Give your garden what it loves most: learn how to backyard compost

If you’re someone who loves to garden and keep your yard looking green and luscious, or even someone who’s interested in helping the environment by reducing waste, backyard composting is for you.

Backyard composting helps convert organic waste, like food and garden scraps, into a dark, soil-like material called humus. Humus is full of important nutrients that can be used to help your lawns and gardens.

To get started, we have backyard composters available for sale, or you can find them sold at local garden centres, nurseries and hardware stores. Alternatively, there are ways to build your own compost bin.

From there, we’ve broken down the backyard compost process into five steps:

Step 1: Set up your backyard composter

• If you’re not building your own backyard composter, assemble your backyard composter according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
• Place the backyard composter in a sunny, well-drained location that is easy to access.
• Remove any grass underneath the composter to invite worms, insects and micro-organisms and improve the drainage, speeding up the composting process.

Step 2: Add organic waste

• Cut acceptable organic materials into smaller pieces before placing them into your composter.
• Layer your organic materials. There are two main types of organic materials you can feed your backyard composter – “browns” and “greens”:

“Browns” (carbon-rich materials)

• Dry leaves
• Old potting soil
• Straw
• Twigs and branches
• Woodchips and sawdust (from untreated wood)

“Greens” (nitrogen-rich materials)

• Coffee grounds and filters
• Flowers
• Fruit and vegetable scraps
• Garden plant trimmings
• Grass clippings
• House plants
• Tea bags and leaves
• Weeds (before they seed)

• Alternate browns, which are the carbon-rich, dry waste materials, from your yard with greens, which are the nitrogen-rich, wet waste from the kitchen and grass clippings. Ideally, have a three-to-one (3:1) ratio; three times as many brown materials as green materials.

Items to avoid using in your backyard composter

• Diseased or insect-infected plants – put these out for seasonal curbside yard waste collection.
• Dog and cat feces – put these in your green bin for curbside collection.
• Eggs, meat, bones and fish scraps – put these in your green bin as they can attract animals.
• Fatty foods and dairy products (like cheese, butter and oils) – put these in your green bin as they can attract animals.
• Plastics and metals – put recyclable plastics and metals into your blue box for curbside collection.
• Weeds with mature seeds – put these out for seasonal curbside yard waste collection.

Step 3: Turn, turn, turn

• Turn the pile every few weeks with a pitchfork or shovel to mix materials and introduce more air.

Step 4: Keep moist

• Keep compost material moist like a damp sponge, not soaking.

Step 5: Harvest and use compost

• Finished compost should be dark and crumbly and have a pleasant earth-like smell.
• Use it on your lawn or garden as a natural fertilizer. Compost helps nutrients and organic matter return to the soil.
• Compost may be ready in a few weeks or six months or more, depending on how you manage your composter.
• The composting process will slow down during the winter, but the pile will become active again in the spring as worms, insects and micro-organisms naturally speed up the break down process.

If you’re more of a visual learner, you can also watch our #DurhamWaste Backyard Composting 101 video.

With these tips in mind, we hope you (and your gardens) will enjoy the backyard composting experience. To learn more about backyard composting and food waste reduction, visit durham.ca/BackyardComposting.

For more information about how we manage waste in Durham, download the Durham Region Waste App or visit durham.ca/Waste.