Materials available now for compost pile

Fall is the perfect time to create a new compost pile or renew an old one. All the materials you need are at hand: Green material like grass clippings, spent flowers and end of summer vegetable-garden debris, and brown material like fall leaves and other dead material.

You will need a space that will hold about a cubic yard of material. A 3-foot square pile is the perfect size to allow the proper microbial action that creates the compost. Pick a space that is out of the way but easy to get to.

Make a fence of wire fencing or wooden shipping pallets on three sides of the space. The pallets are often free at businesses that have things delivered.

Collect enough green and brown plant material to fill your space. Ask neighbors and friends for their fall leaves. Green material is fresh grass clippings, green weeds and vegetable-garden leavings and kitchen vegetable scraps. Brown materials include dried grass, fallen leaves, dead plant stalks and stems and aged manure. Do not use meat, eggs, dairy products or dog and cat manure as these can attract animal pests or carry disease. A few pine needles are all right but they break down very slowly.

Chop up all the plant material with a shredding machine (chipper) or a lawn mower. Fine particles give more surface area for the microbes to work. Mix the material in a ratio of two parts of the brown material to one part of the green material and place in the fenced area. Soak the pile with water as you create it so the pile is as wet as a damp sponge.

Within a few hours you should feel some heat in the pile. Within a day or so, it can be as warm as 160 degrees. This is hot enough to kill weed seeds and plant diseases. It also begins to break down the plant material into compost.

Within a week, the pile will cool down. This means that the microbes have eaten everything they had available. To restart the microbial engine and quickly continue making compost, turn the pile and soak it with water again. Put the outsides of the pile in the center as you go.

At this point you can continue to turn the pile every two weeks or so if you want compost quickly or you can turn as you have time and get the compost a little later. The compost is finished when all the material is dark brown and you can’t recognize any plant pieces.