10 of the Best Books on Composting Books

The Compost Coach: Make Compost, Build Soil and Grow a Regenerative Garden – Wherever You Live! by Kate Flood

I stumbled on Kate’s content on Instagram where she shares a ton of really relatable tips and education about how to compost at home in various ways. She explains the details of making your own soil amendment with worm bins, compost heaps, Bokashi bins, and more. When I saw her book coming out, I knew it would be chock full of great information on residential composting!

The fantastic book includes lots of photos, approachable explanations, and practical tips about how to choose the right composting system for your lifestyle, things to consider with each one, and tips to make the process work well for your own compost. She even touches on making compost tea and having backyard chickens, two other ways to use nutrients from organic material waste to replenish the soil.

She has so much information to offer without it feeling too overwhelming or scientific. If you’re looking to compost at home and make your own soil amendments, this book is definitely a great place to start for easy composting!

Composting For a New Generation: Latest Techniques for the Bin and Beyond by Michelle Balz

This book is the second-best book I’ve seen about composting for beginners (after Kate’s book above). It has such great descriptions and explanations. It isn’t too technical but does explain the basic science, which helps to understand why some aspects of composting are more important than others.

It doesn’t suggest any “perfect” magic formula but is just really reasonable and focuses on making composting accessible for everyday households.

Let It Rot! The Gardener’s Guide to Composting by Stu Campbell

I highly recommend this book if you’re looking to understand the basics of composting beyond knowing just what to put in a compost bin and letting it slowly turn into nutrient-rich dirt. It takes a beginner through the entry-level information and goes just beyond to provide a baseline for stepping into the next level of composting.

The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant & Deborah L. Martin

This is such a great book to help beginner composters apply the principles of gardening to their own home in a low-stress way. The authors don’t make the content too complex or feel overwhelming.

They often discuss ways to simplify the process or include discussions about how they keep their compost piles and systems as easy to manage as possible. In a genre filled with highly technical books that can make composting feel overwhelming, this book does a great job of making composting feel accessible.

How to Make and Use Compost: The Ultimate Guide by Nicky Scott

Composting is easy and fun, saves you money, and helps you to grow lovely plants. This book shows you how to compost everything that can be composted – at home, work, or school, and in spaces big or small. It features a comprehensive A–Z guide, which includes what organic materials you can and can’t compost, concepts and techniques, and common problems and solutions.

Composting: An Easy Household Guide by Nicky Scott

This small handbook is a quick reference guide that I think is very helpful, especially for beginner composters. This is straightforward and written in layman’s terms. It doesn’t address the nuances of composting, but definitely is a greater starter guide and a handy quick reference to keep on hand when you’re learning how to turn your kitchen waste into black gold.

The Rodale Book of Composting: Easy Methods for Every Gardener by Grace Gershuny

The Rodale Institute is a premier leader in the regenerative agriculture space. Lucky for me, they are located just a couple of hours from where I live, so I have been fortunate to attend some of their events on their main farm location. As expected, this book did not disappoint. The Rodale team is a wealth of knowledge about sustainable food-growing and land management practices.

This book is a nice balance of beginner resources paired with some more technical and advanced discussions about the science of composting and more complex or larger-scale composting systems for intermediate experience. It wasn’t, however, overly technical and would be very helpful for anyone looking to try composting beyond a simple bin or pile of kitchen food scraps and everyday cardboard.

Grow Your Soil!: Harness the Power of the Soil Food Web to Create Your Best Garden Ever by Diane Miessler

This book is not a step-by-step guide to composting but applies the concepts of composting to managing soil in a home garden. It’s a great book to read for someone who has a basic knowledge of composting and seeks to step up their attention to care for their soil and the ecosystem of plants in their yard.

This book is really interesting and has a lot of new information beyond composting 101 that was both accessible and even funny at times. I highly recommend this book after you’ve learned the very basics of composting at home.

High-Impact Low-Carbon Gardening: 1001 Ways to Garden Sustainably by Alice Rowe

This book includes tons of ideas about how to make your garden more sustainable, including a section on various types of composting in your home garden. I found it really helpful for my garden in general, and I included it in this list because I think the book does a nice job of showing how composting can fit into a sustainable garden (though a garden is certainly not required to be a diligent home composter).

Beyond composting, High-Impact, Low-Carbon Gardening is a one-stop reference for making a garden more green. From simple actions like installing a water barrel or eliminating pesticides to more long-term investments like choosing permeable, locally sourced paving, and planting the most water-wise plants, there are hundreds of large and small choices home gardeners can make to reduce the environmental impact of designing, planting, and tending a garden.

Community-Scale Composting Systems: A Comprehensive Practical Guide for Closing the Food System Loop and Solving Our Waste Crisis by James McSweeney

When I started WasteWell, a local curbside composting company, this was the first book I read, and it was really helpful. Everyday home composters certainly don’t need to read this book to be good stewards of their own household waste. But if you’re curious about how composting at a larger scale fits into our community waste management systems, this book is a great place to start.

You probably don’t need to buy it unless you’re starting your own business or advocating for community composting in your own area (run by a local community group or your municipality, for example). But you could certainly check it out from your library and take a scan through if you’re a curious composter looking to put your food waste in a grander context of waste in general.

Jen Panaro

Jen Panaro, founder and editor-in-chief of Honestly Modern, is a self-proclaimed composting nerd and advocate for sustainable living for modern families. To find her latest work, subscribe to her newsletter, Sage Neighbor.

In her spare time, she’s a serial library book borrower, a messy gardener, and a mom of two boys who spends a lot of time in hockey rinks and on baseball fields.

You can find more of her work at Raising Global Kidizens, an online space to help parents and caregivers raise the next generation of responsible global citizens.