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How to compost successfully
Making your own compost is good for you, your garden and the environment, and is a very satisfying process as well. By recycling most if not all the organic material in your garden and household, you can drastically reduce the amount of waste you end up putting out for the dustman and practically eliminate the need to make periodic trips to the local council refuse site to dump more bulky garden waste. Best of all though, is the realisation that you'll have the last laugh on all those pesky weeds as you turn them into something really useful - now that's something to smile about.
A successful garden compost should be sweet smelling, easy to use and a delight to handle. Although many gardeners have a go at making their own compost, far too many give up after their first attempt produces a foul-smelling, oozing slimy no-go zone in the far end of the garden, or the compost heap simply fails to work and soon overflows its allotted space creating an eye-sore. So, what goes wrong?
Making compost is really very easy, but for reliable results you need to understand the principles behind the process so that you can manage it effectively. In essence, making compost is like making a cake: you have to have the certain equipment, the right ingredients in particular amounts and then add water and mix thoroughly before cooking. The soil-borne micro-organisms will then do all the hard work for you. For a well done compost, cooking can take anything from a few months to a year, depending on the material you use and the sort of compost you want at the end of the process. |
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How to get set up
You need a bin, a variety of organic waste materials and a little patience.
What size bin?
You don't actually need a compost bin to produce good compost, but it helps. It keeps the material neat and tidy, helps retain moisture and heat. Choose one to suit the size of your garden. Ideally, it should be about 1m? which holds sufficient material to compost efficiently. Smaller bins can work well, but require more careful monitoring to keep the conditions right for decomposition. If your garden and household doesn't produce sufficient organic waste to fill a bin of this size, consider getting together with gardening friends and neighbours to produce a communal composting bin. |
How much waste?
Aim to fill your bin as quickly as possible, because the decomposition process won't start in earnest until the bin is full. In practice, most successful composters will fill their bin in about a month. So, in a large garden you may need two, three or more bins to recycle all your waste.
What can I compost?
To get quick decomposition you need to have the right ingredients in the right proportions. A balanced diet of dry fibrous material (such as shredded prunings, newspapers or straw) and wet green material (such as grass clippings, discarded bedding and weeds).
All woody material needs to be chopped finely before it is added to the compost bin otherwise it will take longer to decompose than the other ingredients. The easiest way to chop it up is with a garden shredder, but if you have the patience you can get the same results with a pair of secateurs.
What can't I compost?
In theory anything that is organic will decompose, but for the sake of your neighbours, don't add any waste meat, fish or fat otherwise you'll attract vermine. And for you own sake avoid thorny prunings, sawdust, glossy magazine paper, plastic-coated cardboard, conifer and other evergreen material because they all take too long to rot. Also avoid perennial weed roots, any flowering weeds and any plants struck down with disease because all these can survive the decomposition process returning to haunt you when you spread out the compost on your garden. Don't add dog or cat faeces to the heap for health reasons, although the litter from the bottom animal cages does compost well.
How long does it take?
In ideal conditions during the summer, the compost bin you filled at the end of May will be ready to use by the end of July. Then the compost bin filled during mid-summer should be ready to use in the autumn, with the final compost bin filled with autumn garden waste ready for use the following spring
How to speed up your compost heap |
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Quick composting requires the right mixture of waste ingredients, plus moisture and oxygen. Use the right stuff Add the dry and wet ingredients either mixed up or in layers of up to 15cm deep if this is more convenient. Don't be tempted to add piles and piles of grass clippings without adding shredded newspaper or other roughage in between otherwise your heap will turn into a slimy failure . Add compost activator High-nitorgen compost activators help kick-start the decomposition process and are especially useful when you are adding a lot of woody waste such as shredded prunings to your heap. Add it to the layers of material as you fill the bin.
Keep the compost heap moist The micro-organisms that do all the hard work need moisture to survive and so the compost heap must not be too dry. However, if it gets too wet, less oxygen will be available which also inhibits their activity. If you get the mixture of waste material correct from the start there should be no problem, but if decomposition appears to be slow, check the heap to see if it needs watering.
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In winter, make sure the bin is covered to prevent it becoming over wet. If it does get too wet, the only solution is to empty the bin and mix in more dry material before refilling it.
Turn it inside out The waste material on the inside of a compost heap will decompose faster than that on the outside. So for quickest results and consistent quality compost it is worth turning the material about half way through the composting process (after as little as four weeks in early summer). Put all the material that was at the outside in the centre of the new heap and vice versa. |
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| Keep it warm in winter During the winter months, severe cold spells can cool the compost heap and slow down decomposition. You can prevent this from happening by wrapping the heap with bubble wrap or layers of old carpet. |
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