Composting requires a lot of patience, it's a natural process that requires times for the things you put into the compost to break down.

But I'm one of those impatient people and when I want compost I want it right now so I'm always trying to speed up the composting process so that I can having it quicker than it would normally take.

There's a few things that you can do to help speed up the process of composting.

One of the most effective things that you can do to help your compost "finish" faster is to break or cut everything up into smaller chunks before you add it to your compost pile. Since the whole composting process is about all that material breaking down you've helped speed up the process by giving all those things you've put into the compost a larger surface area.

The second most effective thing you can do is monitor the moisture level and keep your pile as moist as it can be without everything actually rotting.

Keeping your moisture level just right requires a little bit of intuition on your part but it's easy to tell when you've added too much moisture to your pile because that's when it will start to actually stink.

If you find that your pile has a foul odor don't worry too much because you haven't wrecked anything and it'll just require a bit of time and oxygen to get back to the way it's supposed to be. If you find that your pile stinks after you've added too much water you can add some brown material like dry leaves or small pieces of cardboard to absorb some of that extra moisture. You should also give your pile a good turning if you've ever reached this point.

If you're a little bit squeamish you might not like this next tip on how to make compost faster but if you can get over your squeamishness it's a really effective method to speeding up your composting.

Add some worms to your compost. You read right, add worms to your compost!

These little things are super effective at breaking things down and they also leave behind their casing when they shed their skin which is really good for your compost as well.

Any type of worm will do, but red wiggler worms are probably the best for this task. Just a handful will do the job because as long as your compost is active they'll reproduce and you'll have way more than you started with later on.

You can get worms from any fishing store that sells live bait or you can go out and get them yourself after a rain. Hey, pay some kids to go out there and collect worms if you have to, I'm sure they'll love to do it for you.