Food waste in landfills creates methane, which is a big climate problem. Composting at home can help divert food scraps from landfills. And compost helps improve garden soil.
Andy Faust and Kinorea Tigri are with Penn State Extension’s Master Gardener Program. The extension launched its Seed to Supper education program in 2021 to help people grow their own food on a budget, and it includes a comprehensive section on composting.
The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple asked Faust and Tigri for tips on getting started.
LISTEN to the interview
HOLSOPPLE: How much space do you actually need to start composting at home?
TIGRI: An outdoor compost pile can be as small as three by three by three feet. The ideal size is between three to five cubic feet to reach the optimal temperature, which is 140 to 160 degrees. That’s important to help the microorganisms do their job, and location with good drainage, partial shade and easy access. If it’s out of sight, out of mind, it won’t be taken care of.
You can also use tumblers; there are different methods of doing this outdoors. But it can be as simple as a composter in the kitchen on your countertop.
HOLSOPPLE: Where would you recommend that people start?
TIGRI: You want to use a mix of greens, which would be your nitrogen-rich, such as grass. It could be your vegetable scraps from the kitchen. And your browns, which are carbon-rich, could be your mulched leaves, because the smaller the piece, the quicker it will decompose.
The other thing is layer it six inches of brown to two to three inches of greens, and then two inches of soil. And that could be soil from your garden, or say you have a container that you’re renewing the soil in. You can take that soil from that container to put into your pile and just keep alternating that. Do those layers until you build it.
Then you want to keep it moist like a damp sponge. And turn it regularly, because you don’t want it to start rotting. If you start smelling something, you’ve put something in there that doesn’t belong, or it is just not the right temperature.
- Penn State Extension Guide for Home Composting
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HOLSOPPLE: When you’re talking about brown and greens, if you don’t have leaves, what are some other brown materials? Can you use paper?
TIGRI: Shredded paper, you want to make sure it’s not glossy. Newspaper, even, because now they use soy ink, brown paper bags.
HOLSOPPLE: And then the green is just kind of your scraps, from your kitchen?
TIGRI: Yes, and your grass clippings, I find those are best, as long as they’re not treated.
FAUST: Seed-free weeds would be great. One of the most common ones for the greens is coffee grounds. Egg shells, nitrogen-rich egg shells, are a good one.
HOLSOPPLE: What are a couple of the biggest mistakes that home composters make?
FAUST: I would say probably the biggest three are just an imbalance in the ratio of greens and browns. So typically, if you have too many browns, it’s kind of slowing down the process, and then too much greens have this odor. So if you had this odor coming from your pile, you probably had too many greens in there.
The second one is adding the wrong things. Adding any kind of meat, dairy or oily foods is going to attract a lot of pests. No protein, no meat, no fish, oily food waste scraps are going to attract rodents and animals.
And then the last one is just not really turning the piles. That’s really important too. Turn the piles on a consistent basis as you are adding moisture if needed.
HOLSOPPLE: How often should you turn it?
TIGRI: Once a week is the best practice. It kind of depends, too, on how much you are adding to your pile. Once a week, it’s a great place to start.
HOLSOPPLE: What questions do people usually have for you about home composting, besides what they’re doing wrong?
FAUST: Folks now are kind of preparing for the wintertime and fall. Can I compost over the wintertime? The pile’s going to go dormant over the wintertime, but you can still continue to add to it during that time.
HOLSOPPLE: What do you mean by dormant? It just won’t heat up and make compost?
FAUST: Yes, the items that you’re putting in your compost aren’t breaking down, and so you’re not gonna get the results of the soil that you’re looking to get.
TIGRI: The microorganisms that are in the pile during the wintertime are more or less inactive because it’s too cold for them. Your microbes, your worms, you know, all the different kinds of decomposers that are in soil naturally, they will come if it’s managed correctly.
Andy Faust and Kinorea Tigri are with Penn State Extension’s Master Gardener Program.
