Why is composting magical?? Because by using natural processes, you take food and yard waste and produce a valuable soil amendment - that's why! We start with unwanted kitchen scraps, leaves and grass. Then, using a simple technique - voila! - valuable compost that we would normally pay money for is created.

What it Takes to Make Excellent Compost

1. Composting bin
2. Leaves, grass and foods
3. Air and water
4. Turn your pile

Like magic, you put together the right ingredients, give a little TLC, and presto! You have quality compost! The critical ingredients are: carbon-rich waste such as leaves or non-recyclable paper (browns), nitrogen-rich waste such as food and vegetable scraps and grass clippings (greens), air and water. When sufficient amounts of these materials are present, biological decomposition will occur and make fertile compost.

Start with an ideal mixture of "browns" and "greens" (about 50%-50%) and ensure that the compost pile has the right moisture level. Keeping the right moisture level and air content is done by regularly watering and turning the composting pile. The pile should be about as moist as a wrung-out sponge and turned every two weeks to a month.

When conditions are right, the magic of decomposition can happen quickly, within several weeks to several months. Of course, the mystery ingredient to the whole process is billions of microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) that consume the food and yard waste.

Quality compost requires a little care to avoid odors and weed generation. Not adding animal products, such as meat and dairy, will prevent odors. Avoiding invasive weeds like Bermuda grass and weed seeds will ensure that your compost enhances the growth of your prized plants and not your dreaded weeds.

With the right recipe of ingredients, heat is produced as a byproduct of the "decomposers" doing their jobs. To really generate heat you need enough food or yard waste to get a critical mass. At least a three-foot-high pile will generally produce heat. Heat means your pile is operating at an optimum level. Don't worry, though, if you do not have a lot of heat; decomposition can occur quite effectively without the generation of much heat, just at a slower rate.

I have been so busy ...composting is important to me, but I may not be able to nurture my compost pile like one of my children.

Don't worry, you can still compost if conditions are not 100% ideal, it will just take longer. A compost pile that is smaller, too dry, not turned often, or high in browns such as leaves or wood chips will decompose, but it could be a year or longer before the material starts to look and feel like the dark crumbly soil-like substance we know as compost.

If your compost pile is located close to your neighbor's house, then you should be concerned about the possibility of odors. Odors can form when high nitrogen material (greens) decomposes in an oxygen poor environment, i.e., a pile that hasn't been turned often enough. What happens is that microorganisms use up the available oxygen and then the pile turns anaerobic (without oxygen). Anaerobic bacteria grow instead of bacteria that like oxygen. Anaerobic bacteria cause odors. The solution is to turn your pile. Turning a compost pile works best when you shovel the current pile into a new pile taking the material from the top of the current pile and making it the bottom of a new pile. This turning process fluffs up the compost, adding oxygen to the pile. When turning your pile, always cover food waste with other material to avoid attracting rodents.

Sometimes we only have browns or greens available and, therefore, have trouble making the right recipe (50-50) of browns and greens. Too many browns mean that the compost will take a long time to mature and the end product will be low in nitrogen. A higher amount of greens means there may be some odor if the pile isn't turned, but the end product will be quite fertile for the soil (high nitrogen).

The size of the material you put in the compost pile can also affect both the speed of decomposition and the quality of the end product. Putting whole branches or high woody plant stocks in your pile will slow decomposition. The microorganisms cannot get into the branches to break them down. The branches will be semi-decomposed when the rest of your compost is ready to be added to the soil. It will be hard to use the compost with sticks in it. Hence, if you have woody sticks and branches, then you may need to find a way of chopping them into pieces of less than an inch in diameter. The old-fashioned hand trimmers will work on most branches

Send your leaves to mulch better place

Depending on how you use your compost, you may not even need to compost your yard waste to find a useful way of disposing of the material. If you have landscaping that requires weed control and most of your yard waste is browns (leaves, branches, or wood waste), then you may want to chip the material. By chipping yard waste and using it as a mulch, you have an inexpensive weed control material. Chipping can be done by hand or with a purchased chipper.

It is OK to play with your compost pile. Add a few red worms to see what happens. Add paper towels, paper grocery sacks or add your leftover broccoli! You can even use the coffee grounds from work and watch them all .... DISAPPEAR!