Environmental Services - Home Composting

HOME COMPOSTING

What is Compost?

Compost is a dark, crumbly, and earthy-smelling form of decomposing organic matter. Decomposition and recycling of organic wastes are an essential part of soil building and healthy plant growth in forest, meadows and in your home garden.

Why Should I Make Compost?

Composting is the most practical and convenient way to handle your yard wastes. It can be easier and cheaper than bagging these wastes or taking them to the Composting Facility. Compost also improves your soil and the plants growing in it. If you have a garden, a lawn, trees, shrubs, or even planter boxes, you have a use for compost.

By using compost you return organic matter to the soil in a usable form. Organic matter in the soil improves plant growth by helping to break heavy clay soils into a better texture, by adding water and nutrient-holding capacity to sandy soils, and by adding essential nutrients to any soil. Improving your soil is the first step toward improving the health of your plants. Healthy plants help clean our air and conserve our soil, making Harford a healthier place to live.

What Can I Compost?

Anything that was once alive can be composted. However, some organic wastes should not be put into home composing systems.

DO COMPOST		DON'T COMPOST
Grass clippings		Food scraps of any sort
Leaves		Diseased plants
Flowers		Weeds with seeds
Old plants		Invasive weeds (eg. Morning glory, buttercup, quack grass)
Old potting soil
Twigs
Annual weeds

Bury or Worm Compost These Food Wastes	Do Not Bury or Compost These Food Wastes
Vegetable scraps	Meat or fish parts
Coffee filters/tea bags	Cheese, butter, milk...
Breads and grains	Cooking oil or oily foods

How Can I Use Compost?

Compost can be used to enrich the flower and vegetable garden, to improve the soil around trees and shrubs, as a soil amendment for houseplants and planter boxes and, when screened, as part of a seed-starting mix or lawn top-dressing. Before they decompose, chipped woody wastes make excellent mulch or path material. After they decompose, these same woody wastes will add texture to garden soils.

The following troubleshooting chart is a guide to more efficient composting using a turning unit.

SYMPTOMS	PROBLEMS	SOLUTION
The compost has a bad odor	Not enough air; pile too wet	Turn it; add coarse dry materials such as straw, corn stalk, etc.
The center of the pile is dry	Not enough water; too much woody, coarse material	Turn and moisten materials; add fresh green wastes, chop or shred coarse wastes.
The compost is damp & warm in the middle, but nowhere else	Too small	Collect more material & mix the old ingredients into a new pile.
The heap is damp and sweet-smelling but still will not heat up.	Lack of nitrogen	Mix in a nitrogen source like fresh grass clipping, fresh manure, bloodmeal or ammonium sulfate.

Harford County Office of Recycling offers backyard composting workshops in the Spring. Class size is limited. Call for reservations, 410-638-3417.

Backyard Composting brochures are available through the Office of Recycling. For a free brochure, call 410-638-3417. For your convenience, we have included a copy of the "Home Composting" brochure in Adobe Acrobat format to be downloaded.

To obtain your free copy of Adobe Acrobat Viewer click here.

A "how-to" video entitled "Home Composting - Turning Spoils Into Soil" is available at all local library branches and most local video stores for free rental.

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