Gardening - Making Compost
Making Good Compost

Be the Compost Boss!

Compost is great. Granted, it stinks a bit, but compost not only provides beneficial results for the garden, but is great for the environment as it breaks down waste materials from the garden and kitchen, and refuses the need for chemicals to ammend your soil. It's full of nutrients, and so makes the perfect fertilizer, and it is also great for mulching.

Compost Bins

Tehcnically you don't need one of these, but to keep the compost area tidy, and for quicker decompostation, it's a good idea to invest in one. The small amount of money will pay-off in the long run, believe me!

They can be purchased at garden centres, and they don't have a bottom, so that earthworms can wriggle up and decompost the waste. You can make your own, but don't use chemically treated wood, as this will destroy the microorganisms that make compost so valuable!

Also, try getting two bins going if you can, this way you will always have some ready compost avaliable.

Bin Location

Although garden centres are now making bins in many shades of green to blend with the garden, generally speaking they are not an attractive feature. Locate them out of the way, and you can always plant in front to hide them from view.

What do I put in it?

Garden, kitchen, and lawn refuse is what you can use. Kitchen scraps such as vegetable and fruit remenants (NOT meat), egg shells, nut shells, coffee grounds, tea bags etc...From the Garden includes anyting but weeds (otherwise you may have an interesting problem on your hands!). You can also chuck in saw dust, straw, bitrd seed, sea weed, and manure (not cat and dog manure).

Making it better

Although chucking all the above in will naturally decompose over time, you can make this process quicker by making sure you have a good distribution of both dry and wet ingredients. Two parts dry to one part wet is desirable if possible. Shredded ingredients are better, as they break down faster (perhaps invest in a back-yard shredder?), and thin layers of many ingredients are better than thick layers of the one type of material.