How to Start a Compost Pile
Making nutrient-rich organic compost is fun and easy.
Sept. 23, 2008
By Heidi Hunt
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Rich compost added to your garden will boost the soil's available nutrition.
FOTOLIA/SHEREZ
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A vegetable garden is more than what you see on the surface — dirt, plants and (hopefully!) some mulch. Under the surface, a complex web of dirt, roots, microbes and fungi transforms plain old dirt into a superior growing medium — soil. But that intricate web will exist only if you boost your plain old dirt with nutritious amendments, such as homemade compost. And in addition to being a garden soil amendment, compost can be worked into the soil around trees, bushes and flowers to also give them a nutritional boost.
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Composting is a natural process, similar to the way nature breaks down leaves and other dead material on the forest floor. A combination of green and brown vegetable matter kept barely moist and turned regularly will “rot” into a dark, aromatic material filled with the beneficial bacteria, microbes and fungi that your plants need to grow like champs.
Getting Started
Where will you work your compost? You can easily make a 3-to-4-foot-wide “cage” from chicken wire, welded wire or plastic gardening fencing to contain your compost materials. Place the compost cage in a corner of your garden, where the nutrients carried by rainwater will feed vegetables planted nearby. If there’s no room in the garden install it as close as possible because you’ll also want to add weeds and culled vegetables to the compost heap. Leave a space of equal size adjacent to the container (more on this below).
If you don’t want to build your own cage, there are numerous sizes and shapes of commercial compost tumblers available. While tumblers are compact and convenient to use, a well managed-compost pile can handle a lot more material — and is almost free.
What to Add — Or Not
The best compost heaps contain a good variety of green and brown ingredients:
