How to Make Quick Compost Without an Expensive System

Making your own compost is the best way to create good soil to grow healthy plants, and delicious food. Your vegetable crop will demand a lot from the soil you are growing it in, and the only way to get delicious food is to have deliciously rich soil. I know this, because I got lazy and stopped making my own compost, and my veggie garden pretty much told me that it wasn't happy.

These days we have a fancy, massive compost bin, but from our experience, it takes too long to end up with a constant useable supply of soil. So for the most part we have gone back to the good old cheap method that we used when we were living in a tiny little semi, and only had room (and budget) for a few 60L dome rubbish bins. This is what this post is about, but first, lets learn a little bit about composting.

Composting is a means of turning food waste into nutrients (food) for plants. If something has previously been living, then you can compost it. However, as a general rule of thumb meat and citrus aren't composted, as they take too long to break down and can attract vermin.

My latest appreciation for compost is the added benefit of not contributing to landfill. All you need to do to help your garden grow, and our planet thrive is to just make sure you keep a compost bucket on the bench top when you are cooking, so food scraps don't end up in your rubbish bin. At our house we constantly have old 2L yoghurt tubs on rotation which are for the chicken scraps, worm farm and compost bin (hopefully I will be making homemade yoghurt in them again soon, but for now I'm picking my battles).

The secret to making compost fast is to build lots of thin layers of different materials that are both green and brown. If you can, take the time to cut everything up small to give the worms a fighting start to process everything. You can clearly see from my photos below that I didn't manage to make the time to cut everything up small-because I have small children to look after.

Some general rules to keep in mind are that the compost heap needs to be kept moist, but not too wet, most of the time kitchen scraps contribute enough moisture, but if you have chickens or a worm farm to share the vegetable scraps with, you may need to water your compost bin occasionally. A compost heap that smells bad is usually too wet, so add some more dry brown material to balance it out, you want the mix to be a bit like a wet sponge. Remember, there is nothing wrong with trial and error, that is how we learn.

This is what the process of making a compost bin looks like. My apologies for the amateur photos, if I manage to get my husband to take a video of this riveting process one day I will post it. Sometimes making the first batch of compost can be daunting, just take my "what's the worst thing that can happen?" approach and get started. Your garden will thank you, and in turn your tastebuds will too.

My latest compost wasn't so much of a planned creation, but a means of dealing with everything that was laying around the backyard (hence the haphazard photos taken with my smart phone). I believe this method of dealing with 'waste' around your home is the perfect way to make compost. There were dry leaves and small sticks to make a great base layer to allow aeration, the chicken coop bedding was ready for turning over, I had a bit of pre-made compost ready to add as a starter full of microorganisms and worms, plus we always have kitchen scraps in a bucket for the chickens and worms, so I just gave a 2L yoghurt tub full of food scraps to the compost bin instead-the chickens were cheering as they got freshly picked silverbeet leaves from the vegetable garden. 

LAYERING THE COMPOST BIN

The first layer of the compost bin needs to encourage ventilation so you don't end up with a wet sloppy mess, you want small sticks that will allow for airflow. Some brown leaves in amongst it won't hurt either, there is no need to be too precious and waste time sorting through things. Remember, this is about working harmoniously with your environment.

For the second layer, add whatever farmyard manure you can get your hands on; chicken, sheep, cow or horse poo all work well. Luckily for us we have chickens, and their bedding needed changing at the same time that we had lots of leaves hanging around, so it went in here too, along with some feathers (time will tell how they breakdown and contribute to the compost). As you can see from the photo below the pet-shop didn't have the quick to breakdown soft cane that would be preferable, this stuff takes an age to breakdown.

For the third layer of compost add newspaper, it is such an easily available dry matter, and it feels good to reuse it rather than recycle-I must confess that I feel super good about our newspapers because Grandma reads them before passing them on to me, and then I reuse them in the garden. I'm such a good little greenie sometimes.

The fourth layer of compost is where I add some old rich soil. Lots of references will tell you that this part isn't necessary, but from my experience (and serious impatience) I've found that this added element speeds the whole process along. It also adds micronutrients and worms that I will want to add to my vegetable garden later.

The final layer of the compost bin is where you add food scraps. Now you can continue to add food scraps on a daily basis for about a week, whilst stirring the bin, but for the fast results we are aiming for, I would start another compost bin for any additional food scraps after that. Stir the food scraps in amongst the top layer of soil and wait for three days before giving the whole compost bin a good aeration with a pitch fork.

In approximately six weeks, or less if you're super diligent, you will have beautiful, rich soil for your garden. For reliable results it is important to oxygen-turn the compost every 3 days at a minimum. My best compost mixes were made when I aerated them every day as they were right outside my kitchen door. The more frequently you make compost the more familiar you will become with how much effort you want to put into it to get the results you are seeking in your desired time frame.

Note: If it wasn't such a wet, cold, windy and overcast Sydney winters day I would be out taking photos of this completed mixture and throwing it on the strawberry bed. But it looks like this rain is going to stick around for a while, so my collection of old yoghurt tubs might just get scattered around the yard to impersonate rainwater tanks for now, and I will endeavour to update this post when the weather improves.