Compost ingredients
1. 'Greens' or nitrogen rich ingredients
2. Other green materials
To make good compost you need a more or less equal amount of 'greens' and 'browns' by volume. You can also include small amounts of the 'other ingredients' listed above.
- Urine (diluted with water 20:1)
- Comfrey leaves
- Nettles
- Grass cuttings
2. Other green materials
- Raw vegetable peelings from your kitchen
- Tea bags and leaves, coffee grounds
- Young green weed growth - avoid weeds with seeds
- Soft green prunings
- Animal manure from herbivores eg cows and horses
- Poultry manure and bedding
- Cardboard eg. cereal packets and egg boxes
- Waste paper and junk mail, including shredded confidential waste
- Cardboard tubes
- Glossy magazines - although it is better for the environment to pass them on to your local doctors� or dentists' surgery or send them for recycling
- Newspaper - although it is better for the environment to send your newspapers for recycling
- Bedding from vegetarian pets eg rabbits, guinea pigs - hay, straw, shredded paper, wood shavings
- Tough hedge clippings
- Woody prunings
- Old bedding plants
- Bracken
- Sawdust
- Wood shavings
- Fallen leaves can be composted but the best use of them is to make leafmould
- Wood ash, in moderation
- Hair, nail clippings
- Egg shells (crushed)
- Natural fibres eg. 100% wool or cotton
- Meat
- Fish
- Cooked food
- Coal & coke ash
- Cat litter
- Dog faeces
- Disposable nappies
How do I make my compost?
You can make compost simply by adding compostable items to a compost heap when you feel like it. It will all compost eventually but may take a long time and if the mix is unbalanced, may not produce a very pleasant end product. With a little extra attention you could improve things dramatically.
An ideal mix
To make good compost you need a more or less equal amount of 'greens' and 'browns' by volume. You can also include small amounts of the 'other ingredients' listed above.
How to manage our compost
- Gather enough material to fill your compost container at one go. Some of this may have been stored in a cool heap and have started to rot slightly. Make sure you have a mixture of soft and tough materials.
- Chop up tough items using shears, a sharp spade (lay items out on soil or grass to avoid jarring) or a shredder.
- Mix ingredients together as much as possible before adding to the container. In particular, mix items, such as grass mowings and any shredded paper, which tend to settle and exclude air, with more open items that tend to dry out. Fill the container as above, watering as you go.
- Give the heap a good mix within a few days, the heap is likely to get hot to the touch. When it begins to cool down, or a week or two later, turn the heap. Remove everything from the container or lift the container off and mix it all up, trying to get the outside to the inside. Add water if it is dry, or dry material if it is soggy. Replace in the bin.
- The heap may well heat up again; the new supply of air you have mixed in allows the fast acting aerobic microbes, ie those that need oxygen, to continue with their work. Step 4 can be repeated several more times if you have the energy, but the heating will be less and less. When it no longer heats up again, leave it undisturbed to finish composting.
In our school garden we turned the compost to give it some air.
A link to know more about compost
No comments:
Post a Comment