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Home Composting

Compost is a dark, crumbly, and earthy-smelling form of decomposing organic matter.

Composting is the most practical and convenient way to handle your yard and kitchen wastes. It can be easier and cheaper than bagging these wastes. You can reduce the amount of garbage you generate by 25% or more, keeping it out of our landfills. Compost improves your soil and the plants growing in it by helping to break up heavy clay soils and improving their structure, by adding water and nutrient-holding capacity to sandy soils, and by adding essential nutrients to any soil. Improving your soil is the first step toward improving the health of your plants. Healthy plants grow better and produce more flowers, fruit, and are less susceptible to pest and disease damage. They also help clean our air and conserve our soil, making our communities healthier places in which to live. If you have a garden, a lawn, trees, shrubs, or even planter boxes, you have a use for compost.

Yard wastes, such as fallen leaves, grass clippings, some kitchen scraps, and the remains of garden plants make excellent compost. Woody yard wastes can be clipped and sawed down to a size useful for the wood stove or fireplace or they can be run through a shredder for mulching and path making. Used as mulch or for paths, they will eventually decompose and become compost. Care must be taken when composting kitchen scraps. Meat, bones and fatty foods (such as cheese, salad dressing, and leftover cooking oil) should not be used in the compost but be put in the garbage. Eggshells, leftover vegetables and fruit, onion peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, stale bread, hair, can all be composted.

Compost can be used to enrich the flower and vegetable garden, to improve the soil around trees and shrubs, as a soil amendment for houseplants and planter boxes and, when screened, as part of a seed-starting mix or lawn top-dressing. After they decompose, these chipped woody wastes will add texture to garden soils.

Containers

Effective composting requires choosing some type of system. The cheapest way is simply to throw your waste into an open-air holding-type compost bin constructed of pallets, wire, brick blocks, or other scrap material. Many people purchase a ready-made plastic composting bin. These bins are easy to put together, have a lid to keep animals out, and are attractive to have in the yard.

For kitchen scraps, you will need a pail with a lid. Make sure this pail has a tight seal to keep fruit flies away, and a size easy to empty kitchen scraps into. Line the bottom of the pail with a paper towel to keep the scraps from sticking. The paper towel will decompose with the rest of the scraps.

Location

Make sure your location is level and in partial shade. Near your kitchen is a good location as you will be adding material several times each week, even in winter.

First layer

Straw (not hay). This will keep your pile off the ground and keeps out weeds and pests. Check the local papers for a farmer selling straw or call a garden center.

Second layer

Garden plants, kitchen scraps (no meat, fat or bones), and manure. Periodically sprinkle in compost starter (available at garden centers or from last year's pile) as it helps speed up the process.

Third layer

Shredded leaves. Shredding is good but not entirely necessary. Keep on layering in straw for airflow. Repeat the layers as necessary.
Finish with manure, compost, and lock in with straw so the pile cooks from the bottom up. This also keeps animals and smells out. Water in once in the fall - in summer water as needed to keep the pile moist. Turn every 1-2 weeks. The more turning the faster it will make compost.

 

If you would like to order an Earth Machine backyard composter for $48.20, or a Kitchen Collector pail for $7.50, or you would like more information on home composting please call me at the office, (585) 786-2251.

 

Please don't hesitate to call us with all of your gardening questions at (585) 786-2251 or e-mail your local Master Gardener, Lutie Batt, at lcb37@cornell.edu.

We are available Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.