How to make Homemade Compost for Organic Cannabis Gardening

Okay, you've made it this far so you must be ready to grow your own organic cannabis. Follow the directions below for getting your compost going...keep in mind it's gonna take about 4 months minimum to get your compost to a finished state, so the time to start is now.
  • Buy a Compost Tumbler.
This is the tumbler I have. It has two chambers so I can have one side cooking while the other side gets all the new fresh compost. If you're handy, you can make your own compost tumbler. If you have a lot of space in the backyard, you can also just throw a tarp down in a corner of the yard and get your compost going there.
Compost tumbler for making organic soil
A two-chambered compost tumbler for making homemade compost. Set it and forget it.
  • Gather up all the brown, dried leaves you can find around your house.
You're gonna need these for your compost,
  • Begin collecting all of your uncooked kitchen scraps, EXCEPT for meat and dairy which you won't use in your compost. Also, don't use any animal poop.
Examples of good scrap are coffee grounds and filters, teabags, old fruit, old veggies, egghells, all that good stuff you end up throwing in the trash. Don't use anything you've cooked with oil, sauce or seasoning (for example: steamed veggies are fine but sauteed veggies are not). We have a little container that came with our blender and now sits on our kitchen counter by the sink. We put a plastic bag in it and toss all our scraps in it. It doesn't smell but we sometimes get a few fruit flies, no big deal.
  • Toss these scraps in your tumbler when the container gets full.
You can toss every day or every week, doesn't really matter.
  • After tossing your scraps, make sure to add some of those old brown leaves into the tumbler too.
There is a proper ratio but without getting scientific I'll just say add twice as many leaves as scraps. If you can break the leaves up first, even better. The same goes for your scraps, the more broken up it is the faster everything will turn into compost.
  • Turn your tumbler every week or so.
Your compost pile needs fresh air to stoke the microbial fire, so to speak, so rotating the tumbler periodically keeps everything working efficiently. If you're using the tarp method, you'll have to use a shovel and turn your compost by hand.
  • Fill an old milk carton with water and let it sit out for 24 hours.
The chlorine in your water kills off all the good microbes that work to break down your compost. Letting it sit for 24 hours allows the chlorine to evaporate from the water and make it suitable for use in your compost. Get used to his because you'll be doing the same thing when you water your cannabis in organic soil. If your compost ever looks like it's beginning to dry out, add some of this water to it. Most of your kitchen scraps should have enough water in them to keep everything moist, but keep your water ready just in case. Don't overdo it, just keep it moist like a wrung-out sponge.
Two-chambered compost bin containing compost in different stages of breakdown.
The left chamber is for adding new kitchen scraps. The right chamber is full so we don't add anything else. Just let that breakdown until it's finished.
That's all there is to it. If your compost begins to smell funky, add more brown leaves or twigs. If you don't notice it breaking down within a couple weeks, add more kitchen scraps. There's a particular balance of brown leaves-to-scraps that's needed but it's honestly not practical to measure everything each time you add to your compost. You're going to need a few months on average for all this stuff to break down into black compost. This is why you want a two-chamber tumbler...once one side gets full you stop adding to it so it will breakdown completely, otherwise you're always going to have fresh scraps in there decomposing and your compost will never reach a finished state.
Finished compost, ready for use.
This compost is finished and ready to make your own organic soil. All that remains are some eggshells, twigs and a few fruit pits.
Once your compost is broken down it'll just look like clumpy black soil. You'll probably notice some eggshells or maybe an avocado pit or two, but there shouldn't be any bad smell and nothing resembling actual fruit or vegetables. I usually put on some dishwashing gloves and fish around in my finished compost, breaking up any clumps and pulling out any fruit pits or twigs that haven't yet decomposed. Once you've reached this point, congratulations! The next step will be using this compost to mix your own organic soil for growing cannabis.