Compost is the result of organic matter breaking down naturally in the environment.  This organic matter is filled with nutrients and is nature’s fertilizer.  You can use compost on indoor houseplants, in your garden and on ornamental flowers in the yard.  Anything that grows in the soil can benefit from compost, but different plants will require different types of compost.

What Can be Composted?
Non-meat kitchen scraps make excellent candidates for compost.  We keep a pot with a lid under the sink and fill it throughout the day with vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, bits of paper and anything else that will readily decompose in a compost pile.  Not only will composting these items give you an excellent fertilizer, it will also help cut back on your household waste and reduce harmful emissions in landfills.  Outdoors, you will find leaves, grass clippings and plant clippings readily compost.  They can all be added to the same compost pile or bin.How to Compost
You can start a compost pile by just dumping your compostable items in one location, or you can purchase a special compost tumbler designed to maximize the decomposition of your organic matter.  We just toss everything into a pile at our house, but we also compost animal bedding from the barn so a bin is not suitable for our needs.

Try to layer different types of compost – grass clippings and other green compost in one layer, cardboard, dried leaves and other brown matter in another, with food bits thrown in whenever you need to.  Water your compost every week to help break things down, and turn it with a pitchfork (or the turning function on your tumbler) to help distribute everything evenly.

Composting is easy and will save you money compared to buying commercial fertilizer for your plants and flowers.