What Is Garden Compost

Making Garden Compost

The decomposition of organic matter is actually a process of recurring digestions as organic matter repeatedly passing through the intestinal tracts of soil animals. In this process organic matter is attacked by the digestive enzymes secreted by microorganisms. Garden compost is the end product of this complex feeding pattern involving hundreds of different microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, worms, and insects.

Composting In Soil

Composting is simply the replication of nature’s system of breaking down materials on the forest floor. This process results in a product that significantly improves soil fertility and helps keep the soil in a healthy balanced condition where nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus are produced naturally.


Garden compost is the aerobically decomposed remnants of organic materials (those with plant and animal origins). Compost is used in gardening and agriculture as a soil amendment, and commercially by the landscaping and container nursery industries.


Compost is often called “humus” which is defined as organic matter that has reached a point of stability, where it will break down no further and can remain essentially as it is for centuries, or even millennia. In simple term, garden compost is the end product of decomposed organic matter.

Anaerobic Decomposition

An aerobic process is one that require air (usually refer to oxygen). Aerobic organism is living things with an oxygen-based metabolism.


The opposite of aerobic is anaerobic. To encourage the most active microbes, a garden compost pile needs the correct mix of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water. Decomposition happens even in the absence of some of these ingredients, but not as quickly or as pleasantly. For example, vegetables placed in an airtight plastic bag will still decompose but will do so in an anaerobic manner since there is limited oxygen available.


In an anaerobic decomposition process the absence of air encourages the growth of anaerobic microbes, which produce unpleasant odors.

Artificial Composting

Artificial composting is the controlled process of decomposition of organic matter, producing compost through aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter. The decomposition is performed primarily by aerobes, although larger creatures such as ants, nematodes, and worms also contribute.


Composting can take place under small scale such as garden composting. Large scale industrial composting uses same biological processes but with different techniques.


Garden composting provides a healthy environment and nutrition for the rapid decomposers, the bacteria. The most rapid composting occurs with the ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio of between 25 and 30 to 1. In other words, the ingredients placed in garden compost pile should contain 25 to 30 times as much carbon as nitrogen. For example, grass clippings average about 19 to 1 and dry autumn leaves average about 55 to 1. Mixing equal parts by volume would approximate the ideal range. Industrial composting pays strict attention to this ratio. Garden composting is done with various ingredients and therefore not as straightforward to approximate this mixture.