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Making homemade compost for organic gardening
What equipment do I need ?
What can I put on my compost heap?
How do I start composting?
When's the compost ready?
What kitchen and garden waste can I use?
Will a compost heap attract rats?
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How to make homemade compost
How to make compost from garden and kitchen waste
Composting is a great way to recycle kitchen and garden waste, its easier than trying to work out which bin to put your waste in !!!
Making and using compost for organic gardening.
It's made from garden and kitchen waste ( the stuff we send to landfill sites ) its rich, dark, crumbly and will smell good. Use it to feed and condition the soil saving money spent on fertilisers and saving space taken up by landfill sites. How ECO friendly is that. Its a simple process, nature does most of the work and my tips below should help get the balance right.
What equipment do I need ? None but !
If you are a neat tidy gardener or have a small garden ask your council for a composting bin they are the same as the ones a garden center will charge the earth for . The best compost heaps are sited directly on soil in an accessible and sunny part of your garden and covered with cardboard,sacking or bin bags.
What can I compost ? Aanything that ever lived, but not meat, fish, cat or dog muck.The important thing is to get the balance right a mix of green and brown waste, this comes with practice . This list should speed up the learning process.
GREEN Grass mowings and young weeds,Comfrey, Nettles, vegetable peelings, tea bags and leaves, coffee grounds, green prunings, cow and horse manure, bedding and manure from your free range chickens. lawn mowings.
BROWN Cardboard, cereal packets, egg boxes, Waste paper, junk mail, Glossy magazines, Newspaper, pet rabbit, guinea pigs bedding, Woody prunings, your old bedding plants, Wood shavings, Fallen leaves, egg shells even wool and cotton.
Check now and then, if the heap is slimy add more from the brown list, if the heap is hard and lumpy add more from the green list.
How do I start composting?
Simply by adding a MIX of the GREEN and BROWN stuff and covering the heap with sacking, old matting or bin bags.
(anything to keep the heat in) add enough to make a fair size heap, the bigger the pile the more heat it will generate (heat starts the composting process)
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The compost will start to heat up in a few days, this means your home made compost factory is working,just keep on adding BROWN and GREEN stuff. After a couple of weeks turn the pile inside out, this allows oxygen in and speeds up the composting process or if you aren't feeling to energetic and don't mind waiting longer for the crumbly stuff, leave nature to get on with it.
When's the compost ready.
If you turn the compost heap now and then and keep the heat in it could be ready in about 12 weeks but can take up to 10 months, depends on your effort with the fork,the weather, the mix but whatever, its well worth waiting for. When its turned a dark brown earth colour but is still a bit lumpy (and you just cant wait to use it on the vedge plot) its safe to use, just put the really lumpy twiggy stuff back on the heap.
Diseased plants with club root and white rot etc. should not be composted, if you are not sure dont compost them.
Most weeds will be killed in a good hot compost heap but best not to add ,celandine, docks, buttercup, ground elder and bindweed etc. to your compost heap until they have been rotted down in in a tied up bin bag.
Worms and insects are essential in a compost heap, so welcome and expect them.
Will a compost heap attract rats? Rats will not be attracted by your heap but will almost certainly be already present in the area and will visit the compost heap now and then.
Home made compost is safe to handle, probably safer than the stuff sold in garden centers no added chemical fertiliser just take the usual precautions you would take when gardening .
Hope I haven't made it seem to difficult, it really is not. Your vedge and fruit will be safer to eat and taste better, you will reduce demand for landfill sites and you will save money. How ECO friendly is that.
Do it, make a compost heap from the GREEN AND BROWN STUFF.
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