All compost is organic and that is all that any gardener actually needs. For my flower and vegetable gardens I do not need any "fertilzer", while I might spend about $100.00 for lawn food for the lawn.
There are step by step instructions for making compost already out, all over the place, all one needs to do is type compost making into a search engine and they will get 1,000s of hits.

What are you referring to as "organic compost"? If it's not organic, it doesn't compost. Pretty simple, eh?

You aren't researching compost. You're marketing. I mean, what does "how much do you spend on fertilizer" have to do with compost? Nothing unless you are marketing.

Actually, I'm a new gardener. I lived in the city all my life and now I just moved to the suburban area and have a piece of land that's .1 acre. I want to start a garden and been trying to read up on it, but there are so many things to learn. I want to go with fertilizer, but my husband (also a city slicker) said that it could become expensive. We are trying to cut cost right now with the economy.

I read up on "organic composting" which sounds promising, but not sure if it's too hard for a new gardener. Some sites show making compost very easy just get a bin and dump food scraps, grass clippings and coffee grinds in and turn it. But some sites show complicated process with expensive bins. Not sure if making compost can be costly and if it's worth it.

Is fertilizer more expensive or composting more expensive? Is it easy or hard to make compost?

I have a friend who owes a small coffee shop/restaurant in the city, but it's a distance from where we live. She said she would save the coffee grind and food scraps if I want it. But I can't go there every day. How much of the material do I need to make a good pile?

Not to dwell in my ignorant of gardening and my life, I thought I just post the questions and make my own decisions of buying fertilizer or making compost. Thanks for your opinion.

Read prior posts in this website and you will find lots of good information. You can also go to the library and check out books (don't buy--use the library). I suggest NOT using commercial fertilizers nor buying expensive composting bins. Organic/natural is the way to go and cheap/free is the way to do it. There's no one correct way to garden or compost. Find the way that works for you and as your comfort level grows, you will try new ways to garden. Good luck!

I've been fertilizing my lawn for free using coffee grounds from starbucks for several years. I just get the grounds they have and fling them on my lawn, starting in one corner and working my way around the lawn until I run out. When I get more grounds, I start where I left off. With a large lawn, this might not be practical, but my lawn is only about 4000 sq ft.

A bin isn't needed to compost, but it can make it easier to manage and can also make it a little more aesthetic. I use a bin because I got one for cheap with a program aimed at increasing recycling. I think I got a $50 bin (probably now more like $80) for $10.

You want to have a mixture of high carbon materials (browns) and high nitrogen materials (greens). I don't like the brown/green labels all that much because sometimes things that are brown in color are high in nitrogen and vice versa. But these are terms you'll see a lot (and I use them as shorthand sometimes, too).

I start with a mix of different things. If it doesn't get hot, I add more nitrogen things (coffee grounds, manure, fresh vegetable waste, etc). If it stinks, I add more carbon (leaves, shredded paper, sawdust).

In my opinion, those are the basics.

I have a compost thermometer (a gift) and if I'm pretty sure the compost will get hot and stay hot, I'll add things like meat, milk, fish, cheese, etc. These are very high in nitrogen, so they can cause the compost to stink if they aren't offset with lots of carbons. And if the compost doesn't heat up, these things can carry diseases.

My dad used to use a much more passive approach. He just piled things up. Over time, the compost was on the bottom, so when he needed compost, he'd stick the shovel in near the bottom and get some. New stuff always went on top.

You can make it complicated, but you can also make it pretty simple.

Composting is simpler than you are making it out to be. I've been making compost for 15 years and never used a bin. I steal other people's leaves before the trash guys can haul them away. I open the bags and there's my pile. After that my wife throws everything that didn't get eaten from the kitchen into the pile. Leaves will not decompose very fast so the kitchen scraps always speed things up. Also if you can collect horse or cattle manure that will REALLY speed things up. Simply bury the fresh stuff under the old leaves or old finished compost and you will never smell the pile. After I bury new stuff, I never turn my piles, either. I used to but now I just forget about it and let things happen. I keep two piles going. I have this year's pile that I feed new stuff into and last year's pile that I take compost out of.

Also keep your pile moist. The critters living in the pile need moisture to survive and thrive. Don't be surprised to see roaches, maggots, flies, worms, and ants in your pile. They are all there to decompose stuff and make compost. We either water it with a sprinkler or put a mister sprayer on it.

Your dirt and sweat are the most important things and they are free, people have been growing food for 10,000 years with just those two things. Its not hard to grow enough for yourself if you have enough dirt. It is hard to grow enough food for everybody else year after year if you do not. That is where fertilizer and soil ammendments come in handy.

Mineral fertilizer is much much cheaper than organic sources unless you have livestock running around pooping all over the place, which is why organic produce costs so much more.

Inorganic farming is not evil, it is just a shortcut that if used improperly results in poorer soil and slightly poorer nutritional quality of the food in some cases.

If you plow up your field on an annual basis and add mineral fertilizer so that you can harvest as much as possible then after a couple of decades the soil will be in bad shape because you have done nothing to replace the soil organic fraction that is constantly decaying away.

If you are just starting out and want to save money by growing food I would suggest going semiorganic using a combination of cheap mineral garden fertilizer ($10 for a 25-50 lb bag on sale at the local garden center in the spring) in the soil, and grass clipping mulch and/or straw on top of the soil the first year, and start building up a compost pile for the next year. I am assuming you will be converting lawn into garden soil. The decaying grass and roots from the lawn will provide adequate organic matter for a couple of years so you can hold off on the compost investment the first year unless you have heavy clay soil that you can't stick a shovel in.

Do you need to add compost in order to grow food? Depends on your soil. My mother gardened for decades and never had a compost pile, and the neighbors always had all the free tomatoes they could eat. The only thing she ever did was fertilize a little, and dig in the grass clipping mulch at the end of the year. In that case compost simply made the garden better, as did digging the garden deeper for better root penetration.

There are many places to acquire a large pile of rotting vegetation for free, which you will need for a vegetable garden sized compost pile. The local county-municipal yard waste composting area is one, fairgrounds or anyone who owns a horse is another. And you can check with local tree trimmers to see if there is a way for you to get a pile of wood chips. Wood chips are great because they generally come in large amounts and they contain a high proportion of lignin, which decays into soil humus, but you have to add a nitrogen source in order to compost them(again, cheap mineral nitrogen fertilizer works well, or you can go with green vegetable matter like alfalfa pellets). Some people live near mushroom farms and can get mushroom compost very cheaply.

Rather than invest in alot of bagged soil ammendment material I would borrow-rent a pickup truck etc. for a day and haul as much free stuff as you can to your back yard to make a big compost pile.

The nutrient and water holding properties of organic matter in the soil is the important part of "organic gardening". The plant does not differentiate between organic vs inorganic nutrients (they are converted to inorginic by the time they enter the plant). Inorganic fertilizers need petroleum, organic fertilizers stress the environment in that they have to come from somewhere, generally fish meal and kelp . The world's fisheries are over fished (affecting seabird and marine mammal populations) and kelp communities are rich in biodiversity and act as nursery grounds, plus, boats run on petroleum, so organic vs inorgainic is not a good vs bad thing.

Mineral fertilizer is much much cheaper than organic sources unless you have livestock running around pooping all over the place, which is why organic produce costs so much more.

I've never heard of mineral fertilizer but assuming it is the same a chemical fertilizer, then this statement is inaccurate. Chemical fertilizer is made from natural gas, so when natural gas prices go up, fertilizer prices go up. Organic fertilizer is made from grains, not from animal dung. Thus when the price of corn, wheat, or soy goes up, so does the price of organic fertilizer. Unless you are buying a railroad car volume of anhydrous ammonia, the application rate for the two materials (chemical vs. organic) makes the cost per 1,000 square feet per year about equivalent.

The one thing that changes the equation back to favor chemicals in cost is the use of compost. Compost costs at least 10 times more than either chemical or organic fertilizer. That is one reason why I will very rarely suggest anyone use compost when inexpensive grains are available at any feed store.

The economics of fertilizer vs. compost or chemical vs. organic are quite different in the backyard vs. large scale farming. I would not make the leap from organic produce costing more in the store to saying that a compost-fed backyard garden is going to be more expensive. Too many variables.

To the original poster, the best way to learn is to do. I would be all over those free coffee grounds and food scraps though.

Throw it on the ground in an inconspicuous place - you have a compost pile .

Wrap a section of old fence , grate , cage - anything - around your pile and you have a compost bin .

Go for it ! It can't hurt to try ! You can do this !

I am also living in a suburban area and trying to garden as organically as possible. My 2 cents:

I use one of those large rubbermaid roughneck containers as my compost bin. Punch a couple holes in the bottom for drainage. Save the lid for those days when it's pouring rain and you don't want the compost to get too wet. Take it off otherwise. Put it by the backdoor and use the lid if company is coming over. Makes it neat and tidy looking.

Use bagged leaves to spread or mix into the soil in the fall. Save some for mixing into your compost bin.

I do buy some bagged compost because I do not generate enough kitchen and garden waste to cover my whole garden. If you do, then that's great. I personally like sheep poop.

I also buy bone meal and/or bloodmeal to sprinkle on the garden in the spring when I'm planting, just a little will do.

I have also started a worm bin recently which is going well. I have a lot of worm castings now which I plan to use when I start my seedlings, the rest I will use during planting in the spring.

It's fairly low-cost. Remember you can get things in bulk for free if you try, like spoiled produce from the grocery store or coffee grounds from the coffee shop. Bagged leaves are also free in the fall.

That's one of the things I love about composting, it is virtually free. The only costs I incur are in leaf shredding or possibly a little gas to go get a truckload of manure. Otherwise, everything is free. After all, it is "garbage" that you are recycling. What is trash to some is gold to composters.

To answer one of the OP's questions: I don't buy any chemical fertilizers. What I make at home is far better for my plants and the environment.

If you live in California specifically in San Mateo County you can purchase a Smith and Hawken Biostack Composter for a total of $58.46 (these bins retail for around $129.00). They also sell worm bins for $29.00 as part of their recycle program. For more info go to http://www.recycleworks.org.

There is a lot of good info on this forum on the subject of composting. However, you will only be successful at it if you decide what works for you and do it consistently. What works for another poster may not work for you. Composting does not have to be expensive at all or difficult. We have, for years, used 4 pallets tied together as a bin. I also use piles but we have a large acreage so no neighbors to complain regardless of what we do.

The only thing I've bought in the last few years is alfalfa pellets. They're not probably grown 100% organically but I'm not a purist about it. We compost all our kitchen veggie scraps, get coffee grounds from the local coffee shop, free fine wood shavings, and use some of our grass clippings. I make my own mulch with the shavings, clippings, some compost, and alfalfa tea. I mix it up in our cement mixer and let it sit awhile. I've also used some barnyard soil and barn cleanings.

I like to think of what I do to improve our soil as "feeding the worms" and regard my entire yard as a worm farm. We have lots of earthworms to help make healthy soil because we feed them and don't poison them with synthetic chemicals.

What you need to do for the first few years of gardening depends on the condition of the soil on your property. I suggest you start with a small area and do a lasagna garden, perhaps till another area and plant a cover crop, and *maybe* do a small area with chemical fertilizer altho I really dislike that stuff. Regard it as an experiment and have some fun.

Do as much reading and research on the subject of gardening, join your local garden club, start your compost ASAP and scrounge as much for it as you can. Hope you enjoy gardening and composting, it's very rewarding.

'If you live in California specifically in San Mateo County you can purchase a Smith and Hawken Biostack Composter for a total of $58.46 (these bins retail for around $129.00).'

This bin is only 28" by 28" by 34" high. Buy a thirteen foot piece of 1/4" or 1/2" hardware cloth 24" high for about $15. This will hold more, be cheaper, hold core heat better, and be easier to turn.

HI!

I added sides to an old raised bed to make a 3'x3'x3' container. I gather leaves, redwood needles, trimmings, flowers, etc and shred it with my lawnmower (don't need the lawnmower now that we took out the front yard and replaced it with rocks). I add bunches (maybe 100+ pounds) of coffee grounds as a nitrogen source ..... layering the leaves, needles, etc. with the coffee grounds in about 3" layers each. Water it lots (you can't water it too much). Turn the pile every once in a while if you have a mind to. As the pile gets smaller, add more stuff in layers.

I just harvested 45 gallons (about 20% of the bin) as compost that needs "finishing" .... letting it sit until it's completely done. It'll be fine to use in Spring. Filled the bin back up and started over again.

Temperatures in the bin reached 135 degrees for a period of >20 days .... and the worms that were in the pile survived nicely by migrating to the bottom and out to the edges. Other than the time to refill and turn (about 2 hours a week), this is a low effort way to get great compost.