What is Compost?
Composting is a growing trend throughout the U.S. With recent emphasis on reducing waste and protecting the environment, composting has seen a surge in popularity. By composting, you can reduce landfill wastes by 30% and help the soil too! Compost is a vital product to farmers and home gardeners alike, and it’s super easy to start a compost pile.
Mature compost is a stable material with content that enriches the soil and can help plants and flowers grow. It is called “humus” and is typically dark brown or black, and it has a soil like, earthy smell. Good compost should never smell like rot, and if it does, something is wrong!
Compost is created by combining organic waste products such as fruit and vegetable peels, cuttings and other uneaten food waste. Yard trimmings and herbivorous manures also can contribute to the making of compost. Wood chips, ash, and dead leaves are also examples of what compost is made of.
In order for compost to be successful, it must be left to degrade over time and be subjected to high temperatures in order to kill seeds, pathogens and other undesirable aspects of organic waste products.
Benefits of Composting
There are a number of benefits that composting has. Whether you use it for your own lawn and garden, sell it, or give it to friends and community members to help them with their gardens, composting has benefits for everyone, including the planet. Some of those benefits are below.
• Organic waste generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting organic waste and reusing it in other applications, you are helping to preserve the planet and cut down on landfill emissions.
• Using compost is one of the most organic ways to enrich and amend your soil, reducing or eliminating the use of chemical fertilizers that harm beneficial insects, pollinators and the environment.
• Compost promotes a higher yield of agricultural crops, which means more food to feed more people and could contribute to eliminating food insecurity in at-risk communities.
• Compost can be used to repair contaminated or nutritionally deficient soil, helping to rebuild and protect it for the future.
• Composting is a great way to save costs on gardening. The more compost you have, the less you need external soil, and the more you get healthier, more disease and pest resistant crops and better yields at harvest.
To learn more about the benefits of composting, please click here.
How Can I Start Composting?
Composting is surprisingly easy and doesn’t require a bunch of fancy equipment or barrels. All you need is a dedicated space in your yard that you can fence around to keep opportunistic critters out or a large trashcan with a fitted lid. Composting only requires basic ingredients, however there are some organic wastes that aren’t ideal for composting such as meat/fish scraps, dairy products, pet waste, and egg yolks/whites.
Compost should contain equal bits of green matter, brown matter, and water.
Green Matter: “Green” matter includes materials such as grass clippings, vegetable and fruit scraps, as well as coffee grounds and egg shells. Greens provide nitrogen for your compost pile.
Brown Matter: “Brown” matter includes materials such as dead leaves, branches, twigs and yard trimmings. Browns provide carbon for your compost pile.
Water: Having the correct amount of water, greens, and browns is important for the development of compost and usability of that compost. Water provides moisture to help break down other parts of the compost.
It’s all about balance. There should be equal amounts of browns to greens, and alternate layers of organic matter of different sized particles. It must be turned regularly and aerated, as well as reaching a high enough temperature to kill off pathogens and essentially “disinfect” the pile before it can be used.
For best ingredients to compost, take a look at the list below:
• Fruit and vegetable peelings, cuttings, etc.
• Eggshells
• Shredded newspaper
• Coffee grinds and filters
• Tea bags
• Wood chips
• Fireplace ashes
• Leaves
• Houseplants
• Yard trimmings
And more! For a more complete list on what can be composted, please visit the EPA article by clicking here.
Ingredients to AVOID composting include but are not limited to:
• Meat and fish scraps and trimmings
• Pet waste
• Disease- or pest-ridden plants and trees
• Black walnut tree leaves or twigs
• Dairy products
• Oils, fats, lards, shortening
For more information regarding what you should NOT compost and why, visit The Spruce!