How to start your own compost pile

What do I mean by green? By green I mean:
• Green grass clippings
• Green plant matter from the garden, things you trim off while doing your gardening activities
• Green weeds you've pulled
• Green table scraps, like the ends of broccoli and lettuce
• Seaweed and pond algae count as green materials too, if you have a pond

By brown I mean:
• Grass that has wilted or gone brown
• Plants that have gone brown and wilted and died
• Brown leaves
• Pine needles
• Shredded twigs
• Straw or sawdust (though you'll need to avoid sawdust from wood that has been treated with chemicals)
• Shredded paper – it can be good to add some shredded newspaper to your compost from time to time

Keep your compost moist, but not soaking wet, and turn it occasionally. If your composter is a drum, you just turn the handle. If it's a bin or a pile, get out the shovel and turn over the materials manually.

Over time, by some miracle of nature, you will have roughly the right ratio of nitrogen to carbon, and you'll have great compost.

Remember that when we're talking about kitchen scraps, you can't compost meat or any bones. You also can't compost most animal waste, at least not from carnivores, because it contains pathogens and stuff you don't want around your food.

On the other hand, if you have herbivores, like bunnies, you can add their waste to your compost pile. In fact, animal waste from herbivores can be a great way to get your compost really hot right away – in other words, to get that matter decomposing quickly. It's like starting a yogurt with a specific culture. To start compost, to get it really hot right away, go to a pony ride and get some horse manure and put that in. Boom! Your compost gets fired up right away. Cow manure and chicken manure work, too.

The funny thing is, there won't be any smell from this stuff, because you'll cover the animal waste right away. It'll be in the centre – at the core – of your compost pile, making everything start decomposing really quickly. And you'll have usable compost for your garden in as little as a month.

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Excerpted from Living Like Ed by Ed Begley, Jr. Copyright © 2008 by Ed Begley, Jr.. Excerpted by permission of Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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