openings no wider than one-half inch - must be used.
2. Set up the bin in a convenient, shady area with good drainage. A pile that is about three feet square and three feet high will help maintain the heat generated by the composting organisms throughout the winter. Although a smaller pile may not retain heat, it will compost.
3. Start the pile with a layer of coarse material such as corn stalks to build in air passages. Add alternating layers of "brown" and "green" materials with a shovelful of soil on top of each layer. Shredding leaves or running over them with a lawn mower will shorten the composting time. Be sure to bury food scraps in the center of the pile.
High Nitrogen (green) Ingredients:
- grass clippings
- weeds
- food wastes: fruit and vegetables, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells
- manure (cow, horse, chicken, rabbit)
- seaweed
- alfalfa hay/meal
- blood meal
High Carbon (brown) Ingredients:
- autumn leaves
- straw
- paper towels, napkins, bags plates, coffee filters, tissue, newspaper
- cornstalks
- wood chips
- saw dust
- pine needles
4. Add water as you build the pile if the materials are dry.
5. As time goes on, keep oxygen available to the compost critters by fluffing the pile with a hoe or compost turning tool each time you add material. A complete turning of the pile - so the top becomes the bottom - in spring and fall should result in finished compost within a year. More frequent turning will shorten the composting time.
Source - Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection
Municipal Waste Reduction Program
