Make Compost in Four Easy Steps

[Adapted from The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith]

A bountiful, healthy vegetable garden needs compost. Compost is both partially decomposed organic matter — mostly plants and the manures of plant-eating animals — and the soil-dwelling microbes that do the decomposing. When you make compost, you’re doing what nature does all the time, only a little faster. Composting is nature’s method of recycling. The instructions below are for a hot compost pile.

  1. 1. Begin making your compost pile by adding successive layers of straw, green material (grass clippings, kitchen scraps, and nonpoisonous weeds that haven’t gone to seed), and soil, lasagna-fashion, until the pile is about 4 feet high. As you spread on the layers, fluff them to allow spaces for air to circulate through the pile.
  2. 2. Compost needs moisture just as it needs air. Your goal should be to get a mixture that feels something like a squeezed-out sponge — damp to the touch, but definitely not soggy. Add water to the brown layer (the straw), which is the driest, as you build the pile.
  3. 3. When you’ve finished making the pile, cover it. This reduces evaporation from the top of the pile and also prevents accidental overwatering from rain. You can cover it with a nylon-reinforced tarp or with black plastic, which absorbs sunlight and adds warmth to the pile. Don’t use white plastic; it reflects sunlight and can keep the compost pile too cool.
  4. 4. You’ll get better results with a hot compost pile if you check it and tend it regularly. Using a compost thermometer, preferably one with a long probe, take the temperature of the pile daily. If everything is going as it should, the pile should reach 140°F to 160°F/60°C to 71°C within a few days. Whenever the temperature starts a steady drop, turn the pile. With each turning, moisten the pile if necessary, fluff it for aeration, and move the material from the outside into the center. Your compost is ready when it looks like dirt and you can no longer identify what it was made of.