Composting Green Material - Nitrogen Rich Material
by John Yazo
There are four key words to remember about composting, green, brown, air, water. What this means is, to make compost, all you have to do is join together moist, fresh, predominantly green ingredients, like grass clippings, kitchen scraps, and weeds to name a few and predominantly brown ingredients, like dead leaves, hay, straw, wood shavings or chips. with these ingredience you need to ensure that the mix remains damp, and turn it all every few days or week to reintroduce oxygen into the pile. That's all it takes. With the proper ratio of these ingredences, in less than a month, you'll have a rich, crumbly, brown, sweet smelling compost that you can add to your garden soil, use in containers, or apply it as a mulch in your organic gardens.
The following is a list of a few common organic green material items that you can add to your compost pile as a source of nitrogen:
Grass clippings- are very high in nitrogen and excellent for composting. It is a personal choose about taking the grass clippings for composting or leaving them on the lawn to decompose and add nutrients back into the lawn.
If you use grass clippings for compost do it sparingly by adding thin layers on top of brown material. Thick layers of grass clippings mat and don't permit air circulation. This can cause an unpleasant odor.
Fresh Manure- is high in nitrogen and is a valuable ingredient in composting. It helps to get the pile hot quickly. Manure from cows, horses, chickens, rabbits, sheep and goats are good to compost.
DO NOT USE manure from dogs, cats, pigs or human waste. They contain parasites and can cause diseases in humans. It isn't a good practice to use any fresh manure in your garden without composting it first.
Plant trimmings- cuttings from flowers and even annual weeds without mature seeds are good for composting.
Seaweed is high in nitrogen and excellent for a healthy compost pile. Some people prefer to wash the salt off first before putting it into the compost pile.
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