Composting is easy, right? You throw your kitchen waste into a heap and let it rot.

Sorry, that’s garbage. Literally.

Ask soil scientist Tony Ramsey, a professional composter in New Sharon. Yes, professional.

“If it’s not managed, it’s not compost,” Ramsey said in a recent phone interview. “It’s a garbage pile.”

Wait, let’s back up. What’s with composting, you ask? And why is everyone telling you to do it, you also ask?

There is a compost bin full of reasons when you dig into it, and it’s not all about gardening.

Yes, composting your food waste, leaves, etc. gives you free material to strengthen your soil and promote plant growth. It reduces the need for pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. It recycles nutrients back into the soil. And it promotes a healthy ecosystem.

But, it also reduces waste and makes us less dependent on landfills. What would happen if everyone composted? According to the U.S. Composting Council, if everyone in the country composted their food waste, the impact would be the same as taking 7.8 million cars off the road.

Ramsey has been composting for nearly 40 years at his farm, Living Acres, where he runs a commercial operation and offers classes on large-scale composting.

So, what is compost?

Ask a scientist and you’ll get a scientific answer: It involves nitrogen and carbon and fungi cooking your scraps into a brew that “provides water holding and nutrient holding for soil,” Ramsey says.

Soil is made up of minerals, almost devoid of carbon. So to get that “skin-of-the-Earth” material that will enrich the soil and help things grow, you need to add organic matter, he said.

You need greens and browns. And herein lies one of the secrets to successful composting.

Greens, which provide nitrogen, include vegetable waste, grass clippings, fruit scraps and coffee grounds. Browns such as dead leaves, branches and twigs provide carbon.

Your compost pile should have equal amounts of browns and greens, according to epa.gov’s Composting at Home. The two types of material should be layered. You also need to add water to help break down the organic matter.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency encourages composting as an Earth-friendly enterprise, not just a gardening enterprise.

BRING ON THE HEAT

“Food scraps and yard waste together make up more than 30% of what we throw away, and could be composted instead,” according to the EPA. “Making compost keeps these materials out of landfills where they take up space and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.”

And you don’t need “organic” material in the sense that it’s grown without pesticides, Ramsey said.

“Anything not knowingly contaminated can be composted,” he said. “In general, there is not any real concern about residual pesticides, even from materials grown with chemical fertilizer or other insecticides. There’s nothing in food waste to be concerned about.”

In fact, despite the conventional wisdom, you can add meat and dairy to your compost.

Products rich in protein make great compost by boosting the carbon level and helping with decomposition, Ramsey said.

But only if you know what you’re doing and pay attention. And therein lies another secret.

“The problem is that if you don’t balance the formula and don’t get it hot, it can attract rodents,” he said. “You could end up with skunks or rats.”

“Hot” refers to the decomposition of the materials, which gives off heat. Too hot means it’s releasing too much heat too fast. If composting manure, this can release ammonia vapor that will inhibit root development, he said.

This balancing is one reason why the EPA and others recommend not using meat or dairy; many people aren’t careful about how they formulate their compost, Ramsey said.

“They don’t always use enough drying material (sawdust, hay). If it’s too wet and sticky and there’s not enough carbon, it can putrefy.”

So if you use protein, keep it well buried and add enough carbon — dead leaves and twigs — so it’s hot but not too hot and not too dry.

Air also is important in the decomposition process.

This means you have to turn the pile occasionally to get air into what’s on the bottom. Or you can set up a system of black plastic pipes to let air into the bottom of the pile, Ramsey said.

He said the pile should be covered because if it gets too wet it will get too heavy and sticky. “It gets nasty.”

‘BLACK GOLD FOR MY GARDEN’

Too wet and not enough air are the most common problems for backyard composters, Ramsey said, which can occur when using the open pile method.

But Sandy Dyer of New Gloucester swears by an open pile as the “best and easiest” way to compost. “I have tried a barrel bin that could be rotated, but didn’t have much luck with it breaking down into usable compost,” she said.

If you choose to use an open pile, you should build it to be about 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 4 feet deep to successfully compost “everything you throw at it,” according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s Guide to Composting at Home.

But the best way to compost is to have a dedicated structure to keep it all contained, such as a cube made of wood pallets or a “purpose-built” plastic bin, according to almanac.com. It’s also possible to compost right in your garden bed.

That’s what Dyer does. She has been composting for at least 45 years.

“I lived on a farm where I learned organic farming from my landlady/good friend. She had sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese and a pony,” Dyer said.

She said the manure from these animals was shoveled out of the barn and she and her friend would dig to the bottom for the composted material.

“There were tons of tiny and huge worms (a sign of good compost) and it smelled earthy and sweet,” she said. “We used it in the spring on her raised bed gardens.”

Dyer now has her own small farm where she built a composting bin inside her fenced-off garden.

“I used pallets to create a double open bin,” she said. “I will use one side and turn the compost to the other side to mix and aerate it.”

Composting your own material — she uses mostly vegetable scraps — is best because you know exactly what is in it, she said.

And that’s important.

“When I started my garden here years ago, I had a trailer load of what was supposed to be composted cow manure from local farm” she said. “Turns out it was sawdust and urine mostly and NOT composted. Ruined my garden for four years as all the nitrogen was sucked out by the sawdust.”

In compliance with EPA guidelines, Dyer does not compost meat.

She uses grass clippings and even hair, which add nitrogen. But some “brown” things like woody stems take much longer to break down, over a year in some cases, she said.

“Another way to compost is I let my chickens do it,” Dyer said. “I feed them scraps that I don’t compost, and they scratch their own waste into the ground. I can use soil from their outside run on my gardens as a mulch topcoat to fertilize with.”

LET WORMS DO THE WORK?

Lee Holman of Hartford has been composting for nearly 50 years.

“First and foremost . . . it’s the right thing to do for the environment,” she said. “It also eliminates tons of waste from the municipal waste stream, and that and recycling are one of the few cost centers where individuals can have an impact.

“Second is the fact that the resulting product is black gold for my garden.”

Holman composts “all manner of manures (except dog waste) and food waste.” She uses piles, which she turns infrequently, she said.

She said she sometimes also uses a structure. Three-sided pallet structures are great, she said.

“One can lay up poles like Lincoln logs in a square,” she said. “This works well and can be added to as the pile grows or taken down as the pile shrinks, which it will as it rots.”

She uses a dung fork to turn the material for aeration, she said, “if I get around to it. Or not. In truth, I keep farm animals, so I have a lot of manure and hay, which will break down on its own given time.”

She advises adding “hot” materials, such as lawn clippings, horse manure, or other manures to get the pile activated.

And for people working with small spaces, “there are numerous devices to make composting more appealing,” Holman said. “I have also kept a worm bin for kitchen scraps, and that can work really well and the resulting compost is wonderful stuff.”

Worm composting is the simple process of feeding food scraps to worms, according to Cornell Composting, a resource for classroom composting. The scraps become compost as the worms digest the food.

All you need is a box, moist newspaper strips, and worms. Bedding, made of newspaper strips or leaves, will hold moisture and contain air spaces essential to worms. Red wrigglers or red worms are recommended.

Holman uses her compost as a soil amendment and to make compost tea for watering individual plants.

Compost tea is a liquid produced by extracting microorganisms from compost using a brewing process, according to almanac.com where a recipe is available.

It’s a little like vitamins for people, according to the website.

“A true compost tea contains all of the organisms that were present in the compost before brewing. The brewed water extract should also have soluble nutrients from the compost.”

Whether you use an open pile, a bin or a pallet structure, composting is the best way to tackle the “almost diabolical problem” of decades of soil and air contamination, Ramsey said.

“Composting is a way to bring balance back into your ecosystem,” he said. “Anything you can do to promote that is good.”

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