Trim your fingernails, save the trimmings and place them in a spot near your back door. Go back inside and make a pot of coffee. Pour the coffee down the drain, take the grounds and place them on top of the fingernail clippings. Steal your neighbors morning paper and place it on top of the coffee grounds. Rake all the leaves in your yard and place them on top of the newspaper. Ask strangers if you can have their leaves. Trim your fingernails again and add them to the pile. Eat an apple and place the core in the pile.

Wait.

Keep waiting.

Wait some more.

Add one banana peel, two lemon rinds, and the broccoli your kid wouldn't eat to the pile.

Ask another stranger for their leaves.

Wait.

Wait some more.

Keep waiting.

With a pitchfork or other garden implement, turn the pile upside down, mixing the ingredients as you turn.

Wait.

Wait some more.

Wait even longer.

Add more stranger leaves and immediately urinate on the pile.

Wait.

Smile, you are now a certified composter.

The web site linked below is a very good tutorial for beinners as well as long term composters.

Here is a link that might be useful: Composting Tutorial

Allen is spot on - though he forgot the junk mail.

There is a FAQ section at the top of this forum that is a great place to start. Lots of good information there.

Basically you are going to take all the organic material that you would normally place into the garbage can and now place it in a pile in your back yard. It can be contained in a bin or not, it can be turned or not, it may be hot or not...

There is also a FAQ link at the top of this forum!

Since you are planning on building a big garden, you'll want big compost. It should be located close to the garden, on the side closest to the house. You will want to produce several hundred pounds of compost at least twice a year for the size projuct you are considering, but since land is not a limiting factor you should use it to produce what you need, which will limit the expense of collecting off-property resources. To produce that volume, you will want to use a series of piles, not bins, and you will want some way to manage at least some of them to produce hot, fast compost until you have a good system running for slower composting that will take less labor.

thank you all.
billme- how do i produce hot fast compost?

can you all things like cadboard boxes for cereals, crackers and such? and what type of paper cant you use? how about the coupon type paper?

finger nail clippings? didnt know that.

This is helpful to me, too, as I have been trying to screw up my courage to do this for ... a couple of years, now. I've finally figured out a spot to put a composting trash barrel. I even have the trash barrel. Then my husband said, wash out that trash barrel before you start, there might be lead paint residue in it. So... there is a bowl on my kitchen counter with about two days worth of vegetable peels and apple cores. Heard somewhere that cooked vegetables are no good for compost? Did not fish out the sweet potato skin I'd tossed in.

Vegetables of any sort, cooked or uncooked, are just fine for compost pile.

I am always grin about the things people say shouldn't be composted. Do we have a recent - things I put in my compost pile thread? Those are good threads to read to see what other people are putting in their compost.

How old is the 'trash barrel'? I wouldn't have thought lead paint would have be used in the US for many years. And why would a metal or plastic bin have been painted inside anyway? Relax - just get composting.

For hot fast composting, you need the proper ratio of greens and browns. They should be relatively small in size to increase surface area and encourage microorganism activity. The pile should be moist and well aerated, built quickly and then not added to further, and turned regularly. In a few weeks it will be well on the way to decomposed, and you can let it sit and cool and cure for a few weeks more. This gives you useable compost in the shortest amount of time, which can be used for potting soil mixes, new crops or a mid-season top-dressing to give plants a quick bump in fertility. Slow composting occurs with larger materials, less turning, and takes as long as a year or more. This is good for producing large quantities, which can be used on an annual basis at the beginning or end of the garden season. It requires much less labor, and makes a good quality product, but you need the luxury of having other sources to serve your immediate needs.

This may be another interesting web site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost in 14 days

Someone above said to have a series of piles, with which I totally agree. At some point, you will want to leave your compost alone long enough so that the contents are decomposed enough to use. During that time, you will still generate compostable materials that need somewhere to go. So a second pile is started. Sometimes people decide a 3rd "slow" pile is needed for bigger sticks or stalks that take a lot longer to break down.

can you all things like cadboard boxes for cereals, crackers and such? and what type of paper cant you use? how about the coupon type paper? I take paper and cardboard to a recycling center unless I'm using some as "lasagna". There is so much other organic material between kitchen scraps, leaves, weeds that I'm already devoting as much space to composting as I care to.

finger nail clippings? didnt know that. Personally, I don't see the rewards as being worth the effort on that one, but to each their own. My dog has access to the compost piles, so our rule is to include any kitchen scraps that have not touched meat, whether cooked or not, or are not comprised primarily of dairy products, and anything from the yard that is less substantial than a stick. Each composter has their own rules according to the materials available, space available, and any accompanying lifestyle issues. Some are very scientific, carefully balancing the proportions of greens/browns, turning, taking the temperature of the pile, and some never turn or show any attention to a pile until, seemingly suddenly, it's "the day to spread it around."

If you don't have the space or inclination to deal with piles or bins, you can bury deposits of OM around your gardens, or just lay them on the surface around the plants. Decomposition will happen. Whatever method you encounter that will work for you and the stuff and space you have is the best way for you.