GARDENING How to make your own compost

Turn your waste into black gold


Growing
Hans Wieland

When I arrived in Ireland in 1985, composting as part of recycling household and garden waste wasn’t a well established practise. People often dumped grass clippings or put kitchen waste into the refuse bin instead of composting. That has dramatically changed in the last 28 years, because the benefits are obvious.
Now, County Councils actively encourage people to compost at home. Materials that can be composted account for as much as half of household waste. By making compost at home, in a community, a school or in an allotment you can make a major contribution to waste reduction and do something good for the environment.
With renewed interest in growing vegetables, home composting has become prized as a valuable and cheap source of creating that ever-important fertiliser, or ‘black gold’ as some gardeners call it.
As you clean-up beds in the Autumn, build your compost heap to have a good source of compost available early next year.
Composting is a natural process requiring little expertise if you just follow these seven guidelines.

Choose the right site
Ideally your composter should be near to your home, with easy access.  It should be located in a dry, free-draining area of your garden in a site that isn’t shaded.

Compost the right stuff
The two main sources of home compost are garden waste (leaves, grass cuttings) and  kitchen waste (uncooked vegetable matter). Leftovers from cooked food – meat and chicken etc – can pose problems by attracting vermin. If you want, they can be dealt with by worm composting, but that’s a different article!

Choose the right container
A wide range of compost containers are available on the market, or you can build your own with recycled pallets. A family of three to four people would need a compost bin with a capacity of around 300 litres.

Know the right method
Waste is divided into green and brown categories, depending on its chemical make-up. Green waste would include grass cuttings, vegetable peelings and scraps, young weeds, poultry manure, comfrey leaves and seaweed. Brown waste includes egg shells, wood ash, untreated sawdust and wood shavings, small amounts of soil, shredded hedge clippings, autumn leaves, old plants, small quantities of shredded newspaper, straw and hay.
Ideally, you want to achieve an equal balance of both by alternating layers of green and brown material, with each layer between 5cm and 10cm thick. If you struggle to gather enough brown material gather a few sacks of autumn leaves and add to your heap throughout the year. Start your compost with a layer of brown material.

Get the moisture right
It is important that your compost is not too wet or too dry. Too much wet material will restrict the amount of air in the compost, slow up the process and lead to offensive odours. In Ireland, your container needs to be rainproof. If the compost is too dry, the process will be very slow. Simply watering the compost should remedy this.  Stick a garden fork into your compost bin every few weeks to loosen up its contents. This will allow air to circulate and speed up the process of making compost.
The right end product
Ideally you are aiming for a sweet-smelling, dark brown crumbly compost. Don’t be put off if there are a few woody branches or egg shells that are not fully decomposed.

Using it right
Work compost into your soil as a soil improver, or use it as a 5cm mulch around plants to suppress weeds, improve the soil and retain moisture.

The Organic Centre has produced a booklet, ‘A guide to home composting’, which is available through the Organic Centre at www.theorganiccentre.ie.

Hans Wieland is training manager at The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim, which offers courses, training and information on organic growing and cooking, and runs an Eco Shop and an online gardening store. For more information, visit www.theorganiccentre.ie.
Gardening questions or comments? Contact Hans at living@mayonews.ie.