Composting can take as much time as you like – some people make excellent compost very quickly, but to get that payout they invest several hours and more than a little sweat over a few weeks. Others, like me, trade my time for nature’s time. I am happy to wait if it means I don’t have to spend as much time at the compost pile. The end is the same, the quality of the compost is still excellent – it just takes a little longer.
If you’re interested in very basic, low effort compost, and you have the patience for it to take a long time to “finish”, then this guide is for you. It will take just a little bit of time to set up the compost site, and in a few years the compost will somehow have to be harvested and/or used, but otherwise this compost method will take you 10 minutes a week or less.
To start, watch my video on setting up a super basic outdoor compost bin:
This is by no means the only way to compost, and it isn’t even the only easy way to compost. Maybe someday I’ll go into the details of other rewarding compost styles, like vermicomposting, tumbler composting or hot composting, but for simplicity the above video and this post are only referring to regular outdoor ‘cold’ composting.
The 4 key things for this style of compost are:
- Proper selection of things to compost
- Good balance of wet/dry compost “ingredients”
- Air/airflow
- Security against pests (relative security, anyway)
1. What to compost?
There are two major categories of things to compost (greens and browns, or wets and drys), and then list of things not to compost. Basically, if it fully came from a plant and is relatively small and not diseased, it’s good. With a few exceptions, if it came from an animal or mineral, or contains synthetic material, it’s bad. My lists are pretty conservative, and some people may rightfully disagree with some of my ‘avoid’ list. The lists are meant to make compost easy, and to minimize the amount of time composting will take.
Green/wet things good for the compost:
- Raw fruit and vegetable scraps
- Coffee grounds
- Tea leaves (loose)
- Tea bags (no staples, no plastic bits)
- Plain cooked rice, pasta or bread
- Green grass clippings (before it goes to seed)
- Seedless/flowerless weeds
- Garden waste, like plants that die back at the end of the season or prunings from plants. Don’t add bits that have suffered from bacterial, fungal or viral diseases, or that have had too many pests (and may now contain pest eggs).
Brown/dry things good for the compost:
- Shredded ‘flat’ non-glossy paper and newspaper. The ink on coloured newspaper is almost always made from soy, and is fine to compost. Glossy paper is either coated in plastic or wax, and neither are good for the compost
- Shredded cardboard (uncoated)
- Shredded paper bags
- Parchment paper
- Natural coffee filters
- Dried grass clippings
- Dried leaves
- Untreated straw
- Sawdust from untreated wood
Avoid adding these things to your compost:
- Plastics, including small plastic stickers or wrappers
- Things coated in plastic, like shiny/glossy newspaper or tape
- Meat, including fish
- Bones
- Fats, including animal fats, oils and dairy. Dairy includes milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and things made with any of the above
- Large and dense fruit/veg waste, like avocado or peach pits or corn cobs (unless you chop them up)
- Citrus peels
- Pet droppings from cats or dogs. Most bird droppings are ok, and even good for the compost. I’ve heard of people composting human feces (not just in a composting toilet), but that is something that I think is reserved for the overzealous.
- Wet egg shells. Full disclosure, I add egg shells to my compost all the time – but I dry them in the oven and crush them up first. Adding them to the compost pile “wet” is adding an animal product and a fat to the compost, and it may be a siren call for small rodents or birds. If you do want to dry and crush eggshells, you can lay them on a cookie sheet and set the oven to 175C for about an hour (or, my lazy method is to stick them in the oven as I pull out the last tray of cookies and am turning the oven off. By the time the oven finishes cooling off, the eggshells are dry). Then grind with a mortar and pestle or in a coffee grinder.
- Ashes – this is a bit controversial, and a little wood ash isn’t going to hurt your compost. Too much can affect the pH, however, so generally it’s best not to regularly add ashes.
- Diseased garden waste, or garden waste that has been heavily sprayed or treated with herbicides or other things that wouldn’t be helpful to future plant generations
- Dryer lint, unless there were absolutely no synthetic fibres in the load(s)
- “Biodegradable” products, like plastic-like cutlery
- Painted or treated wood and wood shavings
2. Balance
Your compost should have moisture, but it shouldn’t be truly ‘wet’. A wrung out sponge is the analogy I have heard the most often and agree with.
I find that at the start of my compost pile, everything is pretty dry – even if the only thing I put in are wet ingredients, and even if I add water! There just isn’t a ‘middle’ to get potentially wet and slimy yet. I usually add wets and drys with no real intention behind them until the pile is at least six inches deep. Only then do I start to adjust, adding more greens and water if the pile is too dry or more browns and air if it’s too wet.
What’s the right ratio of “wet” to “dry”, or “green” to “brown”? It depends on your specific climate, and on your compost bin. I haven’t given a number on purpose. In some climates, adding equal amounts of wet and dry ingredients will be right; in others, you may want twice as much dry as you add wet. It will also depend on how much evaporation happens through the air vents, how much rain can get into it, etc.
One thing that can make it easier to dry off a pile, if needed, is to have a small store of extra “dry” compost ingredients, particularly shredded paper, cardboard or leaves. Make a little stockpile, and any time the compost is looking a little too wet or is starting to smell like things are rotting instead of breaking down nicely, add a little in. Some people will go a step further and always dig a small hole in the compost pile when they are adding wet ingredients, then cover the wet with fresh dry ingredients from their little store. Burying the wet can also make the pile less tempting to wildlife, if that’s been an issue at all.
Another thing that can help fix a wet pile is to increase the air flow by mixing up the pile (like you would mix a cookie dough, only on a larger scale) and/or leaving the lid off for a little bit to increase evaporation.
If your pile is too dry, and tends to the dry side, you may notice that the contents are dusty and many of the brown dry ingredients are still intact. Dry piles tend not to smell or attract pests, but they also don’t turn into compost. Adding water will help, and so will holding off on adding dry ingredients the next few times you add wet ingredients.
3. Air/airflow
Air is the secret to a compost pile NOT smelling, NOT being a nuisance, NOT attracting pests, and NOT breeding resentment from your neighbours. Air is crucial for a successful outdoor compost, and showing off a beautiful compost pile may have your neighbours admiring your work and asking you to help them start their own bin!
Most commercial compost bins incorporate air vents by default, but if you’re building your own bin from wood or a typical trash bin, you will need to add some holes for air circulation.
It may seem counterproductive to cut holes in a compost bin – doesn’t that give pests easier access?! Won’t the compost leak out of those holes and cause a mess?! These were my thoughts when I began composting and first had a good look at a typical compost bin. The truth is that air vents do give pests easier access – but not having air vents makes the pile more attractive to pests, and that is a much bigger issue. Pests also have access to the driveway in front of my house, but I don’t have a problem with pests on my driveway because pests aren’t that interested in hanging out there. A compost pile that is well ventilated doesn’t smell attractive to pests, so they aren’t going to really work to get into it. That’s not a promise, though. Just like occasionally I have found a mouse or two industriously work its way into my house, occasionally I find evidence that something has been digging around in my compost – that’s why the 4th key, security, is important as well.
Without air the wet parts of your compost will just rot, usually creating ammonia and methane. This is what happens when organic matter breaks down in a landfill. Typically, organic matter in a landfill is trapped among non-organic matter and does not have access to air, nor to the helpful air-loving microbes and organisms that are the workhorses of backyard compost. The image of disgusting, foul smelling garbage is due to this anaerobic breakdown. That’s not compost. If you want compost, and not garbage, you need air.
Included in this key is that you need the air-loving composting microbes and worms to be able to get to your compost, and that means either placing your compost directly on the earth or to add them manually. If you can, put your compost bin directly on the earth. If you don’t want to cut the bottom completely away, then at least make a few fairly large holes, at least 4 inches diameter. If you were to pick the bin up when the compost is finished, even with the holes in the bottom the vast majority of the compost will remain in the bin for easy transport. The same is true of the side air vents – even when the compost piles higher than the vent levels, it tends to clump and stay in the bin and to not leak out.
4. Security
A good compost pile won’t really attract pests, but in case your pile doesn’t live in a constant state of perfect balance (as many don’t!), securing it against pests can prevent headaches. This means that the bin won’t tip over easily and that it has a locking lid.
You can stop a bin from toppling over in many ways – three useful ones are:
- Nail or screw it to the earth. This is kind of like pegging a tent, and some bins come with fasteners specifically for this purpose
- Bury the bottom. This involved digging a small hole slightly bigger than the base of your bin and about 6-12 inches deep, then placing the bin in it and backfilling around. Any leftover soil can be placed in the bin, which can be helpful in kickstarting the pile.
- Weigh it down from above with something heavy. This is perhaps the easiest security feature to set up, but it may be impractical because it means that every time you want to add something to the compost, you need to remove the weight. For some, that’s no bother at all – for others, it may be a small deterrent to composting, and therefore another means of securing the bin may be better!
A weight can also be used to secure a non-locking lid, but if you can get a locking trashcan or compost bin lid, or latch a wooden bin’s lid, then that may be better. The lid blocks pests from crawling inside, and it also blocks any wind-blown weed seeds (and the sunlight that would allow them to grow!). Many people successfully compost without any lid at all, but my advice when starting out will always be to first compost successfully with a lid.
Depending on your area, reinforcing the bottom or the air vents with hardware cloth can be an extra measure of security.
Some people, usually those on large properties, will compost in a literal pile and not use a bin at all. Even if these piles do have a little pest and weed pressure, with enough space and the right attitude that may not be a problem at all.
And that’s it! Get out there and start your pile – wherever you have outdoor space and permission will work, that’s the beauty of this method. You could have a compost pile at home, another at the office, and another at a place you often visit, and the whole bunch of them will save the planet while barely affecting your day-to-day schedule at all. If you have any additional tips, or any questions, send me a comment and start a conversation! Happy composting 