How Do You Make Compost?

!±8± How Do You Make Compost?

Compost is the absolute best stuff you can use in your garden, but just how do you make compost? If you've never actually used compost, just heard it spoken of as "black gold", you may feel a bit daunted. You know it's great for your garden, but not quite sure how to make it for your own use. Relax. It's one of the easiest things you can make and use for your garden to enrich your soil, grow healthy plants and vegetables free of chemicals.

Compost is simply just rotted natural matter. Sounds icky doesn't it? If done right, it's not. Yes, you'll get your hands dirty but you're a gardener, right? With this article, let's take a look at what compost is and how you can make it for your own use.

As I said, compost is rotted stuff. Think about a forest floor. Think about that lovely black soil that crumbles under your toes and smells so well.. earthy. That's years and years of decayed plant matter, often called humus. It's layers and layers of leaves from the trees, dead growth from plants, moisture all combined to make the perfect growing medium rich in nutrients.

So, how do you get this for yourself without years and years of waiting? You build a compost pile. It can be a bin, a freestanding heap, in a barrel, even in a black plastic bag. In it's simplest form a compost pile can be this fall's leaves that you heap up in one spot and let decay for a few years and then spread the black gold out when it's ready. In one of it's most complex forms you can build a tumbler, check the temperature and rotate it every day, add stuff to make it rot faster and have rich dark compost in a matter of a week.

Compost can be as simple or as time consuming as you want it to be. Remember, there is no way to really screw things up. The more time and effort you put into building your compost pile will be a determining factor as to how fast it rots and turns into usable compost, but it will eventually turn in to compost no matter what you do!