How to make your own compost

No experience of making compost but interested in trying

Whether you live in a house or a flat, in the city, suburbs or the country, there’s a composting system for you. Compost is easy to make, will save you money and help your plants grow well.

You can start composting at any time of year, although spring is perhaps the best season to start.

What are the benefits?

Compost not only adds nutrients to the soil, but also improves its structure and helps it to retain water. Composting your kitchen waste also diverts unnecessary rubbish from landfill, so it’s good for the environment too, and offers a natural alternative to chemical fertilisers.

Compost bins

Choose from either a contained compost bin or an open one. Before forking out for a bin, check whether your local council provides them at a subsidised cost. Also, in some areas local councils may collect compostable kitchen and garden waste. If you're feeling adventurous, you could even make your own.

Wormeries and bokashi bins

A wormery is a special tiered bin that contains worms. When kitchen waste is added, the worms digest and break it down into rich compost. It will provide you with a liquid fertiliser and worm casts, which will give you useable compost in as little as six months.

Wormeries need more maintenance than compost heaps. You need to be careful not to overfeed the worms or put in too much of one type of food.

With a bokashi system you put in all of your kitchen scraps – cooked or raw meat included – and sprinkle it with a bran that contains microscopic bacteria, yeasts and fungi. The bran causes the waste to break down more quickly. When one bin is full you store it (the lid is airtight so it doesn’t smell) and start on the next one.

In two weeks, the full one is ready to be dug straight into vegetable beds or the compost bin (not just dumped on the top), where it will break down more quickly. You also get a supply of liquid fertiliser from bokashi, which you can dilute and use directly on your garden or pot plants.

What to put in your bin

A third of the average household bin can be composted and what you put in can be categorised into “greens” and “browns”. “Greens” are things that are quick to rot and provide important nitrogen and moisture. “Browns” are dry materials that are slower to rot, provide carbon and fibre, and allow air pockets to form.

Here are just a few of the most commons things that can go in your compost bin:

Greens

• Tea bags and coffee grounds
• Grass cuttings
• Fruit and vegetable scraps and peelings
• Salad leaves
• Old flowers

Browns

• Cardboard
• Egg boxes
• Scrunched up paper
• Leaves
• Sawdust
• Twigs and branches

For best results, use a mixture of things so you get a good balance. It can also help to make sure that things are chopped up well and spread out when you tip them into your compost bin.

What not to compost

Do not put dairy produce, meat, fish, bones, fatty food (such as cheese and leftover cooking oil), or pet waste into your compost bin. You should also be careful not to put perennial weeds or diseased plants into your compost.

The composting process

As the material composts in the bin, it will become increasingly moist and will begin to condense - this reduces the amount of air inside the bin. Ensure it stays well aerated by mixing the compost with a stick or garden fork (known as turning) to create air channels in the compost. This will help the composting process and stop it from going mushy.

Using your compost

The bottom layer of the heap will be ready first and it should look dark brown, soil-like and crumbly.

Unlike the potting compost that you buy in bags to plant up hanging baskets or containers, the stuff produced from your bin is garden compost. Use it as a mulch to enrich borders and vegetable patches.

Mix the compost with some soil and spread it in a layer that is a few centimetres thick around plants. You can also dig it into new beds before you start planting to enhance fertility.

Hints and tips

Place your compost bin in the sun - this will increase the temperature inside the unit, and will help speed up the composting process.

Ensure a good circulation of air in the compost bin by layering twigs, cut flowers or remains of houseplants at the bottom of the bin.

Make sure you keep adding the right combination of “greens” and “browns” and you will have a continuous supply of nutritious compost.

Try not to over fill the compost bin - always make sure you can close the lid.