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• Essentials of Composting

Last Updated: 10/13/04

What Is Composting? Compost is a dark, crumbly, and earthy-smelling form of decomposing organic matter. Decomposition and recycling of organic matter. Decomposition and recycling of organic wastes are an essential part of soil building and healthy plant growth in forests, meadows and in your home garden.

Why Should I Make Compost? Composting is the most practical and convenient way to handle your yard wastes. It can be easier and cheaper than bagging these wastes or taking them to the transfer station. Compost also improves your soil and the plants growing in it. If you have a garden, a lawn, trees, shrubs, or even planter boxes, you have a use for compost.

By using compost you return organic matter to soil in a usable form. Organic matter in the soil improves plant growth by helping to break heavy clay soils into a better texture, by adding water and nutrient-holding capacity to sandy soils, and by adding essential nutrients to any soil. Improving your soil is the first step toward improving the health of your plants. Healthy plants help clean our air and conserve our soil, making Passaic County a healthier place to live.

What Can I Compost? Anything that was once alive can be composted. Yard wastes, such as fallen leaves, grass clippings, weeds and the remains of garden plants, make excellent compost. Woody yard wastes can be clipped and sawed down to a size useful for the wood stove or fireplace or they can be run through a shredder for mulching and path-making. Used as a mulch or for paths, they will eventually decompose and become compost.

How Can I Use Compost? Compost can be used to enrich the flower and vegetable garden, to improve the soil around trees and shrubs, as a soil amendment for house plants and planter boxes and, when screened, as part of a seed-starting mix or lawn top- dressing. Before they decompose, chipped woody wastes make excellent mulch or path material. After they decompose, these same woody wastes will add texture to garden soils.

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Home Grown Composting Units

Metal Barrel or Drum, Old Garbage Can with perforated pipe and hoses in bottom for aeration

Chicken Wire, Snow fence, Chain Link Fence

Scrap Wood or Wood Pallets

With the following principles in mind, everyone can make excellent use of their organic wastes.

Biology The compost pile is really a teeming microbial farm. Bacteria starts the process of decaying organic matter. They are the first to break down plant tissue and also the most numerous and effective composters. Fungi and protozoa’s soon join the bacteria and, somewhat later in the cycle, centipedes, millipedes, beetles and earthworms do their parts.

Materials Anything growing in your yard is potential food for these tiny decomposers. Carbon and nitrogen, from the cells of dead plants and dead microbes, fuel their activity. The micro-organisms use the carbon in leaves or woodier wastes as an energy source. Nitrogen provides the microbes with the raw element of proteins to build their bodies.

Everything organic has a ratio of carbon to nitrogen (C:N) in its tissues, ranging from 500:1 for sawdust, to 15:1 for table scrapes. A C:N ratio is ideal for the activity of compost microbes. This balance can be achieved by mixing two parts grass clippings (which have a C:N ration of 20:1) with one part fallen leaves (60:1) in your compost. Layering can be useful in arriving at these proportions, but a complete mixing of ingredients is preferable for the composting process. Other materials can also be used, such as weeds and garden wastes. Through C:N ratio of 30:1 is ideal for a fast, hot compost, a higher ratio (i.e.,50:1) will be adequate for a slower compost.

Surface Area The more surface area the micro-organisms have to work on, the faster the materials are decomposed. It's like a block of ice in the sun-slow to melt when it's large, but melting very fast when broken into smaller pieces. Chopping your garden wastes with a shovel or machete, or running them through a shredding machine or lawnmower will speed their composting.

Volume A large compost pile will insulate itself and hold the heat of microbial activity. Its center will be warmer than its edges. Piles smaller than 3 feet cubed (27 cu.ft.) will have trouble holding this heat, while piles larger than 5 feet cubed (125 cu.ft.) don't allow enough air to reach the microbes at the center. These proportions are of importance only if your goal is a fast, hot compost.

Moisture & Aeration All life on Earth needs a certain amount of water and air to sustain itself. The microbes in the compost pile are no different. They function best when the compost materials are about as moist as a wrung-out sponge, and are provided with many air passages. Extremes of sun or rain can adversely affect this moisture balance in your pile.

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