Chances are you feel that composting properly is out of your league. You’re wrong. Nobody likes yard clean up but it’s actually not that difficult to recycle twigs, vegetable scraps, garden clippings, lawn debris, deadheaded flowers, and dry leaves so that you can make free fertilizer to help in your garden.

There are two ways to make compost – hot or cold.

In order to cold-compost what you need to do is collect the yard waste and organic materials and place them into a bin or a neat pile. Naturally, over the course of time, the material will decompose here.

The hot-composting is a method that has much faster results. In order to build your compost pile collect fresh green plant material and dry brown plant material and create a pile that is 2-3 feet in height.

If you are wondering what green materials might mean what we are talking about are plant trimmings, grass clippings, and vegetable scraps. Newspaper (shredded) and dried leaves constitute brown material (not pet waste).

Now it is time to create layers of both the brown and the green materials. Each layer should alternate and be at least 5-9 inches. It is important to keep the pile moist which helps the decomposition (not soaked). Spray the pile every now and again with water to carry this out.

Keep the materials turned over weekly. Once or twice is optimal to help it cook faster and keep the bad odor from becoming overwhelming. If you want, you can use temperature to determine when you should turn over the pile. 60 – 65C or 140-160F is what should be your signal to turn the pile over.

You will know that the composting is done and ready to use in the garden when it becomes brown, dry, and flaky.

Have fun.

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