Compost is truly the secret behind a thriving, productive garden. If you’ve never transformed kitchen scraps and yard waste into dark, crumbly plant food, you’re missing out on one of the most rewarding parts of organic gardening. Composting teaches a powerful lesson: in nature, nothing is wasted — everything becomes food for something else.
If you’re new to the process, learning the fundamentals from four-season gardening expert Eliot Coleman is a wonderful place to start. His approach opens the door to a deeper, more joyful connection with growing your own food.
Be sure to check back throughout March as part of our “Garden Series,” where we’ll continue sharing tips to help you plan and prepare for a vibrant spring garden.
The following has been adapted for the web from Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables From Your Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman.
Fertile soil begins with compost
Often the solutions we need are the simplest ones right in front of us. Gardeners through the ages have reached the same conclusion: healthy soil grows healthy vegetables, and compost is the foundation of healthy soil. The first step toward a productive year-round harvest is learning how to make good compost — and the good news is that composting happens naturally when we create the right conditions.
Compost is what remains after organic matter breaks down. It turns into a soft, dark, chocolate-colored material that smells earthy and alive. A compost heap is simply a managed pile of organic ingredients that microorganisms transform over time. Because compost and fertile soil are both teeming with life, compost enriches the soil by feeding the organisms that help unlock nutrients for plants.
Compost keeps soil — and gardens — alive
Gardeners aren’t the only ones fascinated by compost. Poets have written about it for generations. Andrew Hudgins, in his poem “Compost: An Ode,” describes a compost heap as the place where life and death meet, “a leisurely collapsing of the thing into its possibilities.” John Updike writes of nature’s quiet ability to recycle everything, from fallen trees to woodland creatures. Walt Whitman celebrates the miracle of the earth turning “such sweet things out of such corruptions.”
Great compost doesn’t appear by accident. It develops when organic matter, air, moisture, and microorganisms come together over time. You can create this process in any backyard without special tools or machinery — just gather the right ingredients, layer them properly, and let nature handle the rest.
What goes into compost?
Most homes generate plenty of compostable materials without even trying. Yard trimmings, garden leftovers, and kitchen scraps are the raw ingredients of a rich compost pile. That’s part of the magic: what you would normally throw away becomes your garden’s most valuable fertilizer.
Variety is your friend. Different plant materials contain different minerals, so the more diverse your ingredients, the more balanced your finished compost will be.
To make it easier, compost ingredients are generally grouped into two categories: green and brown.
Green materials are fresh, moist, and full of nitrogen. These break down quickly and encourage microbial activity. They include things like fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, pulled weeds, and spent garden plants. The average household produces more green material than you might expect — roughly a quarter of typical trash is food and yard waste.
Brown materials are drier, older, and slower to decompose. They provide carbon, which helps balance the faster-breaking greens. Examples include dried stems, old vines, fallen leaves, small branches, and hay. Because most backyards don’t generate enough brown material on their own, many gardeners purchase straw — an excellent carbon source — from stables or garden suppliers.
Straw offers a huge advantage to beginners: it helps prevent odor, imbalance, and soggy piles, which are common early mistakes. Once you get comfortable, you can experiment with more advanced methods, but straw makes the learning process much smoother.
How to build a compost heap
Choose a spot near your garden so the finished compost is easy to move. A location beneath a deciduous tree is ideal — it provides shade in summer and sunlight in winter when the leaves have dropped. Being close to the kitchen makes adding scraps simple, and having a hose nearby helps maintain moisture levels. If your compost site sits uphill from your garden, spreading the finished compost will be even easier.
To build your heap, alternate layers of brown and green materials. Start with about 3 inches of straw, then add a layer of greens between 1 and 6 inches deep, depending on the material. Light, airy greens like vines can be applied more thickly, while dense materials like kitchen scraps should be kept thinner to avoid matting.
Sprinkle a thin layer of soil — about half an inch — on top of each green layer. Soil introduces beneficial microorganisms and minerals that help break down the organic matter. If your greens include weeds with soil still attached to their roots, you can skip the added soil for that layer. If your garden soil is very sandy, consider mixing in a little clay to help balance the structure of your finished compost.
As the heap warms and microorganisms multiply, decomposition naturally speeds up. In time, the pile will transform into rich, dark compost your garden will love.
