Easy green compost

Simple compost (public domain photo)

So you want to make your own compost? You can do it the hard way, following complex instructions or you can do it the good enough greening way. Either way, you'll get great compost. So why not skip the complex whys and wherefores and get right to it?

Making compost is a snap.

Nature does most of the work for you. Oh, you can get out your pitchfork and turn it daily if you have the time, I suppose. You can carefully measure out your proportions of green and brown matter. Or, you can just throw it all in a heap and harvest your perfectly wonderful compost in the spring.

I like the last suggestion, don't you?

Here's how you make lazy compost.

-Continually toss layers of leaves, small twigs, lawn clippings, coffee grounds and vegetable scraps in a heap in a sunny corner of your yard, throughout gardening season.

-Use no animal products, like fish, waste, bones, meat leftovers and such. They make things nasty and unusable.

-Wait until spring.

-Turn the pile over, shaking the loose stuff to the ground.

Voila! Perfect compost without the fuss.

The loose stuff is your lovely, perfectly composted material. It should look like black dirt. It might have a few bits of leaves in it, like the compost in the picture. That's OK. Till it into your garden when preparing for planting, along with the grass clippings from your first spring mowing (for nitrogen). Nature will finish the job of breaking it all down to feed your plants over time.

Keep making perfect compost every year.

Repeat by adding this year's twigs, leaves, grass and scraps to whatever is left of the pile that didn't fully decompose.

Harvest it again next spring. And so on.

Who needs chemical fertilizers? Not me.