How to Start a Compost Pile - Ep. 242

[00:00:00] According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.9 pounds or 2.2 kilograms of garbage per day. That's almost 1,800 pounds per year or 816 kilograms. And over 56% of this garbage is food, yard waste, or paper or paper board.

[00:00:24] That means over 1,000 pounds of the municipal waste produced in the U.S. could be composted per person. So right now, a lot of us are getting our garden beds ready for the gardening season. Or if you're in a colder climate, you might be dreaming of warmer days when you can actually work outside. Much of this garden cleanup involves yard waste and now would be the perfect time to start a compost pile.

[00:00:50] Combining that yard waste with scraps from our kitchen and paper from our offices and cardboard from all of those packages we have delivered to our doors. My success with composting out of the years has swung widely from zero success to slam dunk and everything in between. Sometimes I have managed my piles very closely. Other years it's just been an ignored heap in a corner that just continued to get stuff dumped on it. And that's all the attention it got.

[00:01:18] No matter which method I used, I still had compost at the end of it all to add to my gardens and I was keeping those materials out of the landfill. Today on Just Grow Something, we're going to talk about starting a compost pile or restarting it if you've made an attempt before and maybe weren't as successful as you'd hoped. Composting can be done in a lot of ways in a lot of different spaces. So we're going to cover the basics of what you need to know regardless of where and how you accomplish it.

[00:01:45] Give you a few options for composting systems, both large and small. And the do's and don'ts of what goes into our composting systems and what we should avoid. Let's dig in. Hey, I'm Karen and what started as a small backyard garden 20 years ago turned into a lifelong passion for growing food. Now, as a market farmer and horticulturist, I want to help you do the same.

[00:02:07] On this podcast, I am your friend in the garden, teaching evidence-based techniques to help you grow your favorites and build confidence in your own garden space. So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to just grow something. Before we dig into the dirt on composting, see what I did there? I need you to know that the special offer from Magic Mind to save 20% off your subscription price has a new link and a new code this week.

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[00:04:27] So, we know the benefits of using compost in our gardens. Enriching the soil, helping retain moisture, adding nutrients, and encouraging the beneficial bacteria and fungi in our soil that break down organic matter to create that biomass and release even more nutrients into our soil. Compost is great for the soil. But composting is also essential for keeping organic waste out of our landfills.

[00:04:54] We can do all the things we need to do to reduce the amount of food waste coming from our kitchens, but there's always going to be scraps and there's always going to be yard waste. So, composting can help prevent these scraps and this waste from going to the landfill and causing all kinds of problems. Why do they cause problems? Well, for organic material to decompose quickly, it needs access to oxygen.

[00:05:20] Decomposition at its functional best is an aerobic process. Aerobic, meaning with oxygen. So, without that oxygen, decomposition can take a really long time, sometimes decades, for those same organic materials to break down. Landfills typically have very little oxygen flow. So, if we have all these organic materials and they're all tied up in plastic bags

[00:05:48] and they're surrounded by mounds and mounds of more plastic bags and then that's covered by layers of inorganic waste and then eventually it is all buried, there is very little oxygen happening in that scenario. The organic waste in landfills does not stand a chance at breaking down quickly because it just doesn't have the oxygen that it needs. It does eventually decompose, but it takes much longer

[00:06:14] and that type of decomposition is called anaerobic, meaning without oxygen or very little oxygen. Anaerobic decomposition produces methane gas And since it takes so long for that type of decomposition to happen, the food and other organic waste in the landfills just keeps on producing that methane for as long as that decomposition takes, which can be decades.

[00:06:41] A single head of lettuce can take up to 25 years to decompose in a landfill and it is giving off that harmful methane gas the entire time. So when we compost our organic materials, whether that's food scraps from our kitchen or debris from the garden, the decomposition that occurs in our compost pile is aerobic. This is the good type of decomp. When composting is done really well, it means there's a lot of oxygen present.

[00:07:11] With good oxygen flow, food waste is broken down very quickly. Also, that oxygen means that the decomposition is producing carbon dioxide instead of methane. Now, carbon dioxide is still a greenhouse gas, but our plants breathe it. And our first goal should always be to reduce that food waste. But like I said, there's always going to be some scraps. And we have to do something with our garden debris. So the carbon dioxide is definitely better than the methane. And it's also a much faster process.

[00:07:41] We're talking even an unmanaged compost pile could take two to three years versus 25 years in a landfill. So this is where the compost pile becomes that sort of final step to close the loop of production. So we use the food scraps and the yard waste and the other organic items to feed our soil and to make more food in our own garden. And we're reducing what goes into the landfill.

[00:08:08] Now, when I said composting is done really well, it means there's lots of oxygen present. Does this mean that you need to be out there turning your compost pile every single week or once a month to make sure it's got enough oxygen? Not necessarily. If you have a small compost pile, the oxygen will get in. It may be slower, but it will be there. If we think in terms of scale and the sheer size of a landfill versus our backyard compost pile,

[00:08:38] it's obvious that the size is actually the problem. Do you need a large enough quantity of organic matter to trap in a peak to speed up the decomp process? Yes, if you want usable compost in a fairly reasonable amount of time. But if you're not in a hurry, the lazy compost method of just tossing materials into a pile in a corner and just letting it sit there for three years is also very effective. I know this from personal experience.

[00:09:03] So with that being said, let's talk about the ideal way to compost and the different ways we can do that regardless of the space we have and then the things that we should and should not compost. So all compost requires four basic ingredients, carbon, nitrogen, water, and oxygen. Where do we get these ingredients? Carbon comes from our brown materials.

[00:09:29] So this is things like dead leaves, branches, twigs, hay, straw, our paper products, our cardboard, dry, fibrous, kind of hard and bulky things. These carbon items are more resistant to decay. This is the slow burning fuel for your compost pile. This is what provides energy for the bacteria and the fungi to do the work of breaking down everything in the compost pile.

[00:09:58] It also provides really good texture because it's giving us those air pockets. So the oxygen can get in to those microorganisms that are doing the work. So the browns are also what provides the structure for that final product that we add to the garden. So it's always a good idea to kind of break these browns down a little bit because that's going to help them work in a faster amount of time than they would normally take. So, you know, you can chop them up, you can cut them up, you can use a shredder,

[00:10:28] whatever you're going to do. The nitrogen component comes from our greens. So this includes materials like grass clippings, our vegetable waste, our fruit scraps, the breads and pastas and other food waste that are coming out of our kitchens, the coffee grounds and even the filters use this kind of soft and more wet ingredients. This is the fast burning fuel for the compost pile. So the browns are sort of dry and hard and they take up a lot of space.

[00:10:56] The greens have a higher moisture content and they tend to sort of collapse really quickly into the pile. So this is kind of why, you know, we have the browns to prop things up and give that air space because the higher moisture content of the greens tends to weigh things down a little bit. Manure is also considered a green or a nitrogen ingredient. So, you know, rabbit manure, horse manure, goats, chickens, just about any herbivore.

[00:11:25] Those are all really good sources of nitrogen. And a lot of the time, if you're getting them from a farmer or somebody, or if you have backyard chickens or rabbits, you know, when you're cleaning out that coop or you're cleaning out the pens, a lot of time that manure is mixed with bedding, like straw or wood shavings. So you kind of have a combination of both. You have the carbon and you have the nitrogen. You have the green and you have the brown and you have the green.

[00:11:52] If you're a home brewer, spent grains and hops, they also fall into this nitrogen or green category. Used potting soil is also considered a green and you can add this to your compost pile. I do this at the end of the season. And when I'm entering, like emptying out my pots and my containers and stuff, same thing goes for spent plants from the garden. So just be sure if you have seen any sign of disease or you have had a very heavy pest infestation,

[00:12:19] you may not want to do this. We'll talk about, you know, the heat of your compost pile here in a little bit. But if your compost pile doesn't get hot enough to like kill the disease or the insect eggs, then you might just be adding that right back into your garden again and continuing the cycle. So if you plan to very closely manage the compost pile and make sure that it's getting those correct temperatures, then go for it. You can add all of that to your compost pile and you just want to make sure it's kind of in the middle and the hottest part.

[00:12:47] But if you're planning a more hands-off approach, then you might want to skip adding anything that's diseased or that had a really heavy pest infestation. I get people asking too about eggshells. Eggshells absolutely can go in the compost pile. You want to break them up. You want to grind them up in some way because they break down very slowly. Of course, it's, you know, adding a lot of calcium. It doesn't really fall into either category, greens or browns. I guess it would be, I mean, it's not carbon-based and it's not nitrogen-based.

[00:13:17] So, but they're still good. I mean, they're good for adding calcium. So, yes, toss those in there. And then, of course, we have to have water. The right amount of water, you know, is important for that compost development. It also helps some of those microorganisms to move around. And then our all-important oxygen for that aerobic breakdown. So, the ratio of these things is basically you want to have 50-50 carbon and nitrogen. So, half browns, half greens.

[00:13:43] And it's a good idea to sort of alternate the layers of these as you put them into your compost pile. So, oftentimes, your greens are going to be available, like, all year round. I mean, you always have scraps coming out of your kitchen, even if it's not a time for gardening where you have the yard waste. So, if you have brown materials that you can kind of stock up to help with this. So, cardboard, shredded paper, leaves.

[00:14:11] And you kind of keep it in one area that is next to your compost pile. When you bring the scraps out and you bring the other green materials out, then you're going to have something brown to add to it at the same time. So, you can toss the kitchen scraps in and then throw some leaves on. You can attach the garden debris in and you can toss, you know, some twigs in there or whatever. The greens, the nitrogen component is also going to add a lot of that water component as well.

[00:14:38] So, it may not necessarily, you know, be needed for you to actually add water. You hear people talking about watering their compost pile when they turn it. This is usually when you have too many browns. You have too much carbon in there and it's gotten very, very dry. We want the compost to be moist. We don't want it to be dripping. We don't want water running out the bottom.

[00:15:00] So, I mean, a compost pile should be about 50% water, but that includes the water content of those nitrogen components. So, if you touch your compost and, you know, it's kind of like a wrung out sponge. It's just kind of damp. Then you're good. If it's bone dry, then you may have just too many browns in there, too much carbon in there, not enough green, not enough nitrogen. And you may just need to water the pile down a little bit. But you should not have liquid running out the bottom of the pile and there shouldn't be any kind of a smell.

[00:15:30] It should smell earthy as it breaks down. It shouldn't stink. So, if it's too wet or it has too many, you know, green ingredients, you might start to get this kind of sulfury smell like rotten eggs. And that's a good idea or a good indication that maybe it's time to add some leaves and get those turned in there. We talked about oxygen. And there's kind of this question of, well, how much oxygen does it need? Technically, as much as you can give it.

[00:15:57] And so, this is where turning the compost pile comes into play. It will absolutely decompose without you turning it. But it will go faster if you give it a good turn every once in a while. This is going to help keep the microbes that are in the center from running out of that oxygen and the food so they can keep doing their jobs. It also prevents the, like, higher nitrogen green stuff from getting stagnant and kind of starting to stink.

[00:16:25] This is usually the main culprit of a stinky compost pile. Too much nitrogen and not enough oxygen. So, you can either mix the pile up every time you add fresh stuff or you can mark it on your garden calendar along with everything else and just mark to flip it, you know, every four to six weeks or so. You can use a tumbler. You can do a barrel.

[00:16:47] There isn't really a hard and fast rule here because what your pile needs is going to depend on what your ratio of stuff is and how much moisture is in your pile. And, I mean, you could live someplace very rainy where it gets a lot of moisture. You could live someplace very dry where it's not going to have enough moisture at all. So, after a while, you're going to be able to kind of tell when the stuff in your, if the stuff in your pile is breaking down the right way. And you can just kind of adjust what you're doing from there.

[00:17:13] And a lot of this is going to depend on the type of system that you use. So, what types of systems can we choose from in terms of composting? I did an episode last fall on some proper, popular types of composting that actually don't involve an actual pile. That was episode 218. I will link to that in the show description, but we'll touch on those a little bit here as well.

[00:17:40] So, I mean, obviously the first most obvious composting system is the pile. And there are different variations of this. The first one is the heap. This is what I started with. I literally didn't, there was no structure to it. There was no containment. As a result, it didn't cost me anything. It was just a corner of a yard where I could toss my scraps. Very passive. No effort involved whatsoever. I didn't turn the darn thing. I just let it sit there for several years until it finally broke down and was usable.

[00:18:09] The only downside of this is it's slow. And if you want to use that stuff and you keep adding to it, it's going to be difficult to do anything with. It also might attract bugs because it's just sitting there. Sometimes it might stink depending on what you're throwing in there. So, this isn't necessarily a great option for everybody. But if you live on some acreage and you've got a corner somewhere that you can just toss stuff into, go for it. Super easy. Do a couple of different piles. If that's what you want to do.

[00:18:35] Do one heap until it gets to a certain size and then just let it sit there and start to break down and start another one. Essentially, that's what you do with a three compost or a three bin system. We'll talk about that in a second. The second one would be like the managed pile. So, there's a little bit of structure to this. A little bit of containment.

[00:18:51] A lot of time, you're just kind of grabbing some galvanized garden fencing to kind of hold things in or maybe, you know, creating a little bin out of pallets or two that, you know, you can just add scraps to and then you just cover it in some way to keep the critters out. It's something that's sturdy, you know, so that it's like, you know, heavy enough to contain the mass of whatever you're throwing in there. But you're not doing a whole lot to it.

[00:19:14] Basically, a managed pile is simply everything is being added to the pile and then you're covering it to make sure nothing can get to it. And you're just basically turning it like once or twice a year, which really just involves pulling it all out and shoving it all back in again. And that's it. It's still a little slow to break down. It's probably a little bit faster than like just the heap system, but it still will likely take you about a year to get anything out of that.

[00:19:41] And it might be a little unsightly if you're doing this like in the corner of your suburban backyard or something, especially if you have an HOA or neighbors who might be picky about that. So, that's something to be concerned about, which is where the next system, which is like bins, right? So, collapsible bins. You've got permanent bins. You can do rotating bins, those large canisters that are on, you know, legs that have a handle that you can crank to turn it. These definitely give you more structure than just using like wire garden fencing.

[00:20:08] You can purchase these pre-made or you can build your own system. The three bin pallet system is very common. This kind of gives you more room for a larger amount of compost by volume just because it's more rigid. It's more permanent. You can hook three of them together so you can still have a sort of passive system where you just throw the, you know, pile in or throw all the debris into one pile and then you move to the next bin and then you move to the next bin.

[00:20:38] And by the time this first one's done, you can use it and start, you know, adding more materials to it. It's still going to be a little bit slow to break down if you don't sort of take these bins apart or turn them a little bit. And the pre-kind of designed bins, especially those tumblers and stuff, those can be a bit more expensive. But if that's what's going to work for you, then go for it. And then the fourth one is a little bit different.

[00:21:08] This is kind of a dig and drop or trench composting. Basically, all you're doing is you're digging a hole in your garden. You're adding whatever materials you plan to compost into the hole or the trench. And then you cover it back up once you've got about six inches of compostable material in it, right? You're just backfilling it. So dig a hole or dig a trench, toss your stuff in, cover it back up, and it's going to break down. Very passive, very simple. There's no cost to it. You're basically composting in place.

[00:21:36] The only thing about this is unless you want to have a gaping hole that has stuff exposed, you basically have to have all the materials that you're going to compost ready at once. And if you have a lot of wildlife, animals can kind of find this and dig it up. And how much space do you have for doing this before you sort of run out of places to dig? So if you don't have a lot of stuff to compost, this might work. But, you know, I tend towards more of the pile systems or at least the kind of contained systems.

[00:22:06] Now, if you don't have a yard or you don't have space available for these systems, there are alternatives. Some of them are available for purchase. Others of them you can kind of DIY a little bit. I'm going to leave a link to my blog post about this in the show notes. It's also in today's email. So you can kind of see what some of these look like. The first one is Bokashi composting. So that is an anaerobic or no oxygen composting method. And essentially it's not really composting.

[00:22:34] It's more fermenting the food scraps. You use this inoculated bran or sawdust and you put it into a sealed bucket. So you put your food waste in, you layer it with the bran, and then you close it up. And after a few weeks, it's basically been, I would say, pre-composted. So it's broken down enough and fermented enough that you can bury it in the soil or put it in a planter or something out in your garden. And it will decompose further that way.

[00:22:59] But you can do the beginning part of the system in your kitchen with no smell or anything else and then move it to the garden. There isn't like an intermediate pile anywhere. The second one would be those electrical composters or food recyclers. So Lomi, Vitamix, Food Cycler, these all just break down the food waste through grinding it and heating it and dehydrating it. And it is reduced by like 90% in volume within just a few hours.

[00:23:29] Like people leave these on their counters, they toss it all in, they run it overnight, and boom, in the morning you've got this dry, kind of crumbly soil-like material that you can use as a soil amendment or you just add it to the garden. They can be pricey to start with, but they are very effective. And every listener that I have spoken to who has purchased one of these absolutely loves them and swears by them. A less sophisticated version of this would be blender composting or food scrap smoothies. It's literally what it sounds like.

[00:23:57] If you have no outdoor space, you have no time for any kind of, you know, long-term composting, you quite literally take a high-powered blender. You throw your food scraps in there, maybe add a little bit of water, blend it all up into a slurry or a smoothie, and you pour it right out into your garden beds or around your plants or mix it into the potting soil. Okay? This is going to accelerate that decomp because the food's already broken down into really small particles. The drawback to this is that you really need to bury it under the soil or you are going to attract pests. Okay?

[00:24:25] So, yes, you have a lot of options when it comes to where and how to compost. Now let's talk about what you should and should not put into your compost system. PlanterBox Direct has some exciting news to share. They've got a new shape and a new look. Now not only can you get my favorite planters in square, rectangular, tiered, and stand versions, you've got a hexagonal option too.

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[00:25:20] Use code JUSTGROW10 for 10% off and free shipping at PlanterBoxDirect.com. So let's quickly review the things that it's okay to put in your compost, and then we'll talk about the things that you shouldn't. Maybe. Yes, there are some maybes. So the do's. Let's start with our carbons or our browns, right? So dried leaves, twigs, branches, pine needles, straw, hay. These are all really good sources of carbon. Dried corn stalks, corn husks.

[00:25:49] These are also good, but you want to kind of chop those up a little bit before you put them into the pile. Wood ash is good. It's a really good source of carbon and beneficial potassium. As a matter of fact, if you have wood ash that's coming out of, like, your fireplace, you usually don't want to put that directly out into the garden because it can actually raise the pH. It makes your soil more alkaline. So unless you have very acidic soil, it's best to put wood ash into the compost pile. Just make sure that you layer it in with some greens.

[00:26:19] Paper products like newspaper and cardboard. Shred those up a little bit. Throw those in the pile. What about your greens? All of your kitchen waste, okay? All of your unprepared fruits and vegetables. Cores, peels, stems, all of it. Green plants, grass clippings, and weeds that have not gone to seed, please. Those are also very good sources of nitrogen. So long as they have not been sprayed with chemical pesticides or herbicides, we want to avoid any chemically treated materials. Again, we're not sure how hard our compost is getting.

[00:26:48] We'll talk about that, I promise, here in a minute. But those chemicals could actually kill off the composting microorganisms. But if you have spent hops and grains, coffee grounds and filters, I have loads of those. Actually, no filters. We use a reusable filter, but tons of coffee grounds. Seaweed, seaweed, seaweed? No, seaweed. And manure, herbivore manure, feathers. And, of course, you want to throw those eggshells in there, too, right? Now, what about the maybes? Okay, we talk about coffee, but what about tea?

[00:27:17] So one maybe is the tea bags. A lot of tea bags now are made with some amount of polypropylene that's, you know, made from fossil fuels. It's a synthetic polymer. That's not something that's going to break down in our compost pile. A lot of them also have metal staples, too, that hold those tags on them, which is probably something that you don't want in the pile. So compostable tea bags, perfectly fine, as long as they don't have any metal or plastic components on them.

[00:27:42] Otherwise, cut open your spent tea bags and at least add the leaves to your compost, and then just, you know, you're going to have to toss the bag. The next maybe here is dairy products and cooked foods. So dairy products, high in fat, right? That slows the composting process down, and it's generally recommended that they be avoided. I just say avoid them in large quantities.

[00:28:06] I will absolutely put small amounts of dairy into my compost a little bit at a time and then just add some dry leaves or some straw or some shredded paper just to make up for the lack of texture. The issue with cooked foods is kind of the same. A lot of the time they've been cooked with some sort of oil or fat or something else that's going to slow down that decomp process and can maybe attract pests.

[00:28:30] So I absolutely add cooked kind of scraps to them, but I have a large amount of stuff that I compost. So if you choose to compost these items, try to bury them into the pile so you avoid problems and just kind of make sure you're aerating the pile properly to kind of keep that oil from slowing down the decomp process. I mentioned like diseased plants or garden waste treated with pesticides and weeds with the seed heads on them. These are also maybes, okay?

[00:29:00] These should generally be avoided unless you know that your compost is getting hot enough during the process to kill off the pathogens and the seeds and to degrade those chemicals. So how do you know if your compost is getting hot enough?

[00:29:18] To kill off plant pathogens and bad bacteria and to render those weed seeds inert, your compost pile has to reach a minimum of 140 degrees Fahrenheit or 60 Celsius and stay there for at least three days for most weed seeds and plant pathogens. Some seeds need longer. They may take as many as two weeks at that temperature to be destroyed.

[00:29:44] So this means that you have to be checking the temperature of your compost pile. And you can do this just by using your soil thermometer. You just stick it to the center of your pile and check the temperature. And then if the temperature starts to drop over those days, then you want to aerate the pile and give it some water to get things moving again. With pesticides, it's a little bit tougher. The guideline here is that your pile needs to be turned at least five times in a 15-day period.

[00:30:08] And the temperature during that time has to be maintained between 131 and 170 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 55 to 76.6 Celsius, the whole time. That's quite a job for a backyard composter to keep up with. And honestly, even just the three-day temperature requires you to be out there quite frequently and making sure that you're consistent about checking the temperature, etc. So that is why it is generally recommended.

[00:30:35] If you have concerns about chemical residue or weed seeds or any type of a plant pathogen or bacteria, that you just don't compost anything like that. Now, what is on the no-no list? What should you not be composting? Oil and fats specifically. So leftover grease from a pan, that sort of thing. Basically all for the reasons that we talked about before. It hinders the composting process. It definitely attracts pests.

[00:31:04] So it is never a good idea to add oils and fats like in mass into your compost pile. Coal ash, barbecue briquettes, right? Coal ash can be toxic to plants because there are usually large amounts of iron and sulfur. They also say not to use ash from barbecues because they could be contaminated with meat fat. But if you're using hardwood briquettes and it's in very small amounts, you should be fine. Again, same concept as what you're cooking with.

[00:31:31] If you're cooking with fats and you're tossing that into the compost pile but it's not in large quantities, same thing goes for your barbecue. But definitely no like coal. And then meat scraps. Okay, meat decomposes very, very slowly. It stinks when it starts to decompose and it can also attract a whole bunch of, you know, vermin and bugs. They also contain bacteria, which is a safety issue. Bones too should be avoided. They take really long time to decompose.

[00:31:58] If you have acreage and you have a lazy pile in a corner back somewhere, then go for it. But for the rest of us, that's probably not a good idea. And then finally, dog poop and cat litter. Okay, there are real safety concerns with this, including like really harmful bacteria and parasites. So this is an absolute no-no. So I know that was a lot of information.

[00:32:21] I will link to all of the previous composting episodes and articles on my website to include one we didn't talk about today, which is vermicomposting. So composting with worms. No matter which system you choose, I highly encourage you to do something, anything with the organic materials coming out of your kitchen, out of your house, out of your yards, out of your gardens. The amounts of materials going to landfills that could be going to feed our soils is astonishing.

[00:32:50] And it's only getting worse. So if we can do our little part in our little corners of the world to reduce that, I think we should. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that tree of garden and we'll talk again soon. Keep on cultivating that tree of garden and we'll talk again soon.