We’ve talked about the various ways leaves can be repurposed to help enrich your soil and encourage pollinators, but what about our garden trimmings and all that discarded food we tend to throw away? You guessed it, we can re-purpose those items too by composting.

While composting our table scraps and yard trimmings can seem a little intimidating if you have never done it. It’s really not that difficult and mother nature does the heavy lifting. So, let’s talk a little bit about what composting is, what you can and cannot compost, and how to get started.

There are a lot of ways to compost but according to the USDA composting is “the process of recycling organic materials into an amendment that can be used to enrich soil and plants.” Basically, it is a recycling strategy, only this time we aren’t recycling our glass bottles and plastic containers but instead we are recycling our food scraps and landscape waste.

In Oklahoma, estimates suggest that 15 to 25 percent of our trash is made up of yard trimmings and grass clippings. Another big part of our weekly trash pick-up is made up of food waste. So, it’s pretty obvious that if we put both of these to better use, we could lessen the burden on our landfills. Now in Tulsa, our trash gets burned to generate steam, which is then used to generate electricity. In my view puts us a little ahead of the recycling curve, but what if we could keep that waste and use it to improve the quality of our soil and put those nutrients back into the ground? Fortunately, there’s a word for that and the word is composting.

Most of us know that yard waste and plant trimmings will break down over time. Composting is a way to organize and support the recycling of this waste into a rich, nutrient rich. soil amendment. In the wild, nature does this on its own.

For example, in the forest, leaves fall from the trees providing a natural mulch to help retain moisture and nutrients. Over time the leaves decompose, depositing nutrients into the soil which in turn, helps feed the trees and other plants. So, when we are composting, we are essentially duplicating what’s been going on naturally for a long, long, time.

To get started, you’re going to need a place for your recycled yard waste to break down into more basic elements. This can be as simple or as fancy as you would like. A very basic compost bin can just be a pile of yard waste in the corner of the yard. From there you can move up to an enclosed space such as a piece of chicken wire shaped into a vertical cylinder, possibly 2 feet in diameter. After that you can move to a more permanent structure such as one made from recycled pallets or concrete blocks. And then from there you can move to one of the compost devices that include rolling bins mounted on some type of stand. For our house, since we have limited space, we have a small, two container composter like you see in the photo. The compost bin is not the most important part in this equation though, you are.

As far as what you can put in your compost bin, you can of course put in yard waste, eggshells, vegetable waste, paper, and coffee grounds, etc. Vegetable waste would include cuttings from vegetables, leftover greens, etc. This does not mean that if you made a creamy corn casserole that leftovers from that can go in the composter pile. We want as close as natural as possible.

You don’t want to put large branches, meat, dairy products, fish, bones, weeds, diseased plants, or pet waste in your compost. These are not appropriate items for the home composter. You also don’t want weeds or diseased plants in there for pretty obvious reasons.

You’ll also want to layer your compost with what we break into two groups, greens and browns. This means that you might want to put down a layer of fresh yard waste and then cover with some brown leaves or shredded paper etc.

Whatever you put into your compost bin will breakdown faster if they are in smaller pieces. For example, newspapers. You would want to shred these or tear them into smaller pieces. And something like a leftover Halloween pumpkin, you would want to cut the pumpkin up into pieces to expedite its breakdown rather than just toss in a full pumpkin.

So what’s going to happen in your compost bin? Basically, you are hoping to accelerate the natural breakdown of these ingredients into a more basic, nutrient rich form. To do this you are going to need help from the FBI (no not that FBI), fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates. And you will need to keep your compost bin moist, not wet, but moist as the FBI does its work.

You are also going to need to get a garden fork to turn over the material in a process we call aeration. Aeration is essentially, turning over the contents of your compost pile to increase the amount of available oxygen to help fuel the breakdown of the plant debris.

The process of composting can cause the inside of you compost pile to reach 140 to 160 degrees F. You keep this temperature up with the periodic turning over of the composting materials. If you use a unit like the one in the photo, you can simply rotate the container to aerate.

The time required to complete the composting process can take 4 to 6 months depending on your method. But the time is going to go by either way, so you might as well generate some nutrient rich compost in the process.

We have quite a bit more information on composting on our website (www.tulsamastergardeners.org). Just go to the website, click on Lawn and Garden Help and then Composting. See you in the garden!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: Tom Ingram