Composting

Ready to get started with composting? The City of Raleigh Solid Waste sells Earth Machine Compost Bins. Click here for more information.

Many home and garden stores or nurseries sell compost bins. Be sure to call the store and confirm that they have the product you are looking for in stock. Check out these sites to purchase compost bins online:
http://www.composters.com/main.shtml?k=compostbins
http://www.envirocyclesystems.com/
http://www.urbangardencenter.com/products/composter/

Backyard Composting

• Locating Your Composter: Your compost bin should be located in a convenient location to your home preferably in partial shade close to a hose or water source.
• Your composter needs: Good air circulation around the bin. To be set on bare ground for easy drainage. Distance from large trees that tend to steal nutrients.
• Greens and Browns: Successful composting depends on the proper mix of green material (Nitrogen) and brown material (Carbon), mixed into the composter in the proper combination. The ideal combination of the two is 2-parts green to 1-part brown. A good tip is to stockpile green and brown material until it is needed

Sources:

• Browns (Carbon) would be found where? Dried materials are generally your source for browns. These include, dried grass and leaves, paper products, straw and hay. Leaves are a particularly good source for carbon when dry and they break down much faster when shredded. Just picture a forest floor and the rich dark material that is found there. You got it, leaves!
• Greens (Nitrogen) would be green, right? Yeah, in most cases greens are green, like grass. But fruit and vegetable spoils and scraps, salads, peelings, apple cores, banana skins, onion skins, stale bread, coffee grounds and yes of course grass clippings. You get the picture.
• Manure: Manure is desirable as an activator to heat up the pile and speed the process. The best manure is from grass eaters such as horses, cattle, sheep, goats even rabbits and chickens. (Be cautious with horse manure as it tends to have a lot of weed seed.) To be safe, buy packaged manure at a garden center. Don't compost human, dog or cat wastes (they carry disease).

Never Ever…Attempt to compost these materials in a backyard composter:

• Weeds: already gone to seed
• Ashes: too alkaline, would raise the pH levels to undesirable heights
• Plastic, metal and glass: don't break down
• BBQ ashes or coals: too high in sulfur dioxide can kill your hardworking little worms
• Meat, grease and bones: will only attract rodents and create bad smells which could upset your neighbors or anyone for that matter
• Contaminated matter
• Large branches or chunks of wood
• All dairy products, butter, cheese, oil and dressings

Make Your Own Compost Pile!

With good planning and a bit of luck, you should have results in 2 to 3 months. To get started, follow these steps:

Begin by stockpiling your items. If you do this, the entire process will be much easier!
• Build a foundation. Start your pile with about three inches of the coarsest material such as straw, hay, small twigs, flower stalks etc… If you chop this material, it will break down faster
• Add materials. Add about 3-inches of moist, green materials, then the same amount of drier, brown materials and moisten with a fine spray. That's the process, keep doing it again and again until you run out of material or fill your bin.
• Add an activator. As you are building your pile, you may want to ad an activator between layers. This activator could be manure or a commercial activator available in most garden stores.
• Cover your bin. To retain moisture and ensure the heat needed for composting, cover your bin. This also keeps small animals out. Be sure you have good air-flow around and into the bin.
• Turn, Turn, Turn! If you turn your pile every week or so with a shovel or garden fork, you bring the material from the outside into the middle where it is hotter and the process speeds up. You also create passages for air and moisture again speeding the process.
• Check moisture. Check the moisture every week and add water if needed. The pile should have the consistency of a wrung out sponge.
• Wait Patiently. A compost heap built in this fashion should have results in about 30 to 90 days. The volume will be about half the size you started out with.
• Check for a beautiful earth aroma. The compost should have a healthy, "forest-after-a-rainstorm" smell to it. If it doesn't, then re-check your steps in the process to make sure you didn't miss anything.

Tips:

• Smaller is Better…Materials, both brown and green, break down much better when they are broken into smaller pieces. So you can run a mower over fallen leaves and chop kitchen waste to help speed the process.
• Pile it on, Pile it on….Try to keep your bin full or near full. If the process is working properly, the contents will shrink by 1/3 in the first week and after several months by 2/3's or more. This is the natural process of composting.
• Kitchen Bucket…A good idea is to keep a small covered bucket in the kitchen to collect food scraps and cut down on your trips to the composter.
• When it doesn't smell right…It could be too wet, so just turn the material and add browns. Too many greens, add more browns. Don't add meat, dairy, fish etc.
• Balance…A healthy balance of greens and browns keeps everything working just right. Be sure to constantly ensure you have the right mixtures of browns and greens.
• And don't forget…use that wonderful rich black compost to enrich your lawns, your flower and vegetable gardens. It's nature's way of saying thank you.