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Enroll Free →Compost
Turn scraps, manure, leaves and garden waste into black gold: log each pile, what goes in, when you turn it and how hot it gets, and spread the finished compost on your beds.
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Compost turns manure, bedding, leaves and kitchen scraps into the best garden food there is. A hot pile is fast; a cold pile is easy. Both work.
- Mix
- about 2–3 parts browns to 1 part greens
- Smallest hot pile
- 3 × 3 × 3 ft
- Hot pile
- 130–160°F
- Ready in
- 2–6 months hot, 6–12 months cold
1What goes in
- Greens (nitrogen): manure, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, garden waste.
- Browns (carbon): leaves, straw, wood chips, used animal bedding, cardboard.
- Leave out meat, dairy, grease, dog and cat waste, and diseased plants.
2Building a hot pile
- Build it all at once, at least 3 ft each way, layering greens and browns.
- Keep it as damp as a wrung-out sponge.
- Check the temperature; when it drops below about 110°F, turn the pile.
- Turn 3–5 times; when it doesn’t heat up again and looks like dark soil, let it cure a month.
3Using it
- Spread 1–3 in on beds each year, or use it as mulch.
- Fresh manure should be composted or aged before going on food crops (rabbit manure is the exception).
- Screen finished compost for seed-starting mixes.
Put it to work
These free tools keep the records for you once you’ve made an account:
These are rules of thumb from university extension guidance. Breed, climate and your state’s rules change the details — your county extension office is the best place to ask, and you can find it on the selling rules page by ZIP code. All how-to guides →