The best mix of nutrients for healthy compost is two parts carbon-rich "brown" materials, such as dried leaves, mixed with one part nitrogen-rich "green" materials, such as grass clippings. Other proportions of brown to green can still create good compost, but may decompose more slowly.
However, micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes–even though they go unnoticed in your compost pile–are responsible for most of the organic material breakdown.
The balance between the amount of carbon and nitrogen in the organic material is one of the most important factors in composting. All organic material contains both carbon and nitrogen, but the ratio differs from one material to another.
To make good compost, you need a 50:50 mix of materials that are rich in nitrogen and carbon. Nitrogen comes from lush, green material such as grass clippings. Carbon comes from brown material, such as woody stems and cardboard. For every bucket load of green material, you need to add the same volume of brown.
Food scraps: Materials like banana peels, eggshells, fruit cores, and vegetable scraps are great for compost. Food waste contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which are necessary elements for rich compost. 5. Newspaper: Shredded paper is another effective ingredient for your compost.
High nitrogen materials include grass clippings, plant cuttings, and fruit and vegetable scraps. Brown or woody materials such as autumn leaves, wood chips, sawdust, and shredded paper are high in carbon.
Nettle, comfrey and alfalfa are rich in nitrogen and contain additional nutrients like calcium, potassium, magnesium or iron. As they decompose they will bring these important elements to create a balanced and fertile compost.
Citrus fruit, tomato products and pickled food products can do harm to your compost. High acidity can actually kill the good bacteria that helps break down the material in your compost pile.
As a rule of thumb, actively decomposing materials should be turned every three to four days. Materials with slowed microbial activity can be turned less often. In tumblers, turning two times a week resulted in higher temperature and faster decomposition than turning once a week or once every other week (Figure 1).
Decomposition will be complete anywhere from two weeks to two years depending on the materials used, the size of the pile, and how often it is turned. Compost is ready when it has cooled, turned a rich brown color, and has decomposed into small soil-like particles.
There are two main ingredients in any successful compost pile: carbon-rich ingredients and nitrogen-rich ingredients.
Excessive nitrogen can cause your compost to heat up very quickly and even spontaneously combust, which becomes an obvious fire risk.
Grass clippings are excellent additions to a compost pile because of their high nitrogen content. Grass clippings should not be the only compost material. As with mulches, a thick layer of grass clippings in a compost pile will lead to bad odors from anaerobic decomposition.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Coffee grounds can be an excellent addition to a compost pile. The grounds are relatively rich in nitrogen, providing bacteria the energy they need to turn organic matter into compost.
The fastest way to add nitrogen to soil is by applying a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. This includes certain all-purpose plant foods with a high portion of nitrogen, as well as fertilizers formulated for green plants (especially lawn fertilizers).
Fruit and Vegetable Scraps
Some fruits and vegetables that you should compost with caution are those with high acidities, such as citrus fruits, pickles, and tomatoes. The acid content of these foods can kill the good bacteria in your compost pile and slow down its decomposition.
First things first, you can't do worm composting without some worms! But don't go out and dig out night crawlers that live in the soil by your home to populate your compost bin. Night crawlers need to tunnel through dirt to eat and survive and they can't live on vegetable waste.
Simple organic activators you may have on hand are lime (limestone), blood meal (yes, it's dried blood), fish meal, and poultry, rabbit, and horse manure. Rabbit food (pellets) and dry dog food are also organic activators that are often have on-hand.
You can put your compost pile in the sun or in the shade, but putting it in the sun will hasten the composting process. Sun helps increase the temperature, so the bacteria and fungi work faster. This also means that your pile will dry out faster, especially in warm southern climates.
Many gardening and composting sites recommend adding urine onto compost heap to help speed things up. With cold composting this provides the bacteria with a source of food which can be digested quickly producing heat rapidly.