Composting

Composting is nature's way of recycling. As concern about landfill space increases, worldwide interest in recycling by means of composting is growing, since composting is a process for converting decomposable organic materials into useful stable products. Compost has four main ingredients: browns, greens, air, and water. Browns are dry, woody materials such as fallen leaves, hedge clippings, newspaper, and so on. Greens are moist materials such as fruit and vegetable scraps, grass clippings, and fresh weeds. Air and water are the other essential ingredients that the millions of tiny composting creatures need to breakdown your browns and greens into a crumbly soil-like material.

The process of composting is simple and practiced by individuals in their homes, farmers on their land, and industrially by industries and cities. Compost soil is very rich soil and used for many purposes. A few of the places that it is used are in gardens, landscaping, horticulture, and agriculture. The compost soil itself is beneficial for the land in many ways, including as a soil conditioner, a fertilizer to add vital humus or humic acids, and as a natural pesticide for soil. In ecosystems, compost soil is useful for erosion control, land and stream reclamation, wetland construction, and as landfill cover.

Organic (or green) waste is anything that was or is living. It includes:

• Garden waste: Leaves, grass clippings, branches, hay, flowers, sawdust, woodchips and bark.
• Food waste: Fruit, vegetables, tea, bread, cereals, eggshells, grains, meat, dairy products.
• Other: paper, animal hair, faeces, vacuum cleaner dust, hair, wool, wood ash.

About 60% of our household waste is organic. The benefits of recycling organic waste include decreasing a garden's need for water and fertiliser by returning the nutrients once in the living material into the soil to help new plants grow. Recycling organics reduces waste to landfill and develops potential products and markets for green waste including mulch, compost, soil conditioners, recycled timber and firewood.

Anaerobic decomposition occurs without oxygen in sealed containers. The process is quite slow and can give off unpleasant odours and methane gas. In aerobic decomposition, the breakdown is caused by the action of micro-organisms that thrive in oxygen. The process is relatively rapid and does not produce unpleasant odours.

How to make your own compost

Many people choose to compost in a compost bin or tumbler. There are a number of commercially available compost bins:

• Plastic bins with ventilation holes
• Plastic bins without ventilation
• Metal drum with holes punched in the side and the base removed
• Rotating drum units (tumblers)
• Enclosures made from timber, bricks or chook wire

If you prefer, you can make compost in open heaps, but they should be covered with a plastic sheet or hessian to prevent the heap from drying out in hot weather. With any composting system it is important to achieve balance by using roughly equal amounts of greens (food scraps, grass clippings, leaves etc.) and browns (straw, fallen leaves, shredded paper etc.).

What can go into compost?

YES: Vegetable and fruit scraps, vegetable oil, prunings and lawn clippings, tea bags and coffee grounds, vacuum dust, shredded paper and cardboard, used potting mix, egg shells, flowers.

NO: Meat and bones, dairy products, large branches or logs, diseased plants, magazines, bleached and magazine paper, bread or cake.

Getting started

1. Spread a thick layer of coarse, woody prunings in the base. Do not press down.

2. Fork a layer of weeds, plant trimmings and old bedding plants onto the heap.

3. If the heap seems dry, sprinkle with water. The material needs to be damp enough to rot rather than soaking wet.

4. Cover the heap to prevent moisture loss and encourage it to heat up, quickening the rotting process that generates compost.

5. To speed composting, mix the waste you are adding with grass cuttings, chicken manure or nettle tops. If possible add an occasional layer of soil, for instance when emptying plants pots.

6. Be patient. Compost takes six months to a year to rot down. This is a natural process that cannot be hurried.

Top Tips!

• Add a mixture of tough and tender waste.
• The more you put in at once and the hotter the weather, the quicker it composts.
• A soggy smelly heap needs more tough dry stuff. Shredding the garden waste you add to the heap helps it rot
• To speed things along empty the bin, mix the contents and put it all back again.
• Spread compost on the surface or dig into the top few inches of soil in the spring and summer.
• Ask Northumberland County Council if you can get some leaf mould or compost from local parks.
• Form a compost club with your neighbours or friends and club together to buy a shredder that you call all use.
• If you live in flats with a garden, start a compost heap and check that each flat owner knows what type of waste they should be adding - make it a team effort.

External Links

• Composting with Waste Online
• Composting with Garden Organic