How to Start a Compost Pile

Anyone with a backyard can start an environmentally friendly compost pile rather easily. Composting keeps organic yard and household waste out of local landfills while allowing you to create a rich, excellent mulch for your flowerbeds and vegetable garden. Here are some composting basics:

• You may want to create a simple, three-sided compost “box” of wooden boards to contain your compost materials, or you can just create a compost pile in an out-of-the way corner of your yard. Your goal is to create a layered pile of organic material about three feet tall and three feet square. This will allow the organic materials in the pile to heat up inside and decompose.
  
• Rule of thumb: The more you manage your compost pile, the quicker you will get rich, black compost. Management ranges from simply leaving the pile (everything decays in time, but this method may take a year or more) to turning the compost once or twice a week with a garden spade so the cooler exterior of the pile is turned under.
  
• Keep your compost pile damp. Depending upon your weather, this may be easy to achieve naturally during some seasons. You can check for moisture by turning over the compost with a spade – the center of the pile shouldn’t dry out. Depending upon the weather, you may have to sprinkle your compost pile occasionally to keep it damp, or cover it with a tarp to prevent it from being soaked regularly.
  
• The interior of the pile should be warm. This indicates decomposition of the organic materials is taking place.
  
• There should be both "brown" (carbon-rich) and "green" (nitrogen-rich) ingredients in your compost pile. Brown components are rich in carbon and include dried leaves, pine needles, spoiled hay, straw and paper. Make sure that most of the items – about two-thirds – are brown ingredients.
  
• Green ingredients are rich in nitrogen. You will want to create a thin layer of green ingredients between thick layers of brown ingredients. Remember, two thirds of your pile should be brown. You can create a five-to-six inch layer of brown, topped with up to two inches of green, then another layer of brown, and so on. Common green components include grass clippings, yard refuse (old vegetable stalks, last fall's flower stalks), coffee grounds, barnyard animal manure and fruit and vegetable kitchen waste (don’t add chemically-treated grass clippings, cat litter, dog feces, or meat/fat and bones). Avoid adding protein sources from meat to a compost bin, as protein tends to smell as it decomposes, attracting pests like raccoons and other creatures. A smelly compost pile means that meat sources were added to the pile. A compost pile using vegetable matter does not produce an odor.
  
• A few additional tips: You can throw weeds into the compost pile (green material) because the center of the pile heats up enough to kill weed seeds. If you get lots of rain where you live, tarp your pile so it doesn’t get soaked – damp is all you want. Depending on weather, your dedication to tending the pile and the ingredients in it, you can expect rich compost in four-10 months.