You want “black gold” compost for your garden this year. You’re willing to work for it, but you don’t want to spend money.
There is a way to make compost so that it is ready in a few weeks. It costs nothing, but you have to work a little to get it.
That’s how:
Choose a site that is close to the garden, but to the side and out of the way. You will need an area of at least three square feet. Ideally, the site will receive some sun, but it does not need sun all day.
Go weed your gardens. All of them. Collect weeds in a bucket. Dump the bucket of uprooted weeds in the center of the designated composting area. Leave it in a pile.
Find some dried brown materials. The amount of brown material you need is about twice the amount of the weed pile in your gardens.
Leftover leaves from the previous fall make perfect “brown” material. Put them on the grass, spread them out and cut them with your lawnmower to break them into small pieces. Let the mower bag them or rake them up yourself.
If you don’t have sheets, plain white office paper or newspaper shredded with a paper shredder will work just fine. You can also shred paper bags (not the printed part, unless it’s organic ink).
Pour the shredded leaves or papers over the pile of uprooted weeds. Take your garden fork and mix the two together until they are a homogenized mass.
Cut your lawn. Collect the clippings and add them to the top of the mix. Mix them the same way you mixed the dried leaves.
Wet the top of the pile with your hose sprayer. Do not soak or saturate the pile, just add a little moisture. This will help get you going.
From now on, save all fruit and vegetable peelings and trimmings. Also save eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds, and coffee filters. A good thing to use to collect these is the kind of quarter-size container that yogurt or cottage cheese comes in. It has a lid, fits easily next to the kitchen sink, and is washable when empty. (Do not include fats, oils, meats or poultry).
Before adding any of these scraps to your compost pile, break them up in your blender or food processor. What you are looking for is compost that will be ready quickly. The smaller the material you add to the pile, the faster it will break down and compost.
Dig a hole in the top of the compost pile and pour the pulverized food scraps into it. Push some of the pile over them so that the remains are completely buried.
Two days after building your compost, turn it over for the first time. Use your garden fork and try to completely rearrange the contents of the pile. Move things in the center of the stack to the outside and things on the outside to the inside. When you’re done turning and rearranging, use your garden shovel to push the materials back into a cone-shaped “pile.”
Turn the pile every other day. If rainfall is light, wet the top of the pile before turning it over. Add kitchen scraps as they accumulate, always breaking them up and burying them in the center of the pile.
When the materials in the pile look like black dirt, the compost is finished. You should not be able to discern any individual ingredients.
If most of the compost material has broken down to “black gold” but there are still a few larger pieces remaining, you can sift out the larger pieces by sifting the compost through a 1/2-inch wire mesh. Use the finished compost in your garden and throw the larger pieces back into the compost area to form the start of your new compost pile.
You can keep doing this until everything is frozen for the winter.
Copyright Sharon Sweeny, 2009. All rights reserved.