How To Make a Compost Pile in Your Backyard

As anyone who knows an avid gardener can attest, the financial investment in improving the life of plants and the soil can be enormous. However, the very best soil amendment and fertilizer is available for nothing except a small investment in time and labor. Anyone with a few square feet of open ground in the backyard can produce nature's most perfect plant food: compost.

The first and most important thing to know about compost is that it occurs naturally, with or without human intervention. All the specialized equipment, the scheduled turning of the pile, the watering to maintain optimum moisture content may help the process along, but in the end composting goes on regardless.

To make a simple backyard compost pile, nothing more is needed than an unused plot of level ground, four feet square and shaded if possible. Grab a shovel or hoe and clear the ground of grass and weeds. When building the pile itself, keep in mind that three components combine to make the fuel that drives the composting engine: carbon, nitrogen, and water. If all three are kept in the proper proportion, composting will occur much more quickly and efficiently.

1. To begin, put down a three inch layer of material rich in carbon: dry, coarse, brown stuff such as dead leaves, chopped up twigs, and straw.
2. Next, add a one inch layer of nitrogen: moist organic matter such as fresh grass clippings, kitchen vegetable scraps, and fresh manure.
3. Sprinkle on some regular soil and moisten lightly with water. All the material should be evenly moist but not soggy.
4. Stir everything together and add on another layer. Keep going until the pile is about three feet high.
5. Top the whole thing with some straw or leaves to prevent moisture loss and keep too much rain off the pile.
6. The only thing left to do is moisten the pile when necessary and turn it occasionally, weekly, monthly, whenever; the more often the pile is turned, the quicker it decomposes.

Finished compost will be moist, black, and smell like a forest floor. If you can recognize any of the materials still in it, it is not done yet. Also, decomposition produces a considerable amount of heat. The final product will cease giving off heat. Mature compost can be added to the garden at any time and in any amount. There is no such thing as too much, unlike many other fertilizers, which can burn plants or throw off the chemical balance of the soil. In fact, adding compost to any soil type will improve the soil. So next time the kids don't finish their broccoli, instead of throwing it in the trash, throw it in the backyard.