This is a popular recipe for compost. There is no better way to start and maintain a garden.

A compost pile can be started in sun or shade at any time of the year. Good ingredients include animal manure and urine, leaves, hay, grass clippings, tree trimmings, food scraps, bark, sawdust, rice hulls, cotton gin trash, weeds, nut hulls. Since chicken manure and animal urine is extremely rich in nitrogen (urea), dilute urine at about 10 parts water to 1 part urine. Don’t worry about any weed seeds that might be in the mixture because the heat that is a natural byproduct of the composting process will kill them. Manure from animals that consume vegetation is best. The best manure is from horses, cattle, chickens, sheep and goats. Try to avoid manure from dogs and cats or any other carnivore. Kitchen vegetable waste is good, but avoid grease and meat scraps.

Mix the ingredients together in a container of wood, hay bales, hog wire, concrete blocks or simply pile the material on the ground. The best mixture is 75-80% vegetative matter and 20-25% animal waste, although any mix will compost. The ingredients should be a mix of coarse and fine-textured material. Avoid having all the pieces of material the same size since the variety of sizes will help air to move through the pile. Oxygen is a critical ingredient to the process. Turn the pile at least once a month; more often speeds up the process. Keep the pile moist, roughly the moisture of a squeezed-out sponge, to help the living microorganisms thrive and work their magic. Compost is ready to use when the ingredients are no longer identifiable. The color will be dark brown, the texture soft and crumbly and the aroma that of a forest floor. Use compost in all bed preparation and as a high quality mulch around annuals and perennials. Watch these pages for a compost tea recipe coming soon.

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Categories: Garden, Household