Choosing your Compost Site
You can either buy a bin or make an enclose area yourself. The idea location for a compost had good drainage and is well shaded in summer. Your compost heap should sit directly on the soil.
What to Compost
- Vegetables, fruit scraps and egg shells
- Tea leaves and coffee grounds
- Vacuum cleaner dust and untreated wood ash
- Leaves, garden and lawn clippings
- Weeds if they have not gone to seed
- Sawdust, straw, seaweed and animal manures
- Old potting mix
- Human and animal hair
What not to Compost!
- Meat, dairy, fish, fats and cooking oils
- Wood, bones
- Diseased plants material
- Plant foliage with residues of chemical sprays especially weedkiller
- Oxtails , live twitch, convolvulus, docks, dandelion and other problem weeds
Setting up your Bin
- Before postioning you bin, fork over the soil to encourage earthworms and aid to drainage.
- Start the heap with a thick layer (15cm) of twigs or coarse mulch at the base for drainage.
- Thin layer of kitchen and garden wastes
- Manure, soil, blood and bone or a compost activator will help minimise odours and help make a richer compost.
Maintaining your Compost
- It is important to add air to your compost so it doesn't smell. This can be done by occasionally turning it with a garden fork.
- Dampen your heap regularly to maintain consistency of a squeezed out sponge.
- Compost is mature when it has a darkened and is a crumbly like soil. Don't use to soon as it may borrow nitrogen from the soil as it breaks down. This will limit the nitregen available to growing plants.
Using your Compost
- Mix into soil or use ot as a mulch on the soil surface. Either way it will result in improving soil stability, incresed soil fertility and a boom in the earthworm population.
- If the compost heap is reguarly turn it will be ready in 3 months
