How to compost

Follow these guidelines to compost:

• Use a mixture of tough and sappy ingredients to ensure active composting
• Add as much as possible to the heap at once as this will help to generate heat and so speed up the process.
• Provide sufficient moisture but don't let the heap become waterlogged.
• Fork the heap to build air into it
• Cover the heap to keep rain out and prevent heat loss.
• Never use pesticides on a compost heap.
• Shredding or chopping larger items can speed up the process.
• A composter needs to be placed on the grass or soil so that worms can enter.
• Put a wire mesh under your composter to prevent animals getting in.
• The composting process will slow down during the winter.
• Add leaves to the mixture if it becomes wet and heavy.

You can compost:

• Vegetable and fruit scraps
• Grass trimmings, leaves and weeds
• Straw, hay and sawdust, woodshavings
• Newspapers, cardboard, paper towels (all torn up)
• Stale bread
• Pasta
• Egg shells and egg cartons
• Livestock manure and vegetarian animal waste (rabbit/guinea pig)
• Coffee (ground/filter) and teabags

Benefits of composting

The advantages of home composting for you and your garden are:

• it saves money by avoiding having to buy peat based composts from garden centres
• adding compost to clay soils makes the soil drain better
• adding compost to sandy soils can help the soil retain more moisture
• compost can help produce healthier plants which are more resistant to pests and diseases therefore reducing the need for chemical pesticides
• most of the nutrients needed by garden plants can be provided by compost therefore reducing the need for chemical fertilisers

Home composting also has a number of environmental benefits including:

• most commercially produced composts are peat based; using your own compost reduces the amount of peat extracted from peat bogs - many peat bogs contain rare and endangered species
• extracting peat from these areas can lead to irreversible damage and loss of wildlife
• less waste in the bins means fewer emissions from refuse collection vehicles
• reduces the amount of organic waste that is deposited in landfill sites. In a landfill site, organic waste breaks down and forms a liquid (leachate) which can escape form a landfill site and pollute the environment