Journalist Kate Hodal takes the compost challenge
Kate Hodal from Aberdeen’s the Press and Journal has taken the compost challenge. You can read about a worm massacre, fermented organic matter and nitrogen injected banana skins in her entertaining and informative pitch on the tribulations of being green. Find out about bokashi, wormeries and more conventional green thumb techniques to recycle food waste. She’s spoken to Carl Nichols, head of home composting at Recycle Now and she gets Heather Gorringe’s from wigglywigglers.co.uk take on bokashi and wormeries – “I might have drowned mine, but it’s worms’ resilience that makes them such good composters”. Recycling food waste is moving higher up the agenda for people and Kate reminds us that “one-third of all household waste can be composted at home”.
Kate provides us with a bit of know-how so we can ‘avoid some of these pitfalls and reap the benefits’ of home composting. Because, as Carl Nichols says, home composting, whether it’s a wormery, a Bokashi bin, or saving fruit and veg scraps to put in to your compost bin, doesn’t just give you nice, enriched soil to feed back into your plants, it also cuts down on your waste, clears our air, and keeps our planet from overheating. Read the ‘Take the compost challenge’ article.
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
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Composting Autumn Leaves
Collect fallen leaves for leaf-mould. Store moist leaves in black plastic bags and after a year or so you’ll have a rich, crumbly mulch your plants will love.
Much as I love autumn, I do dread picking up all the leaves. It’s never ending, especially when you live at the end of a wind tunnel like we do. But great things can come of all that hard work. Here’s how to turn those damp leaves into a rich mulch for your garden:
Stack your leaves in a wire mesh compost bin
You can mix a few leaves into your compost heap, but too many will make the compost slimy. You’re better off stacking large quantities separately, using a wire mesh bin to keep them tidy. You can easily cobble together a wire mesh compost bin by wrapping chicken wire around four supporting stakes. The secret is not to let the leaves dry out, so you should sprinkle them with a little water during dry periods, or turn them occasionally to mix wet leaves with dry.
Pack leaves into black plastic bags
If you have a smaller garden you can fill black plastic bin liners with your leaves. Rake them up just after rain so they’re nice and moist and pack them into the bags. Tie the bags at the top and pierce them to encourage air to circulate. Alternatively, you can use biodegradable leaf sacks. Stack the bags somewhere out of the way and forget about them for at least a year while the leaves break down into a rich, crumbly leaf-mould. Some leaves take longer to decompose than others. You’ll find, for example, that oak, hornbeam and alder leaves will take longer to break down than sycamore, chestnut and beech. Avoid using evergreen leaves for leaf-mould because they take too long to break down.
Good things come to those who wait
Although leaf-mould takes longer to make than compost, once you’ve packed the leaves in a wire mesh bin or plastic bags you can just leave them alone. After a year to eighteen months you’ll have a rich, crumbly mulch, which you can either spread around the plants and borders in your garden, dig in as a soil improver, or mix with your potting compost.
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Click here for more information on how to get the best out of your bokashi composter.
Buy a Bokashi Kitchen Composter
Get the low-down on how to make great compost
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Making Compost: Ten Top Tips
Reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and boost the health of your garden with these ten top tips for making compost :
1. Make sure your heap is handy
When setting up your compost heap find a spot in your garden that’s fairly close to the kitchen, so that it’s handy enough so you don’t mind popping out with kitchen waste fairly frequently. And if possible, make sure your compost heap or bin is in the shade, so the compost doesn’t dry out.
2. Build your heap on the cheap
The only piece of equipment you must have to make compost is a garden fork. You don’t even need a compost bin. If you want you can just build a heap and cover it over with some old carpet or cardboard, but a compost bin will keep the compost heap neater. You can build your own using recycled materials such as brick, stone, timber or plastic. For example, you can assemble a bin from old wooden pallets, or cut the bottom out of an old plastic dustbin and press the bin into the soil, keeping the lid to cover it.
3. Think about tomorrow
If you’re making a wooden compost bin, build a four-sided frame about 1 metre cubed that is open at the top and make sure one of the sides can be easily removed so you can turn the heap and extract the ‘cooked’ compost.
4. Protect your stash
If vermin such as rats are present in your area, they may pay your compost heap a visit in the same way that they might visit any other part of the garden. Bury wire netting 30cm deep around your compost heap to keep them out.
5. Help the worms help you
Worms and other soil organisms are crucial for making good quality compost. Make sure you position your heap on a level, well-drained area of soil. The worms will soon find your heap, but if you want to boost your compost production, bags of worms can be bought on the internet. The best worms to get are tiger worms (elsena fetida). Don’t worry about adding too many, their numbers will quickly adjust to suit the conditions.
6. Blend your ‘browns’ and your ‘greens’
Add alternating layers of carbon-rich ‘brown’ materials such as dried leaves, egg boxes, sawdust, dead flower stalks and twigs with soggy, nitrogen-rich ‘green’ materials such as cut grass, manure, tea bags and vegetable and fruit peelings.
7. Get to know the neighbours
Ask the neighbours for any organic matter they might otherwise throw in the rubbish. While you’re at it, offer to gather up compostables from your workplace; unbleached tea bags and coffee grounds break down very quickly and supply proteins, oils and nitrogen. Pile the material on your compost heap to rot down into glorious soil food.
8. Bottoms up
If you have the energy and the motivation, ‘turning’ your compost heap at least once a month will speed up the composting process.
9. Do compost
- Fruit and vegetable peelings
- Coffee grounds
- Tea leaves
- Unbleached tea bags
- Stale bread
- Eggshells
- Sawdust
- Vacuum cleaner dust and hair
- Natural fibres
- Grass cuttings, non-woody prunings and leaves
10. Don’t compost
- Meat, fish and bones
- Cooking oil and fats
- Cooked food
- Dairy products
- Diseased plant material
- Dog and cat waste
Cooked food, meat, fish and dairy can all be safely thrown on the compost heap if they have first been fermented in a Bokashi Bin. But, if in doubt, leave it out. Suspect materials can be sent to your local green waste recycling facility.
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Get the low-down on how to make great compost.
See our Compost Checklist for a full list of what you can and can’t compost.
