How To Make Compost

How to make compost - recycle kitchen and garden waste and turn it into rich crumbly stuff that will benefit your soil.

For your compost you can use kitchen and domestic waste such as fruit and vegetable peelings, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea leaves, dust from the Hoover, combings from cats and dogs - just about anything except meat.

The garden waste you add should be leafy and sappy material, woodier pruning's that have been chopped up smaller shredded. Weeds can go in if they haven't set seed but don't add the roots of perennials such as dandelions and couch grass which can resprout. Never add diseased material, most diseases are persistent and can outlive the compost process.

Buy a purpose made compost bin. Fill it with the ingredients as they become available scattering them so there is a good mix. Add horse manure or a compost accelerator to speed things up.

Once a bin is full fork the whole lot, give it a good mix. If the weather is hot water it to keep it evenly moist. In about six months the compost will be ready to spread around the garden. If you don't mix the heap there will be a lot of unrotted material but you can put this in the next heap.

Worms will appear in your compost heap and start turning your waste into compost. You might also find frogs and hedgehogs using it for shelter so be careful when you empty you bin out and don't stick a spade or fork right in without checking first.

For information on soil care Clock how to make compost.