The real secret to successful composting
For most of us, our heart is in the right place when it comes to composting, but once things start going wrong, we bail out as fast as we can.
Don’t feel bad, says master gardener and composter Kevin Marini. It happens more often than we might think, and it’s probably because we’re trying to follow rules that don’t really make sense for us.
For one, Marini says, most people are taught the four steps of composting, which start with buying a compost bin. That’s where we head off in the wrong direction.
There are two things you need to consider first, he says, and that’s to know what your goal is and how much composting material you have access to.
If your goal is to make lots of compost for your garden, you’re going to need a lot of material to do that, and a 3-by-3-by-3foot compost bin isn’t going to be enough. If you only want to recycle kitchen scraps, you probably don’t need a compost bin at all. You need some composting worms.
Most people don’t have access to enough green and brown material to feed a hot compost pile, Marini says. It takes a lot of material to get even a small amount of finished compost. People most often fail when they try to set up a bin and don’t have enough equal parts of browns and greens.
Marini recommends thinking of composting not as big piles, but of batches. Get equal amounts of greens and browns, put them in a pile or bin, keep them moist and stir weekly. In time, you’ll have a batch of compost.
Many practice what Marini calls reality compost — starting small and continually feeding it as the weeks go by. If you do this, he says, it is crucial you don’t add browns without also adding greens, and vice versa.