Make compost in your backyard

Composting is nature working.  Compost s miracle happening in the backyard.

It is very easy to make compost. It is not dirty, smelly or fishy. If you follow certain guidelines you will have clean compost without much effort.


Compost Bin:  First you need bin to make compost.  If you do not have resources to make one or you do not like to build one then buy one. Check out  the compost bins here.  You can build your own compost bin.

wire mesh compost bin

You can a make a simple bin from wire mesh.  Make sure it has at least 3 ft diameter and is sturdy.  The one shown on the left are tied to a tree.

wooden compost bin

You can also make a bin from wooden planks.  The one on the left is 4 ft x 2ft x 2 ft. See full illustration here.







Material:  You need browns and greens for your compost.  Browns will provide carbon and green will provide nitrogen.

greens ready to be shredded 

Shred leaves and other greens.  You can use various leaf shredders to shred leaves. Check here.

browns being shredded by mower

You can use your lawn mower to shred leaves and greens.  Use grass clippings to provide green.  See illustration to how to use lawn mower to shred leaves.

shred pizza boxes add to compost 

You can shred cardboard boxes like pizza boxes and add to the mix.  They provide excellent browns to the compost.  Spray some water over the shredded cardboard to just moisten it.

compost full of shredded material

Fill it up as things are going to settle down after a while.  Add more of the clippings on top.  Mix green and brown thoroughly.  You can also layer brown, green, brown so on.  Each layer can be about 3 inch thick.  Add some moisture by spraying some water.  Do not make it soggy.

How to make compost from Oak leaves?

Oak leaves are very stubborn and take long time to decompose.  Oaks leaves must be shredded well before throwing in  the compost bin.  See how I use my lawn mower to shred oak leaves before composting them.  This way the leaves are shredded in to small pieces and also volume is reduced.  You do not have to empty the bags more often.  Add some green too.  I shredded my tomato plants along with oak leaves.

Leaves are back.

Summer is gone and fall is back and so are the leaves. The blog went dormant during the summer and we are back again. I found that it is better to mulch the oak leaves first. Run your mower or tractor (riding mower) in mulch mode and just run over the leaves. This will break down the leaves. Then run it with the bagger. Now there will be less volume and you do not have to empty the bags very often. Empty the bags in the compost. All the you have do the process twice but it makes it less laborious.


Check out my previous post Shredding and mulching leaves- my previous post.

Search for leaves shredder.