Tell Me All About Compost :-)

There are many ways to properly compost.

First the stuff sold as "compost" in bags at garden centers is junk. Pass on it.

If you can get compost/leaf/mulch from your municipality, do that. If nothing else get some cheap plastic bins or very very sturdy garbage bags and fill them up with compost at the city compost site. Put a cheap tarp (Harbor Freight is a good source) over your back seat, if possible bend the seats down so it is open to the trunk, and haul the stuff yourself.

A conventional composting set up can be constructed using those concrete blocks with the holes in them. Stack them so the holes are horizontal and allow air flow into the compost pile. Throw all your yard waste in there. Unless you have a shredder, don't put castoff wood in there. Mix green with brown - eg if you have high nitrogen grass cuttings, mix them well with something high in carbon, such as finely ground bark/wood, shredded brown cardboard such as from shipping boxes, or shredded paper such as computer printouts or newspaper. If you get fresh horse manure, do NOT put it straight on your garden or it will burn the roots of your plants, it is VERY high nitrogen. Mix it with a carbon souce ("browns") as above in your compost pile.

Do not ever put any sort of meat, dairy, eggs (shells are OK), or any cooked food in your compost pile. Ever. I don't care what somebody else has told you, don't do it. You can end up with botulism if you trip up and don't keep the pile aerated, and even if you avoid that particular pitfall, it attracts vermin. Coyotes, stray dogs and cats, and rats and mice, among others. Insect vermin too. Don't do it. And RACCOONS! OMG the raccoons. Just don't.

Personally I don't bother to try to compost vegetable leavings (trimmed pieces and leaves and whatnot) any more either, for two reasons, one of which is that this is now a single person household generating very little in the way of kitchen waste and the other being that I have abandoned conventional composting for Something Entirely Different which we shall get to in a moment. Also - no grass here. If/when I ever move back out of the freaking desert, and I have grass clippings again, things may change.

If you want worm castings/worms to add to your garden, take up vermicomposting (and this is a much better use for kitchen scraps IMNSHO). Still no meat, cooked foods, eggs (not even shells in this case), or dairy. Not sure about citrus peels as there may be substances in the peel that worms might not like.

HOWEVER. There is a lower-work alternative that I find much more appropriate. And that is no-till gardening. I'm pretty sure my version has diverged from that of Ruth Stout, but this is how I do it. You can buy her book if you want to see her method LOL!

This may cause a few problems in a very rainy area such as Portland or wherever slugs proliferate but I have used this in Portland without much trouble. There was something I did to deter slugs that I cannot for the life of me remember (and it was organic) but its been so long since I've seen a slug, I haven't had to worry about them. I'm pretty sure a mechanical barrier around plant stems was part of the solution. Anyway, if slugs are not an issue (and it is one that can be overcome though I've forgotten exactly how) here is how I do it now and have for over 30 years (of a 50 year career as an organic gardener).

Take plain brown boxes that are relatively clean (eg not something machine ball bearings were shipped in or otherwise contaminated with oil LOL!) and break them down flat. In this day and age, I bet you get plenty from Amazon.

Layer these all around your garden over the surface.

Slight divergence, I have used this also to kill grass in an area I want to open up for more garden space or a new garden, I weight them with rocks so they won't blow away. The next spring from whenever you first did this (could be as late as autumn) I cover the ground with a thick clear plastic that I securely weight down around the edges and some rocks in the middle. Preferably pile soil around the edge to totally seal the perimeter and so no wind can get in under the edges.

I leave that through the growing season, if you are willing/able to test soil temps multiple times through the season you can lift it as soon as soil temps have been "high" enough for "long" enough. Google soil sterilization for exact details, I've forgotten and that is what I would do to remind myself LOL!

Anyway, assuming you have a garden spot already in place, just cover it up with weighted down flat brown clean cardboard boxes. Newspaper or clean paper is also ok though I would put it UNDER the cardboard.

Cover that with spread out grass clippings (let them dry well before adding more grass clippings) and/or leaves. Also free or cheap bark, leaves, or mixed mulch from your city if available is good here. If you have access to cheap or free straw or hay go ahead and use it - but keep in mind if you do, you are now committed to sheet composting FOREVER to kill off the weed seeds that are generally in hay and sometimes also straw.

As I have not had access to yard waste or municipal bark or compost for many years, I will instead buy the cheapest UNDYED 100% wood "bark" mulch that I can find. This has become increasingly difficult in recent years as most of the cheap stuff they carry at the big box stores is dyed and even has metal scraps in it because it has come from chopped up houses. Which means you can't be sure there is no pressure treated wood waste in those bags from chopped up decks around said chopped up houses. I got a pretty deep cut from sticking my hand in a bag of this sort of mulch from a large hunk of chopped up gutter in the bag. Might have been chopped up aluminum siding. It was definitely chopped up aluminum something or other. But do the best you can, and cypress mulch is OK for this and generally is free of chopped up houses. But I wouldn't use any of the stuff that has been dyed. If it is named "red mulch" or "black mulch" or "brown mulch", it is dyed. Pass on it. It is OK to use around ornamental plants I guess but not around anything you are going to want to eat.

Do not worry about reducing free nitrogen in the soil. That only happens when you DEEP TILL fresh wood waste into soil. Also the idea that cypress or cedar are bad for plants, that is a myth. It is true, however, about black walnut so don't use any black walnut waste in your mulch or compost and don't plant near a black walnut tree.

I have found that most large yard supply place are amenable to you coming in with your car and some big bags that you fill up by hand. Well, at least SOME of them are. So you can go that way as well. But don't reject the idea of getting a half dump truck load of mulch from a large supply yard because the stuff is well worth it. Yeah, you need a wheel barrow and some muscle to help you schlep it to the back yard but the stuff is gold for your garden.

So cover up your cardboard with whatever you can get to mulch over it.

Come planting time just pull back the top layers of "mulch" and cut through any remaining cardboard - and if you don't live in a desert, it disappears in just a year or two (sometimes 3) before you will have to reapply it - and plant your plants or seeds. Then push the mulch back. Here is where slug problems are most likely so if you live where there are slugs, put a mechanical barrier around the stem of things like tomato plants and don't push the mulch up against the plant stem but leave it clear to cut down on slug damage. Toilet paper rolls (made of cardboard) or paper towel rolls cut into sections will usually suffice. Make sure the bottom of the tube/barrier is sunk a couple inches into the soil so nobody can sneak under. There are also organic slug baits out there that work well. I've only ever lived in two place where I ever saw many slugs though and one of those places was Portland OR. Not that I'd NEVER seen them anywhere else but Portland and WV were the only places I've had much trouble with slugs.

Worms will flock to your garden and its shaded, temperature stable soil and all that yummy sheet mulch up above. They will eventually "process" all the cardboard and any underlying newspaper and pull all those yummy composting materials directly down into the soil, aerating the soil with their worm trails and fertilizing it with their worm castings.

Year 1 - initial move-in, partway through the spring. I double-dug the whole garden and incorporated "organic material" in the time-honored tradition. I only planted limited things in half the garden and just covered the other half with shredded computer printouts and cardboard. What I did plant did not do very well.

After one year, the difference was obvious in favor of the sheet mulched half which teemed with worms and other healthful soil microfauna, as opposed to the double-dug half where the incorporated "organic mass" was being preserved under layers of 3 different kinds of clay. It was a soil desert. Few worms, and hard soil that varied between goopy muck and baked nearly into bricks.

So in year two I planted the sheet mulch half from year one with buckwheat which I mowed 2 or 3 times (whenever it had set mature seed) through the season. Buckwheat freely reseeds itself when mowed in this manner. Because the soil was such heavy clay the first crop was only about 6" to 8" tall before mowing but each successive mowing got taller as the underlying soil was aerated by both worm and root activity. Buckwheat doesn't fix nitrogen but it is a great, fast growing cover crop to break up hard soil and bring it back to health. It produces a massive root system that aerates the soil and breaks up hard pack. As the roots die they break down back into the soil to provide both organic matter and food for worms who do their work in tandem with the cover crop, improving your soil without having to lift a single shovel. On the other half I made my first attempt at modified sheet mulching which eventually led to the method I use today. Crops from the planted half (that had been only been double dug up to this point) struggled but did grow.

Year 3 - I started planting using the modified sheet mulching method (I had access to plenty of grass clippings so that's what went on top of the cardboard) on the side where I had previously planted the buckwheat cover crop and used the other half for buckwheat cover crop, mowing to self-seed as often a the buckwheat set mature seed. I quit double digging. That was in 1986. I haven't used anything but sheet mulching (my way) and cover cropping ever since. Doing this on new ground with poor soil may result in poor or even no crops for the first year, but every year thereafter will be significantly better.

Year 4, both sides of the garden were now under full production and I continued to use buckwheat as a late fall cover crop. It grew but didn't set seed but that was OK, it was still adding organic matter.

After we sold the house, neighbors told us the new owner ripped out my garden (I had also gone to raised beds) and planted grass over it and thereafter were forever mystified as to why the grass grew so well and fast only over that section of the yard, LOL!

In 3 years I had gone from hardpan clay soil composed of three distinct layers of clay - the gray natural clay at the bottom, and a layer of imported yellow clay they had used for fill topped by another layer of red clay they had used for the final leveling of the yard after construction, that nothing would grow well in. I could have double-dug that for years without significantly affecting the soil characteristics with nothing to show for it but an aching back and knees.

Trust me, even if you have to buy bagged mulch to do this, its still way easier to drag your remaining mulch back every 2 or 3 years (less often if you live in dryer climes), put down more flattened boxes, push the mulch back in place, and maybe buy another bag or two to put down, than any method of double digging or whatever and keeping a separate compost pile.

One thing to be careful of, do not leave shredded computer paper or anything white on top when you sheet mulch. It will reflect too much sun and leave the ground below way colder than you want it if you expect anything to grow or want any sort of worm activity. Cover it with something not white, like leaves, brown cardboard, or dried grass clippings. Do not cover wet grass clippings with cardboard or they will go anaerobic and that's an awful smell among other things LOL!. Let them dry out thoroughly or mix well with a carbon source (shredded paper or shredded cardboard or leaves, etc). Dump them on top as you cut the grass and stir around with a hoe for a few days until they dry out if necessary, but it usually won't be necessary if you are cutting your grass regularly. If your yard is huge, you may not be able to put all of the clipping directly on your garden (unless it, too, is huge) so you may still need "real" compost bins and all the turning and mixing that involves. Yards seem a lot smaller these days though so ... probably not a big problem for most people.

Personally I don't use any kitchen scraps with this type of sheet mulching - it's just not deep enough to properly compost them without attracting vermin. Conventional sheet composting uses much deeper layers but I don't have access to that much organic matter any more.

I find barrel composting too unwieldy, most "compost bins" are too expensive (and too small, you need a lot of them to get enough compost space), and some municipalities object to concrete block compost bins so the modified sheet composting method I use works out well for the city-dweller I have become in my old age. Plus it way easier on my back. I don't have to turn anything and I hardly ever even have to weed. When a weed DOES poke its head up its easy to pull it out of the now very friable soil.

Finally I used to always grow in raised bed but don't much any more. I would if I lived in an area with heavy spring rains so my planting beds can drain better. I would for looks, if I have the energy. And I would if I needed to warm the soil more easily where the season might otherwise be too short for a crop requiring a long season, such as watermelon. Also if I wanted to grow rosemary in most parts of the US (needs extra good drainage and pretty coarse, poor soil to grow well). I do still practice a sort of modified version of square foot gardening as well. I tend to plant things like eggplant and tomatoes closer than conventional recommendations, but further apart than Mel says to.

Sheet mulching the way I do not only improves my garden soil and extends the season but also has extended my career as a gardener. Granted the season is simply too short here to manage but up until I moved here I could still keep a garden and once I escape this place I can do it again, because this sort of mulching makes it easy for me to physically keep the garden. Plus it puts all those Amazon boxes to good use.

I say, let the worms do your work for you. They WANT to. They will THANK you for the opportunity.