On this page:

• What is Composting?
• Why Compost at Home?
• Options for Composting at Home
• Composting in Your Backyard
  • Ingredients for Composting
  • What You Can Compost
  • Steps for Backyard Composting
  • Avoiding Rodents
• Worm Composting (Vermicomposting)
• Benefits of Using Your Finished Compost
• Additional Resources for Home Composting

What is Composting?

Composting is a controlled, aerobic (oxygen-required) process that converts organic materials into a nutrient-rich soil amendment or mulch through natural decomposition. The end product is compost – a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling material. Microorganisms feed on the materials added to the compost pile during the composting process. They use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce, water to digest materials, and oxygen to breathe.

You can compost at home using food scraps from your kitchen and dry leaves and woody material from your yard.

Why Compost at Home?

Composting is nature’s way of recycling. It is one of the most powerful actions we can take to reduce our trash, address climate change, and build healthy soil. By turning our food scraps and yard trim into compost, we can transform our waste streams into a beneficial, value-added soil amendment and use it to protect the environment and create resilient communities.

• Composting is a resourceful way to recycle the food scraps and yard trim you generate at home all year and manage your waste more sustainably.
• You reduce the volume of materials that might otherwise be disposed in landfills or trash incinerators – leaves, grass clippings, yard trim, and food scraps – and prevent powerful greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere.
• Composting involves minimal effort, equipment, expense, and expertise, and can be fun.
• You save money by producing a free, high quality soil amendment – compost, which reduces your use of fertilizer and pesticides.
• You can use your compost to build healthier soil, prevent soil erosion, conserve water, and improve plant growth in your garden and yard.

Options for Composting at Home

There are different ways to compost at home:

• Backyard composting with a pile or a bin you can build yourself or purchase.
• Vermicomposting (worm composting) with a bin.

If you don’t have an outside space for composting, consider participating in a local community-based composting program, which may collect your food scraps or have a designated location where you can drop them off. Alternatively, vermicomposting can be done indoors (more information is below).

Composting in Your Backyard

Ingredients for Composting

The ingredients for composting include a proper balance of the following materials:

• Carbon-rich materials (“browns”) can include dry leaves, plant stalks, and twigs. The carbon-rich materials provide food for the microorganisms to consume and digest.
• Nitrogen-rich materials (“greens”) include grass clippings and food scraps. The nitrogen-rich materials heat up the pile to create ideal conditions for the material to breakdown.
• Water (moisture).
• Air (oxygen).

What You Can Compost 

*Backyard composting piles do not generally reach high enough temperatures to fully decompose certified compostable food service ware and bags. These items are designed to be composted at commercial composting facilities.

Steps for Backyard Composting

1. Determine how you will collect and store your browns and greens.
   Collect and store your fruit and vegetable scraps in a closed container on your kitchen counter, under your sink, or in your fridge or freezer. For browns, set aside an area outside to store your steady supply of leaves, twigs, or other carbon-rich material (to mix with your food scraps).
2. Set aside space for your compost pile and build or buy a bin. 
   Choose a space in your yard for your compost pile that is easily accessible year-round and has good drainage. Avoid placing it right up against a fence and ensure there is a water source nearby. Your compost pile will break down in sun or shade. Next, choose a type of bin for your pile. Bins can be constructed from materials such as wire, wood, and cinder blocks. They can also be enclosed and include barrels and tumblers.
3. Prepare your ingredients for composting.
   Before adding your browns and greens to the pile, try to chop and break them up into smaller pieces (e.g., corn cobs, broccoli stalks, and other tough food scraps). Doing so will help the materials in the pile break down faster.
4. How to build your compost pile.
   Start your pile with a four- to six-inch layer of bulky browns such as twigs and wood chips. This layer will absorb extra liquids, elevate your pile and allow air to circulate at the base of the pile. Then layer your greens and browns like lasagna. If needed, add a little water to dampen the pile.

   Having the right proportions of ingredients in your compost pile will provide the composting microorganisms the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and moisture they need to break down the material into finished compost.

   When adding browns and greens to your pile, add at least two to three times the volume of browns (such as dry leaves) to the volume of greens (such as food scraps). Always ensure your food scraps are covered by four to eight inches of dry leaves or other browns.

   Air and water are the other key ingredients in your pile. To ensure air circulation, add enough browns and turn your compost occasionally. To maintain moisture in your pile, ensure your combined materials have the consistency of a wrung-out sponge.

5. Maintain your compost pile.
   As the materials in your compost pile begin to decompose, the temperature of the pile will initially begin to rise, especially in the center. A backyard pile, if well maintained, can reach temperatures of 130° to 160° F. High temperatures help reduce the presence of pathogens and weed seeds.

   Turning and mixing your pile from time to time will help speed up the decomposition process and aerate the pile. Use a garden fork to turn the outside of the pile inward.

   Monitor your pile for moisture, odor, and temperature and make adjustments as needed.

   1. If the pile is too dry, activity in the pile will slow or cease. Moisten the pile and turn it. (Refer to the note above about maintaining moisture in your pile.)
   2. If the pile has a bad odor, it may be too wet or need more air circulation. Add more browns/dry material to the pile and turn the pile.
   3. If the pile is not heating up, mix in greens and turn the pile.
6. Harvest your finished compost.
   When your compost pile is no longer heating up after mixing, and when there are no visible food scraps, allow your pile to cure, or finish, for at least four weeks. You can relocate the oldest compost at the bottom of the pile to a separate area to cure or stop adding materials to your pile. After curing, your pile will have shrunk to about one-third of its original size.

   Compost in a well-maintained pile will be finished and ready for use in about three to five months. Left untended, a pile may take a year to decompose. The compost will look dark, loose, and crumbly and smell like fresh soil. Most, if not all, of the materials that went into the compost pile should be decomposed.
   Screen or sift your finished compost to filter out materials that didn’t break down – twigs, fruit pits, eggshells, and items like produce stickers and plastic. (You can make a homemade screener out of ¼ inch hardware cloth.) Pits, eggshells, etc. that you sifted out can be added back into the active pile or to a new pile.