Compost Central

Compost is as easy to make or as labor intensive as you wish to make it. The cold composting system is the ultimate in ease because in one sense it takes no effort.

Consider that you already make kitchen scraps and yard waste such as grass clippings and leaves. There is no more effort in piling them in one spot of the yard than there is to put them in the green box for collection or whatever your communtiy does with such things. If the pile is added to over time until it reaches a height of about three feet and is then left alone for a couple of years, there will be a layer of compost on the bottom. Again there is no more work to gathering and spreading it than there is in going to the garden center and bringing home sacks of soil amendments like peat moss and the like.

Remember that organic matter rots and pile it up to do so. Compost wil result. There are a couple of things you can do to help it along, even in a cold pile.

• Try to mix equal amounts by volume of green (fresh, wet) material with dry (leaves, straw).
• Make sure the pile is as moist as a damp rag.
• Turn the pile after gathering all the materials so as to make it easy for all those microbes to reach lots of food and air.

A hot compost pile is more work but my preferred method.