How To Make Compost

The cold weather may be rapidly approaching but you can still produce your own compost over the Winter months. Not only is it free, and easy to make – home made compost is one of the best soil conditioners you can use in the garden. Compost feeds the soil and helps turn it into a lovely, fertile, and friable growing medium: making your own compost is a great way to make use of your garden waste, along with some of your organic kitchen waste. Compost is a valuable resource; see the difference it will make to your garden.

The success of good compost depends on the ingredients you put in and how you mix those ingredients – rather like baking a cake.  Most plants, flowers and vegetables benefit from a compost rich soil – for how to make your own compost, take a look at the tips below, it isn’t difficult and your efforts will pay dividends later.

How does it work?

Compost is simply the decomposed remains of anything that has lived before and all organic matter will compost down eventually but for gardening purposes your end product should be sweet smelling, nitrogen and carbon rich, with a crumbly texture and a rich dark colour.

The compost bin

There are a whole range of compost bins available at garden centres and through online suppliers with shapes and sizes to suit most gardens. And, in some regions, the local council sell perfectly adequate bins at a greatly subsided price. However, many gardeners prefer to make their own and for most, the simpler the design, the better. A straightforward, no fuss compost bin would be a compound constructed of chicken netting (at least 1 square metre) held up by four corner posts.

Tip – Treat the wooden pallets with a suitable preserver to extend the life of your compost compound/ bin.

Suitable materials to make compost

All organic materials will rot eventually but to make the best garden compost the ingredients are classed as either brown or green which correlates to whether the ingredient is nitrogen rich (green) or carbon rich (brown). It does not relate to the colour as for example coffee grounds are coloured brown but fall into the green category of composting material because they are high in nitrogen.

Green waste: – Teabags, vegetable peelings, grass clippings, fresh leaves, weeds that have not gone to seed, flowers, coffee grounds, old vegetables from the fridge etc.

Brown waste: – Junk mail, paper, newspapers, and cardboard (scrunched up or shredded but not glossy or printed in colour), straw, pets’ bedding, paper coffee filters, torn up cardboard egg boxes and small broken up twigs. You can add fallen autumn leaves sparingly but it is much better to compost those separately and turn into leaf mould.

Do not add: – Meat, fish or dairy, cooked food, cat litter, coal ash or diseased plant material.

How to mix the ingredients

Green waste tends to heat up quicker and compost (rot) down quicker than brown waste but too much of it results in a slimy, smelly heap which is why you have to have layers of green and brown in your bin. Alternate the layers – green and brown – around 25-30cms deep.  Grass clippings however; will often form a rotting mat between the layers of brown so it is better to just sprinkle fresh clippings in a thin layer. Aim for a mix of 30% – 50% green and 50% – 70% brown.

When is the compost ready to use?

You can start to fill your compost bin/ heap at any time of year and it will take about six months for your waste to turn into compost. In the colder months of the year, the micro-organisms in the soil that work to turn the waste into compost still perform although it will take longer. Your compost is ready when it smells sweet, is a crumbly texture and all the waste is no longer distinguishable as individual ingredients. If the majority of the contents of your bin are ready, remove the un-composted particles and use them as a start for your new compost heap.

For all your gardening needs visit us at Birstall 

Published November 12th, 2014 by Jordan. Article ref 3323

Tags: compost, compost bin, decompose, waste

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