My Fledgling Garden

Last year I started composting. My father in law had a compost bin languishing behind his shed, and I asked if I could have it. It was one of those green plastic ones that our local council gave away a few years ago. I brought it home and then wondered just what I was going to do with it.

Compost is a natural organic material that contains important nutrients and nitrogen beneficial for the health and growth of your garden plants and vegetables. It improves the condition of the soil, and helps to retain moisture for your plants to take in and absorb. If you are gardening in earnest, making your own compost is a natural step. Much of our kitchen waste can be composted, which will provide nutrients for all the plants in your garden. These in turn will provide leaves, twigs and garden waste that can be put into the compost bin. And so the cycle continues.

And why send good composting material to land fill when it can be used to improve our own back gardens? When kitchen and garden waste goes into landfill sites, it ends up getting buried and producing methane as it rots. This damages our environment. Composting is done above ground by all the lovely worms, microbes and bacteria and no methane is produced.

When I took possession of my compost bin, I didn't know the first thing about compost. I always bought mine from the garden centre, put it into my raised beds or pots and planted my plants. I didn't give any particular thought to the compost itself. Now I wondered how to actually go about filling the bin. And with what?

Making compost is a bit like making a cake. You need the right amount of ingredients in order to make good compost, so try and aim for a 50/50 mix of 'green' and 'browns'.
Greens are important because they rot quickly and provide a moist nutrient rich material. They  include:
grass cuttings, soft plant cuttings, dead flowers, bedding plants and leaves, tea bags and leaves, vegetable and fruit peelings tops and leaves, used coffee grounds and filters, young weeds, poultry and horse or cow manure.
Browns are important because although they are slow to rot down, they provide carbon and the fibrous material which holds pockets of air. Browns include:
cardboard egg boxes, egg shells, shredded paper, cardboard tubes, cereal boxes, twigs, straw and hay, wool, vacuum cleaner contents, bonfire and barbecue ashes, bedding from pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs.
There are also items that shouldn't be put into a compost bin. They include:
cooked food, diary products, dog faeces, diseased plants.
All the above will smell as they rot down and attract rats and mice.

Looking at the above lists, there really isn't much that can't be put into the compost bin. The key is to maintain a balance of green and brown material.  For example, if your compost looks a bit dry, then add more green material. It's also worth adding your material in thin layers. If you dump a load of grass cuttings from your mower into the compost bin (as I have done), it will just become slimy. Try and mix it up with some brown material, so that it can rot down more effectively.

I was naive enough to think that I would be spreading my home grown compost around almost immediately. I should have known that the process takes time. Good compost can take up to a year to be produced. It cannot be rushed. Site your bin on bare earth, so that the worms can get up inside it. It's also a good idea to put it where it gets some sun. Most bins are hidden away in the shade, but it needs a little heat from the sun to get the process started. I have sited mine down the side of the house, next to the chicken run.

Once you have a good heap of material inside the bin, it will heat up. When it has cooled it will be time to turn it. The reason for turning it is so that it can be aerated and no slimy mass has congregated anywhere. This is not so easy in my bog standard bin. You could tip it all out, turn it and pile it all back in again. I didn't have the space for that, so I tried as best as I could with my fork. I also had a go with gloved hands, but only the one time...

I got a great deal of satisfaction in taking all my kitchen waste down to the compost bin every day. I lifted the lid and threw it all in.When we harvested the broad beans, Olly carried all the spent pods and threw them into the bin. Ditto any other garden waste. We could never resist having a peek inside. The flies that may be on the top are harmless fruit flies, but if you don't like that you could always cover the top of your compost with a bit of old carpet to stop them hanging around. I was always amazed at how it had all rotted down if we had been away for a few days camping. It didn't smell unpleasant either. Olly loved being part of the process, and although he probably isn't old enough to fully understand the mechanics of composting, he is growing up with a nod to the mindful way we try and get rid of our waste.

This weekend I proudly deposited my home made compost all over my raised vegetable beds. It was moist, crumbly stuff that smelt pleasantly of the earth. There was still a few egg shells here and there and some twiggy bits that hadn't completely rotted down. I put those back into the compost bin, ready to start the process all over again. I cannot tell you how proud I was of my first batch of home made compost.

Leanne xx