Compost Success

By Author: Jean Vernon1
Total Articles: 31
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Every garden and every gardener has a duty to recycle garden waste by composting. Most gardeners do this automatically, valuing the resulting nutrient rich material as a useful soil conditioner.

Composting is a natural process that occurs all around us in nature and actually needs very little human intervention. Unfortunately some gardeners still struggle to make good compost and sometimes decide that it is beyond their capability.

There's nothing mysterious about composting and it really is a low maintenance process with huge rewards. Not only does it save costs on disposing of garden waste, but also it transforms the waste into a very valuable material that can be used all around the garden.

By early summer when the garden is full growth the material that needs to be added to a compost system has usually multiplied hugely. Swelled by lawn cuttings, weeds and other leafy material a compost heap will be quickly swamped to overload if it is all added at once. Usually this is when you start to get problems with your compost heap. It's a bit like adding six times as many eggs to a cake recipe and wondering ...
... why it is a stodgy mess, you need to balance the wet material with plenty of dry material. In summer this can be more difficult, the sap is rising and most of the garden waste is wet. When it comes to grass clippings from the lawn you need to be very careful not to add them all at once. You can alternate layers of grass clipping, about 10cm of grass with a layer of cardboard, it doesn't need to be shredded, just sandwich them in layers to counteract the wet material. If you follow this plan you don't even need to mix it up until it starts to break down, it should simply biodegrade into a rich, brown, sweet smelling material. This can take about eight weeks or much longer, it doesn't matter how long it takes, just leave it to break down naturally. There is plenty of nitrogen in the grass clippings, which acts as an activator and you may even achieve a hot heap where the activity of the microbes becomes so intense that the heap heats up until it literally steams. This is good news as it will kill off any weed seeds and some plant diseases that can be harboured in composting waste.

Some gardeners add their paper shreddings from the office, or dry animal bedding from hens, rabbits and guinea pigs (bedding from vegetarian pets are ideal). Sawdust, shredded woody material, dry leaves, small amounts of shredded newspaper, egg cartons, toilet roll tubes and other cardboard are all ideal and help to create a balanced mix in the compost heap. It's also a good idea to cover it over to stop too much rain washing into it, especially if the usual June downpours are happening.

Occasionally a compost heap may be too dry. The quickest way to rectify this is to add wet, leafy material such as grass clipping and mix in well. You can also add rainwater, though this may cool the heap down too much, so should be a last resort.

Mixing the dry and wet material together will help speed the composting process, but it is not vital. As long as your compost heap or bin is open at the ground to allow worms and other beneficial creatures to enter in and you have a healthy level of naturally occurring microbes then the compost will look after itself and you can turn your attention to other things that need doing around the garden.

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