So you’ve started to compost – yay! That’s great; the earth thanks you!! Your garden thanks you too!! Or maybe you’ve composted for a while but are looking to rev up the process. If you are like many composters, you’ve been dutifully tossing in your kitchen scraps to an “as you go” pile, supplementing with yard waste when you have it. This is fantastic.
But now you are looking around and wondering what else you can add to the pile. And, you’ve probably noticed that the pile takes a long time to generate good, hot, composted soil, and want to know how to make better compost faster.
First thing to note is that an “as you go” pile will never get as hot as commercial batchpile methods. And that’s OK – most people do it this way. It just isn’t reasonable for most home gardeners to add everything to the pile at one time, because at home we generate the kitchen scraps over time.
But there are some things we can do to tweak the pile to make sure we get some good, healthy soil amendment at least a few times a year. Here are a few tips to make better compost faster.
1. Understand your “Browns’ and “Greens”
The key to making better compost faster is having a good mix of carbon and nitrogen. These two feed off each other and break down much more rapidly when they are present in a specific proportion. The proportion is 25:1, but you don’t need to remember that number, because all material has carbon and some material has greater parts of nitrogen present. So we classify each as brown or green, and then you can portion out how much to add to the pile.
What you want to aim for is about 1 part green to 2 parts brown. That being said, you are going to need to adjust the ratio depending upon what you put in your pile. If the brown is leaf mulch, that will be much more dense than something which has a lot of air in it. In that case, use less brown. But if using egg cartons, nut shells, shredded paper, and dry leaves for the brown, you’ll need quite a bit more brown than green to get the ratio correct. Similarly, if you have a lot of grass clippings, you’ll want to ramp up the browns.
Your pile is going to be different based upon what you use and consume in your own house and yard. Therefore the key is to experiment a bit to get your pile close to that 2:1 ratio.
This one step is probably the biggest one you can take to speed up your rate of composition and make better compost faster.
2. Layer your Greens and Browns
Whenever you add a layer of green kitchen scraps, always try to cover that with a layer of brown, such as leaves, shredded paper, or straw. First, the nitrogen rich greens, if left on top, will get smelly, attract bugs, and worst of all, could dry out. If they dry, they will not generate the heat required.
When you cover the pile with a layer of carbon, you are keeping the heat in and kickstarting the enzymatic reaction.
3. Turn your Pile
Yeah, I know. What a pain. Here’s why it works. The beneficial microbes – you know, the ones breaking down the scraps? They need oxygen to survive. Over time, the pile is going to get compacted and there will not be enough air in the center portion.
If you live in a rainy place, it gets anaerobic even faster, because any air there might be already in the pile gets waterlogged and the water cannot escape. Turning the pile allows the microbes to live to eat another day, and keeps the temperature more consistent throughout the pile.
You can make your job easier with the right compost turning tool. Check out some of these options:
- Compost Aerator from gardeners.com
- Garden Weasel from Amazon
- Pitchfork. This is my go-to tool for OPEN style compost bins, such as a pallet style bin. A couple of thoughts when using pitchforks. You want a short handle for better maneuverability. Thinner, rounded tines work much better for compost. Try to get one with at least 5 tines; close and thin.
- You can also try a tumbling compost bin to make this chore easier.
4. Water your Pile
Here in California, we get consistent rain about three months a year, during the winter, then it is relatively dry for nine months straight. This could spell disaster for your compost pile. Remember those microbes? Well, just like us, they need water to survive. Not too much, but more than nature is willing to provide.
Water also helps to regulate the temperature of your pile, too. Without it, there could be hot spots – hot enough to ignite dry material. Dry compost might be hot for a while, decomposing partially, then dry out. This dried compost will form rock hard clumps of partially decomposed matter which won’t even break with a shovel. Trust me on this – been there!! These clumps are super rich because they are mostly decomposed, they just ran out of … steam so to speak.
Your best bet if you get super dry composted clumps is to make compost tea. Take the rock hard compost clumps, put them into a tub and fill the tub with water. The compost will absorb all of the water and still probably be too dry to use. You’ll likely need to fill the tub a second time until the clumps soften enough that you can break them down into soil with your hands.
Let me know in the comments below how you are doing with your compost piles!
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