Best Compost Recipe

Composting is an environmentally friendly way to improve your garden soil and reduce waste. Yard waste and table scraps can make up a large part of household garbage which could be turned into nutrient-rich amendments for your garden with the right compost recipe.

Even if you only have a small garden, learning how to compost is one of the most important activities you can do to save money and prevent waste from unnecessarily ending up in a landfill.

Some people mistakenly assume that compostable materials thrown in the garbage will break down and feed the soil in the landfill. But throwing vegetable and garden scraps in the trash means it will be surrounded by garbage and not have the proper recipe to decompose. Instead, it releases harmful methane gas into the environment.

The Best Materials To Toss In Compost Bin (printable Chart)

Composting isn’t difficult, but it isn’t as simple as just throwing your kitchen scraps and garden cuttings into aheap and checking on it a year later. Eventually, those items will break down and create compost, but it is much faster, cleaner, and more effective when you know the proper compost recipe.

Add 1 part of greens. Green compost ingredients are those with higher nitrogen content, such as grass clippings, kitchen scraps, and garden trimmings.

These materials rot quickly and contain the compounds needed for fast microbial growth. They are usually quite wet and heavy and can get stinky fast unless you balance them with enough brown material.

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Add 2-3 parts of browns. Brown compost ingredients are those with higher carbon content, such as paper, shredded woody material, and straw.

Browns are dry and bulky, allowing air to reach the greens. They do not decay rapidly without greens because they do not hold enough moisture.

Colour alone is not a good indication of what is considered brown materials. Deciduous leaves that have fallen and turned brown, as well as chopped up tree and shrub clippings, have higher nitrogen balance than true “browns.”

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Leaves and chopped-up clippings are excellent for compost and can decompose readily on their own, without needing additional greens or browns. You can choose to compost these materials from the garden on their own or mixed in with the 1 part green / 2-3 part brown mixture.

Packing layers of green and brown materials into a compost bin will not make compost alone. Air needs to be introduced by turning the compost with a fork, an aeration tool, or a rolling composter.

As the microbes work to break down the materials, the compost heap will become warm. The heat in the middle of the pile can reach up to 150 degrees F.

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Turning the compost once a week should be plenty, but to speed up the process, mix the compost every few days to introduce more air and move materials from the edges to the middle.

Moisture is also necessary to give the microbes the best possible conditions to break down the material. After adding the materials, water the compost pile and mix it well. It should be damp but not soggy. In dry months you may have to add water, and in wet months you may have to protect the compost from rain.

I love the look and feel of compost. It’s rich, black, light, and fluffy to the touch. When I pick it up, I just know that it will be pure gold for my plants and my garden.

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Creating your compost rather than buying it means you’ll have more of the specific nutrients and organisms that your plants and soil need. You can use it as a soil amendment, fertilizer, and as mulch.

Amend soil with compost manually or more often when you have compost readily available. Spread compost in a thick layer over the soil when the garden is not productive. Compost doesn’t need to be scratched in or turned into the top layer of the soil.

Turning the compost in only disturbs the network of microorganisms already living in the soil. Better yet, add compost directly over the mulch layer that protects soil and decomposing itself.

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When I’m adding a new plant to the garden, I also like to mix in a little bit of compost at the bottom of the hole I dug to give the plant an extra boost of nutrients. I really never use fertilizer for my garden plants, instead opting for compost.

You can also make a compost tea. This is a liquid made from steeping or brewing your compost in water to extract beneficial organisms and water-soluble nutrients. Then, it’s applied as a foliar spray to help with plant diseases or as a soil drench which applies diluted concentrations of soil microorganisms and nutrients.

Compost bins are another major part of learning how to compost. You need to find the right bin to suit your needs; one won’t work for everyone. It depends on your available space and how much compost you’ll need.

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You can have one big compost bin or many small ones. The goal is to ensure it’s accessible and easy to add and aerate.

One of my personal favourites is a vermicomposting bin. These work great for small spaces and those who want a closed system. It relies almost entirely on the power of worms, and you’ll get some pretty amazing organic matter for your soil.

Some materials are full of microbes, bacteria, fungi, soil insects, mites, and worms that will speed up the decomposition process. Add just a small portion of one of these compost amendments to really get the party started.

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Not everything can go in your home compost bin, although some of these can go in city or county large-scale industrial compost bins where the temperatures are consistently hot enough to kill pathogens and seeds.

If you think composting is yucky or dirty, you aren’t doing it right! Compost should smell fresh, sweet, and earthy. Overly stinky compost is not properly balanced, but it is an easy fix.

Too many greens in your compost will become soggy and smell bad. Compost can also start to stink when it is too wet. In both cases, adding more brown materials and turning your compost to introduce air will help to remedy the problem.

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While composting aims to attract insects and fungi to your compost bin, you shouldn’t need to fight off an army of critters to get into the compost. The best defense against an overly active compost bin is, again, balance.

If you follow this compost recipe and keep a layer of brown on top of the compost, you will only attract those critters that will work for you to make healthy, nutritious compost.

Compost can take as little as four weeks to make or as long as a year. Ultimately, the more work you put in, the faster your compost degrades. While you can just toss everything together in a heap and wait a year, you can speed up the process.

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If you work to accelerate and aerate your compost bin, you will have compost quickly. Quick composting is when you accelerate compost by adding plants.

Traditionally, this combines dried nettle, dandelion, chamomile, yarrow, valerian, and oak bark. The plants are dried, crushed into a powder, and sprinkled on layers between compost. This will give you compost in 4-6 weeks.

Generally, compost can sit for a long time without any worry. It won’t stink or rot when it’s properly taken care of by controlling the moisture levels.

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However, compost can lose potency over time. The nutrients leach, and the compost will turn finer and finer as the microorganisms get to work. Too much moisture can cause the compost to rot and grow fungi. And if your compost is in a pile and not in a bin, it could disappear altogether, becoming part of the soil.

Your compost will be okay in the sun or shade if you properly manage it. Sun speeds up the composting process since it raises the overall temperature. However, it will dry out faster. You may find that you need fewer carbon materials for bins in the sun and need to add water frequently.

Compost bins in the shade will be prone to staying damp and won’t be as warm. In this case, you may need to aerate it more often and add more carbon materials to help accelerate it.

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Hi, I’m Stephanie Rose. My love of plants healed me from a debilitating illness, so I know the power of garden therapy firsthand. Click here to read more about me and the story behind Garden Therapy.

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