Composting for beginners: turn scraps into garden gold

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Compost feeds your soil, holds moisture and cuts your trash in half. It's just a pile of the right ingredients, kept a little damp.

Mix greens and browns

Greens are wet and rich in nitrogen: fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, fresh grass clippings. Browns are dry and rich in carbon: fallen leaves, straw, shredded paper and cardboard. Use more browns than greens by volume; a pile that smells bad usually needs more browns.

Keep these out

Meat, fish, dairy, oils and pet waste attract animals and smell. Skip diseased plants and weeds that have gone to seed too.

Keep it damp and add air

The pile should feel like a wrung-out sponge. Turn it every week or two with a fork, or spin a tumbler, to feed the microbes air. More turning means faster compost.

How long does it take?

A well-tended pile or tumbler can finish in a couple of months in warm weather; a pile left alone takes most of a year. It's ready when it's dark, crumbly and smells like soil.

Make it easy

A small bin on the kitchen counter collects scraps without the smell, and shredded leaves give you a winter's worth of browns.

Gear for this job

• Compost tumbler: Turns scraps into garden gold.
• Kitchen compost bin: Collect scraps without the smell.
• Digging fork: Loosens soil without wrecking it.
• Worm castings: Gentle, natural plant food.
• Leaf mulcher: Turns fall leaves into free mulch.
• Garden gloves: Breathable with a grippy palm.

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