'Organic matter' is plants and animals. Humus is the decayed remains of that organic matter. When one is in a deep forest and looks at the layer of leaves and old twigs on the ground one is looking at the organic matter. When one scrapes away the top layer of loose stuff that can be recognized as leaves and twigs, one will find a dark layer of matter. This layer when examined closely will contain little or no external indication of what it was once comprised of. Being under the trees and the layer of leaves one may surmise that it is the decayed remains of previous years' leaves and twigs. This layer of totally decayed organic matter is called 'humus'.

Humus is organic matter which has been reduced to it's elemental state of carbon, mineral salts and ammonia. For a good primer in humus you can go to the Encarta Encyclopedia and read what they have to say about humus.

It can also be said that humus besides being the original plant and/or animal material, it is also the remains of many of the plants and animals that feasted on the original matter. They lived out their lives on the bits of material, eating and living out many generations in just a few months time in many instances. These creatures range from the microscopic algae's and bacteria to the multi-cellular worms and insects. The process of decomposition can often require a host of flora and fauna that work at various stages in the process. Each type will accomplish a specific task depending on the material, it's stage of decomposition and environmental factors such as temperatures and moisture.

I go to such depth here so that one may more adequately understand the needs of the creatures that assist us with this process, for it is they themselves who do the bulk of the work, not us. I might say that I 'make' ten tons of compost yearly, but in actuality I haul ten tons of materials home, and pile it, water it, and look after it in a way that I know is beneficial to these trillions of creatures in my piles. When their needs are adequately addressed I will have a rich crumbly and fluffy compost to add to our gardens and beds.

The proper actions taken by me will ensure their actions in the required numbers that will give me the results I desire, in a time that is adequate for me, all the while destroying most of the harmful bacteria and weed seeds.

Compost can ultimately be said to be the refined product of decomposition by natural means using natural materials and organisms in a controlled process to derive humus as an end result.

The previous being said it is time to focus on how we make compost. First the materials.

Compost can be made from virtually any natural product that was once alive. If it grew, walked, crawled or soared and was a carbon-based-life-form (yeah, I'm a Trekkie) it can be composted. In nature upon death it would lay on in the ground and the process of decay would go on barring unusual circumstances. But we want it all to be in a nice pile for us to use and all maturing at the same time, not all strung out over a field, and maturing all year long. So we must gather materials together.

I am a firm believer in using things others think are waste if you can find a good use for it. Compost fits into that plan nicely. There are many places in the country where one can find natural waste products that can compost well. Think about your area, are there stables around? A zoo? vineyards, breweries, cocoa bean processing plants? There are a lot of places that make products out of something and have a hard-to-dispose-of waste product. Contact them and see if you can get a truckload or two. You will probably have to do the hauling, but they might load it for you. Unfortunately these things are becoming more well known now, and harder to find. I used to get municipal wastes brought to my home in town in the 80's. But as more people found out about the value of organic materials even if they do not garden organically these materials became more of a resource that the cities and counties now often use themselves. I get tons of manure from a local stable now, but there is a local mine that decided to trade fill dirt for the manure to use in their regeneration projects. And while I am glad to see the manure go to a good use like reclaiming open pit mines and making them into nice natural areas again, I am sad when I have a nice pile of manure I am whittling down a bit each day, and then one day it is all gone in huge dump trucks by guys that can load it all in hours with large tractors. Then I have to wait for a few weeks until the manure piles start building again to make it worthwhile for me to gather. In the meantime I haul wood chips for mulch, or concrete chunks for use for retaining walls.

And do not forget the kitchen and yard wastes our own houses generate. Many of these materials make very good additions to the compost pile. but since they are such a small amount of bio-mass I really have to recommend you consider an occasional trip to someplace where you can get a large amount (a half cubic yard or so) of material that will form the bulk of your compost pile. This material should get the critical mass of the pile going so as to generate enough heat and mass that it will enable the rapid and efficient odor-free decomposition of your household waste.

I often make my compost piles in a leisurly way. I will gather a couple of truckloads of manure together to form the beginning of the pile. Over this I will toss all the clippings from the garden I have been piling up separatly. Then the next week I will add a couple more truckloads of manure over this garden waste. Then I might start pulling the corn plants or whatever is ripening. This will be put on the pile and the next week a couple more truckloads of manure put over it. This may go on for weeks during the active late summer. At this time I will have added eight yards of manure weighing two tons or so, and a lot of garden slash or vines. This way I rid myself of the garden waste, getting rid of it in very hot manure which will reduce spread of any diseases while adding to the compost pile. I like to time the late summer compost piles to work in this fashion. Then I will get a new one going every two months or so, and the old one will not get any new additions unless it is to adjust the ratio of materials. This pile will then be turned every couple weeks while I am building a new pile elsewhere that will take the new garden refuse. In this way I often have three piles in various stages of finish. I take from the most finished materials first. But no matter what I do it seems that I never have quite enough, when I have a lot I am very, oh so very generous to any soil I am working. And then as the finished piles is reduced as I take from it I become a bit more stingy with the compost. New plantings will get less volume. Until finally the other pile seems OK to take from. In this way I tend to let each pile sit for four to six months before I start taking from it. It is very good to let the compost mature fully before adding it to the soil.

One note of caution should be sounded here... all the books and manuals say not to use animal products in the pile. This includes cat and dog waste as well as fat, bones and meat. The dog and cat waste may contain pathogens and parasites that you do not want to be getting on your food later. And the bones, fat and meat from the kitchen could attract vermin and other undesirable creatures. I have used meat and bones before and never had a problem, but remember that I am able to cover such material with two to five feet of hot manure weighing tons. If a little smell escapes to attract dogs and vermin, the high heat of the pile will probably keep them away as well as ensure the rapid decomposition of the material.

As you are building the pile it is beneficial to 'inoculate' the pile with the necessary bacteria. Since they are naturally occuring all the time anyway you could easily go without adding them on purpose. And manures from a stable will certainly have a lot in it. But if you are starting with a new pile and are not using manure, it is helpful to add a sprinkling of soil over the pile as you build it. If you have old compost that will work well sprinkled over the pile. When making a new pile I tend to make it in our large compost bin before I have used all the old stuff, so they are so very close it is easy to add a bit to the new pile. And certainly the ground there is so full of organisms that they would occupy the pile quickly without any help from me.

OK, you have got your source for the bulk of the materials. Now remember that it is not good for all the materials to be either manure nor plant. If all the material is dry plant wastes like say, ground corn cobs, or spoiled corn or municipal wood chips they will not rot quickly enough. In fact it might take materials such as this years to decompose into humus. This is because such materials have a very high amount of carbon in them. You need to add another material that has a high ration of nitrogen in it. Such materials are commonly described as 'hot'. These are also said to 'burn' plants if applied to them while fresh. Such materials might be manure and fresh grass clippings, or fresh green leaves. Once these materials are dried by being spread out in a thin layer on the ground they will lose much of the nitrogen in them to the air in the form of ammonia. But if you have a pile of high carbon material and want to add the high nitrogen material to it you certainly don't want to lose the nitrogen by letting the grass spread out on the lawn. Rake it up immediately and add it to the high carbon material.

It will take some time to learn the particulars of your local materials, in time you will have an instinctive idea of what amounts of each you need. If one day you stop by the grinding mill to get ground corncobs and take them home, you will learn that the proper proportion of nitrogen to add to that might be two truckloads of horse manure from the local stable, or one truckload of fresh pig manure from the local fattening farm. Learning this interaction which is called the Carbon to Nitrogen Ratio (C-N ratio) is a little bit tricky, but not too much. If the mixture is too high in carbon it will not heat up and decompose properly, so add a bit more of high nitrogen material and mix it into the mix. If the pile gets kind of rank smelling, and kind of 'slumps' and seems heavy and slimy (remember when you left a big pile of grass clippings behind the house for a week?) then you have way too much nitrogen and need to cut it quick with some high carbon. Hold your nose and mix some straw, ground leaves or sawdust (not from treated wood or compressed wood) into it real fast. In just a few days you will see a real positive result.

The Carbon Nitrogen ration can be made a bit complex with tables and lots of figures, or it can be simplified this way... if the material is hard dry and woody, it is high carbon and needs to be mixed with a nitrogen material. If the material is moist from being alive still, green (in general if plant material) or is fresh and moist manure then it is likely a bit high in nitrogen. In general I find myself with a fifty-fifty mix when I get manure. I have learned how to pick my manure by the ratio of hay and straw in it to the manure. And that is variable depending on the stage of the manure, whether it is moist, fresh, concentrated from grains, or if the animal has been eating lots of dry forage then I need less straw.