Create Your Own
Compost

Healthy, Organic & Sustainable

Create Compost

Creating your own compost is easy and sustainable by using your kitchen waste. When added to already existing soil, compost provides nutrient-rich food and organic material to promote a prolific soil ecosystem and healthy plant growth. By recycling food scraps and everyday waste items, it also reduces dependence on landfills, and provides a wonderful alternative life for items that are normally thrown away.

organic healthy soil compost food scraps

Create Compost

Creating your own compost is easy and sustainable. Click below to see a list of supplies you'll need and steps to take to achieve healthy, organic compost:

Step One

Collect your supplies (supplies listed below). Decide if you will build compost on bare earth or in a container like a plastic tub.

Step Two

Once you have your space is ready, it's time to add in the first layer of your compost. Begin by layering in some carbon rich materials also known as brown compost materials. Brown materials are things like dried leaves, newspaper clippings, cardboard scraps, paper egg cartons, paper towel rolls, egg shells or bush clippings.

Some things to avoid putting your compost: chemically treated wood, glossy paper, high color paper.

organic soil compost leaves plastic bin healthy

Step Three

For the next layer, start collecting food scraps and other household waste. Now add nitrogen-rich "green material" like coffee grounds and tea bags, vegetable and fruit peels, table scraps, egg shells, left over vegetable material, hair salvaged from hair brush, and dyer lint from natural fibers.

Some things to avoid putting into your compost: meat and fish, dairy products, oils and fats, human waste, pet waste, bread products, diseased plants or weeds with seeds.

Step Four

Continue layering your brown items and your green items, and over time, the organic material will break down and create a healthy, organic compost. At least once a week, take a shovel or a trowel and mix up your compost to promote aeration and to prevent pest infestation. Your compost will look like a moist soil when it is ready to use.

compost leaves grass healthy organic soil

Supplies List

Large plastic bin or designated space in the yard
Food scraps
Yard natural waste (leaves, twigs, grass clippings)
Home organic waste (newspaper clippings, brown boxes, paper egg cartons, etc.)
Top for the plastic bin or something to cover the compost pile if on ground
Spade or shovel to turn the compost

Create Your Own
Compost

Create Compost