How to Make a Compost Pile

You can easily make your own free fertilizer by turning food scraps and yard waste into compost that will benefit fruit trees, vegetables and flowers and keep on giving you more food.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Dried plants
• Fresh plants
• Black plastic
• Food scraps

1. Pile your plant material on the ground. You can start with a layer of broken-up twigs, perhaps some old tomato plants, green bean or squash vines.
2. Dump your leaves, twigs and other plant material into an area about 4 feet by 4 feet round. Weedy areas are fine because the material you pile on top of them will cause them to die.
3. Add other organic materials like grass clippings.
4. Toss your food scraps on top of this and then add some cinder, wood ashes, or straw. Whatever you have works fine.
5. When you get more food scraps, uncover your pile and add them, making sure to cover them with more cinder, ashes or leaves. Or just bury them a few inches deep.
6. As the final layer, spread some dry plant material (dry leaves or straw) on top of your pile. You can also use torn-up newspaper.

Tips & Warnings

• If you want, you can cover your pile loosely with black plastic to keep out four-footed critters. But it's not necessary. If you use it, poke some holes in the plastic to provide some airflow-this will help to break down the compost materials. It will also prevent anaerobic decomposition from happening, which can cause a compost pile to smell nasty. The holes will allow a little rain to get in-a compost pile needs some moisture in order to do its work.
• John Jeavons writes of making compost in his book "How To Grow More Vegetables." His recipe for compost uses alternating layers of dry vegetation for the carbon that is needed and green vegetation, for nitrogen, interspersed with kitchen waste, peat moss, and other ingredients. This combination of carbon and nitrogen is the key to successful composting: the proportions don't need to be exact, as long as you include alternating layers of dry brown plant material and fresh green plant material.