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Compost is like nature's recycling system, making waste into something that improves soil. By replicating nature, your kitchen scraps and yard waste can be made into black gold that is good for your garden.
Compost is vital for gardens, providing nutrients, helping soil retain water, balancing pH, and providing a home for billions of beneficial microbes and fungi. Although you can’t rush it, there are different methods to match each gardening goal and timeline.
In this guide, I will discuss the aspects of composting, including what is compost, different styles of composting, the benefits of using it, and how to use it.
Instead of slaving away year after year, wouldn’t you like to enjoy a garden that basically grows itself? Soil quality is key to enjoying a low-maintenance garden, and that is where composting comes in.
Composting is essential to any sustainable, organic gardener's routine. More than simply reducing waste, composting produces the nutrient-rich soil needed to grow a strong and healthy harvest.
That is why I’ve created resources like these to help you have ultimate success in the garden:
Let’s get started recycling nature in your backyard.
Compost is a dark, organic material formed from decomposing organic matter. Finished compost contains humus, pronounced HEW-MUS (and no, that is not the delicious, creamy spread made from chickpeas; that is hummus), which is vital for good soil composition and soil fertility.
Composting is the natural decomposition process of breaking down organic material into usable soil that contains all the necessary nutrients and structure to sustain plant life. The original ingredients become almost unidentifiable.
Compost contains microbes (or decomposing organisms) that help break down organic matter into smaller pieces. These microbes slowly release nutrients, making the soil more fertile and sustainable for gardening.
Everyone knows that compost gives your plants the nutrients they need. But some of the benefits of composting might not be so obvious. Here are more ways composting at home can save you time and money and even improve the environment:
Aspect |
Benefits |
Environmental |
Food waste is the single largest component of waste in American landfills, accounting for about 23% of the volume. Much of the food sent to landfills is decomposed anaerobically (without oxygen), producing methane gas. This has a hugely negative effect on the environment. Composting minimizes waste, reduces methane emissions, and provides an inexpensive fertilizer for your plants. |
Economic |
Composting saves the home gardener money while potentially increasing garden yields. With reduced expenditures on fertilizer bills and watering, plus cost savings on home waste management, it's a smart choice for saving money and being green. |
Soil Composition |
With a pH of roughly 7.0, compost is a great way to correct acidic or alkaline soil. Compost improves clay soil, helping to break it up by preventing clay particles from binding to each other. It also increases soil's water retention capacities by enhancing soil structure. Runoff and evaporation rates decrease when water retention improves, reducing the amount of water needed to keep the soil moist. |
Soil Health |
Compost can be the perfect growing medium, returning vital nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium back to the soil. It contains minerals essential for plant life, like calcium, iron, magnesium, and many other trace minerals. Compost allows for microbes and fungi to colonize. Having beneficial fungi and bacteria in your soil is proven to give the best results in the garden. |
Plant Health |
Composting creates the ideal ecosystem for your plants. The enhanced soil fertility offers disease suppression and other protections for your plants. They will grow hardier, healthier, and be more protected in extreme weather conditions. Compost can be applied directly to the top of the soil as a living mulch to save drought-stressed plants from dying. |
Good compost is made up of organic waste called greens and browns. Greens are nitrogen rich material and include things like grass clippings, coffee grounds, manure, and scraps of fruits and vegetables.
Brown materials are high in carbon and include things like dried leaves, straw, and wood mulch. When composting, greens and browns are layered or mixed together to create the right ratio of carbon and nitrogen.
Then microorganisms go to work breaking down the organic matter. When the compost is mature, it will be crumbly and look and smell like dark rich soil.
Composting can be done in different forms, for different spaces and needs. Let's look at the main types and their pros and cons.
A compost pile that is left for years to weather without ever being added to or mixed is a cold compost pile. The compost is essentially “cold” because it does not heat up like the more common hot compost pile.
The benefit of the cold composting technique is that the lack of extreme heat allows for a more diverse range of beneficial bacteria, insects, and fungi to colonize the pile. It is also, by far, the most natural route and the least labor-intensive.
Pro-Tip: Perennials benefit from a fungally-dominated compost because fungi mine nutrients for the plant from the soil and increase the root mass. Fungally-dominated compost is achieved through cold composting. Think leaves sitting on a forest floor!
The downside to cold composting is that it takes a long time. Since there is no flipping, adding, or stimulating cold compost may take 1-3 years to break down fully.
Hot composting is the process of piling up small pieces of organic material (both carbon and nitrogen) into a large pile and actively wetting and turning it to keep specific bacteria highly active. These bacteria and microorganisms speed up the composting process by using moisture and aeration to create heat.
Pro-Tip: Annuals benefit from a bacterially dominated compost. A good rule of thumb is to use hot composting to achieve bacterially dominated compost.
A hot compost pile is recognized by the steam it emits. It can reach temperatures up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot composting is the fastest composting technique, usually creating quality compost in just 30 to 60 days.
Hot composting is labor intensive, requiring you to consistently monitor and turn the pile. Due to the high heat, many weed seeds, diseases, bad bacteria, and harmful fungal spores are killed off. However, beneficial bacteria, worms, and beneficial insects may also die in this hot environment.
VermicompostingVermicomposting is also known as worm composting. Worms are commonly found in living soil, where they feed on organic material.
When vermicomposting, you put worms into a controlled environment, usually an enclosed container like a worm bin, and give them food to digest. They excrete nutrient-rich humus-like vermicast (also called worm castings), resulting in effortless compost.
The nutrient quality of worm castings is nearly triple that of regular compost. The digestion process also incorporates billions of beneficial microbes into the compost, which interact with plant roots and help to create a healthy environment for life.
Vermicomposting is easy because worms require very little care. Five hundred worms can eat 2 pounds of food scraps per week. Aside from feeding the worms, they need moisture and to be indoors because many animals feed on them.
This type of composting involves anaerobic bacteria breaking down food scraps in an enclosed bucket. In Bokashi, organic matter is fermented rather than decomposed.
Bokashi composting utilizes beneficial bacteria similar to those found in our stomachs. The bacteria belong primarily to three strains: yeasts, bacteria that produce lactic acids, and (phototrophic) purple non-sulfur bacteria.
Bokashi is easy and does not require the maintenance that a hot compost pile does. This technique is the safest to use if you want to add things that wouldn't generally be compostable materials, like meats, eggs, and greasy foods (but never pet waste!).
The downside of Bokashi is that the starter for the compost must be purchased on a very regular basis. Making the Bokashi starter is very dangerous and can breed E. coli bacteria if done wrong. Also, this process can be stinkier than the other methods.
This isn’t actually a composting method, but have you considered using chickens to create compost for your garden?
Chickens will eat just about anything and the leftover product is great for your organic vegetable garden. They can turn food scraps and garden waste into not only eggs, but beneficial fertilizer for the garden.
Chicken poo can be hot (very high in nitrogen), so you may want to let it cool off a bit before adding it to your garden to prevent burning your plants. Try adding it to the soil in the fall when you plan to plant in the spring. Or add chicken manure to your compost pile to boost the nitrogen content.
How to Use CompostWhether you make your own compost or buy it premade, you can use it as a soil amendment, mulch, topdressing, fertilizer, or even to make compost tea.
My favorite way to apply compost is as a mulch layer with a no-till gardening approach.
Now that you know the answer to “What is compost?” start adding this critical garden element to your routine. You can save a few bucks by choosing one of the above composting methods and start making your fruit and vegetable scraps into your own black gold today!
Compost is a dark, crumbly material made from broken-down organic matter that is rich in nutrients.
Composting is the process of breaking down organic material into usable soil that contains all the necessary nutrients and structure to sustain plant life.
Compost is made up of what are called greens (high nitrogen) and browns (carbon materials). These, along with water and oxygen, create the perfect environment for microorganisms to decompose the organic material.
There are several different methods for making compost. Follow this guide, How to Make Compost, for step-by-step hot composting instructions.
Hot and cold composting are the most common methods. Vermicomposting and Bokashi are growing in popularity.
No, compost is not just food waste. Food waste can be used as a "green" ingredient to make compost.
Generally, things like meat, eggs, and greasy foods shouldn’t be composted.
Comments
i have made compost all summer it is black and not hot anymore , i was going to put it in my raised beds after i pull my plants , or can i save it somehow and put it in my raised beds next spring i am in top of wisconsin also i love your idea of having this business i wil always buy from you when possible
