Compost Your Leftovers
Composting is great because it is fairly simple and is a direct way that we can have a beneficial effect on the environment.
On the one side, we are rapidly running out of landfill space and soon organic materials will be banned from landfill sites altogether. On the other, these materials are too good to be thrown away and the most responsible thing to do is to treat them as a useful product rather than a waste. If you need any other reasons: it can be a community building enterprise; it can teach your children about the world in their back garden; and it can be a source of worms if you are feeling very hungry.
Put simply, what we are doing by starting a compost heap is like creating an incubator for all the helpful bugs in our garden. So we need to ensure that we keep them happy.
So, there are only really two things to remember about composting. First, keep it aerated. The bugs need to breathe, so make sure there is lots of air mixed in. The two ways of doing this are ‘turning’ and ‘adding big bits’. Turning is the technical term for mixing with a fork. Adding big bits is the technical term for adding big bits (sticks/logs). These will take a long time to disintegrate, but at the same time will allow the air to get to the rest of your compost.
Second is a bit more technical. The bugs need the right balance of carbon and nitrogen. ‘Urrgggghhhhh…’ I hear you cry, ‘I hate chemistry’. So this is all you need to know: brown things have lots of carbon and green things have lots of nitrogen. If you have too many green things in your compost bin, it will go manky. So for every handful of grass, vegetable peelings or green leaves that you bung into the compost bin, try to put some cardboard (torn into little pieces), card egg box, thin sticks chopped up finely, dust from the vacuum cleaner or a bit of newspaper. Garden composting is an inexact science, but if you are using a lot of fruit, all grass clippings, have lots of flies, or it is all looking chocolate brown and slimy, you need more carbon.
Then, probably a couple of times a year, you will end up with nice, crumbly, dark compost to spread on your prize geraniums. There are other things that can be done if you do not have space for a large composting bin, by the way.
Almost the whole known world will be falling over themselves to tell you about home composting. Local councils love it (it saves them a whole lot of trouble) so a good place to start is to talk to your local recycling officer and/or look at their website. You might even be able to buy a nice shiny plastic composting bin at a special knockdown price (depending on where you live).
Otherwise, the Henry Doubleday Research Association give good general composting hints.
If you are really keen, my friend Nicky Scott has produced a very readable booklet called ‘Composting for All’ published by Greenbooks for a few pounds.
Join the fray by signing in.
Midhurst, GB , 20 Aug 2005
Rotting problems? Why not come to the Composting Clinic at Greenbelt this year? Find us in the Generous Space next to Pru’s Cafe.
30 Sep 2005
We’ve been composting now for three years (but are new to Generous). It’s fantastic. There is one tip though especially during the autumn / winter.
Compost heaps are lovely and warm and make an ideal place for hedgehogs to hibernate. Please be careful with your turning until the spring.
GB , 01 Oct 2005
marvellous stuff compost, most councils are now selling affordable bins, I do leaf mould as well, make some pals and clear their gardens of leaves for them.
02 Oct 2005
city dwelling flat dweller. can’t see how i can do this one.
South London, GB , 05 Oct 2005
We used to have a small bin on the balcony and got the council to provide a special compost wheelie bin. Maybe see what your local authority can offer. If you’re a Southwark resident you can get a kit for just ten english pounds. See http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/environment/RecyclingPages/HomeComposting.html
05 Oct 2005
have just started composting with discounted bin from south west water (also a rain butt-not connected yet)have a wormery…not too successful have killed two sets of worms in last 2 years so have stopped at present it does make a very smelly juice to dilute and feed plants with though
Plaistow, GB , 08 Oct 2005
This is cheating really as we’ve been doing it for a year or two. We’re delighted at how little goes into our dustbin each week. Kinder to our dustmen’s backs? Peter’s church also composts, with a special container for terabags after every service so everyone can join in.
09 Oct 2005
A new lease of life for our composting – our council had a composting day, so we picked up a £10 wooden bin for ourselves to supplement our existing one. Even managed to squeeze a big plastic one in the car to save a friend making the jouney too!
27 Oct 2005
Just started – how long till it looks like compost? (hmm week two and the wind blew the bin over – need to pin it to the ground a bit better!)
Godalming, GB , 28 Oct 2005
It could take a year or thereabouts, but it should be worth the wait. It’s useful to have two bins or piles as one needs to be left to rot once full while you carry on with the next one. If you are very impatient there are products available that are meant to speed the process up, but I’ve never tried them.
29 Oct 2005
I’ve been composting for a while and I’ve found out that it helps a lot if you have several composting bins (you are less likely to run out of space, it helps with mixing up the inputs e.g. you can spread the leaves or grass cuttings over 2 or 3 bins; and crucially, you can leave bins alone for a while whilst you wait for the composting process to complete).
You can speed the composting process up by using a tumbling composter which aerates the soil or by adding an activator.
Another way to compost is a wormery for kitchen waste – Can O Worms works well; the compost is great but you do have to extract the worms – I use my children to help with this – they are learning not to be squeamish and to care for the worms. There is an art to getting the balance in the wormery correct – but we find this fun.
A great source of supplies and information is wigglywigglers.co.uk
31 Oct 2005
We’ve just acquired our second composter, to enable us to keep it up through the winter. Great fun for all the family and very rewarding too!
31 Oct 2005
Been doing this for about six months now and cannot believe the results (even if I do find I need to pluck up courage to lift the lid because it’s alive in there)! I am using some ecological accelerator which works well.
Worthing, GB , 02 Nov 2005
We have been doing this for a year and a half now, and it is working great – we had excellent vegetables from using it too! Last week we also put in an ejester – for bones, fatty bits, left over meat etc. Anyone else doing this? Does it really work?
Birmingham, GB , 15 Nov 2005
Hooray! We’ve just got a compost bin, and I’m very excited about it… have been thinking about getting one for a while but YoLG has made me think about it more and more…so here we go! (is it a bit sad to be quite so excited about compost?!)
09 Dec 2005
Ali and I decided to give ourselves some sort of kitchen waste composter this Christmas. Choice boiled down to a can-o-worms (see above) or a Green Cone.
Eventually decided on the Green Cone (http://www.greencone.com) coz (a) it doesn’t seem to need any attention (b) it’s not fussy about what you feed it and© it’s cheaper.
When it’s up and running I’ll try to remember to give some feedback here. It needs to be in a sunny spot, so it’ll be the centre of attention in our 4 metre square front garden: who needs flowers? ; }
Meanwhile, does anyone else have any experience of using one of these things?
08 Jan 2006
Started composting, then gave up briefly, then ended up with a bee’s nest in their this summer. This suggested that I hadn’t done the composting correctly (it’s a plastic one) but didn’t want to upset the bees. I am now trying again. Will also build one at the allotment.
Nashville, Tennessee, US , 25 Jan 2006
A 28 year composter and organic gardener. Being vegetarian, composting, buying in bulk, and recycling leaves less than one kitchen-size trash bag of waste per week.
31 Jan 2006
The composting is going well. I’m keeping all the veggie peelings and my endless supply of used teabags. I think I need to start adding some shredded paper.
Stroud, GB , 31 Jan 2006
Hooray! Just back to composting,after a year without following move and much smaller garden. Before we had a large and traditional heap at the bottom of the garden; now we have large green plastic cone, via the local council special offers page. I hated throwing out stuff that I would have composted before, so it’s a great relief to be back on track.
26 Feb 2006
I think we are lucky down here in Devon, our council collects all food/garden waste and composts it all, although the bin they provided does get a bit smelly!
13 Mar 2006
Composting is great! there’s a real sense of satisfaction when throwing things away, knowing that they will go back into the soil again and the cycle will continue! was very excited when moving into my first house 2 years ago – one of my first purchases was a compost bim – parents have a lot to answer for!!!
17 Mar 2006
We compost all of our veggie and fruit scraps every day. We have a garden in our yard and we can’t let all that good material get thrown away. We also pay for a yard waste bin for larger stuff. And there are some veggie “scraps” that get saved in the freezer for making stock.
03 Apr 2006
I’ve been composting for a few years and I have 4 bins on the go and I still never make enough to satisfy my needs.If you are brave enough adding urine to the heap helps it break down quicker and also adds goodness to the compost.
07 Apr 2006
A “Peely bin” from the lakeland catalogue www.lakelandlimited.co.uk provides a nice looking container for storing organic kitchen waste before you get round to taking it to the composter – this also gets over the yuck factor from some visitors who haven’t embraced composting yet!
07 Apr 2006
My composting tip
If you don’t care about your compost being marvelous and working for you, don’t bother with all the forking to airate it, or the covering with black liner to heat it up. What I do is leave it in a pile to break down. I have about 3 compost heaps which I pile all my compostable items from food, garden..etc and then every so often, if the underneath looks reasonably OK, I use that straight on the garden. Sure, you get weeds but you get them anyway. It saves effort. It just takes longer so you have bigger piles of compost.
15 Apr 2006
We’ve tried composting in the past, but I’m afraid we just eneded up with a big pile of weeds. I generally throw food scraps in the garden where they decompose or feed neighborhood squirrels. We also have a rabbit who enjoys a lot of our veggie and fruit food scraps.
I see in the comments many of people mention compost bins. Does that work better than just having a pile?
30 Apr 2006
Composting bins do work better than just a pile.
If you want you can try covering your pile (grass clippings and all) with a black sheet (use a bin liner) This will heat up the compost from the sun and and hopefully as it breaks down it kills the weeds and weed seeds.
20 May 2006
Last year’s compost has now been harvested! It was great. We dug it into the raised vegetable beds we built last year which has produced a lovely rich soil for growing. We planted carrots, brocolli, letuce and beans. The shoots are now pocking through and looking great! The winter compost bin is brewing up nicely and the second bin is filing up… The future is great, the future’s brown!
Birmingham, GB , 22 May 2006
I loved the news item about composting preventing identity theft as all our shredded paper goes in the compost bin, partly for that reason but partly to bulk out the compost a little.
I’ve got a worm bin too which has taken a while to get going but I got very excited this morning when I noticed that some liquid had finally dripped out of it – oh dear, sad is that!
06 Jun 2006
Ordered a compost bin through our local council some weeks ago, now we have several tubs of rotting veg peelings waiting for the bin to arrive!
12 Jun 2006
Used our first ‘crop’ of compost this year. Wow! It was fantastic. The egg shells did not compost that well, but we shall remember to crush them up well in future.
We now have really crumbly rich compost.
So far with the heat our compost bin is going down and down, it amazes me where it all goes!
12 Jun 2006
We dont turn our compost, we were advised to add paper (scrunched into balls), egg boxes and loo roll tubes – this makes air spaces. We were also told to water our bin occasionally in the summer to stop it drying out.
Hull, GB , 21 Jun 2006
The compost helps with the Veg growing.
18 Jul 2006
Not wishing to be cynical, but the local authorities have recycling targets to meet, by getting you to use the council composting facility, they appear to be doing better, even though composting at home is more environmentally sound.
Get a compost heap, not a composting bin.
Luton, GB , 13 Sep 2006
I have two compost bins – fill one during the year then leave it for the next year while I fill the other one. By the end of the year the one that’s been left is lovely stuff (though it is surprising how much it goes down!) so I turn it out onto the garden and then start filling that one while the other one then sits for a year. Easy!!!
Newcastle upon Tyne, GB , 27 Sep 2006
I have acouple of compost bins in my garden and one for leaves. The compost is great for my clay soil. We have a cat and we use recycled paper cat litter which we put on the compost heap once unwanted items have been removed! I have just got a Bokashi system which means I can compost any waste food, cooked or raw, meat, pasta, etc. It doesn’t smell and the liquid you drain off can be diluted as plant food. You get a bag of bran with microorganisms in it to sprinkle in the bin. It seems to be working and after a fortnight of letting it rest it goes on the compost heap. It looks promising so far!
Leeds, GB , 03 Oct 2006
Hi, a newbie here! We are buying a “Compost Crock” from Lakeland (http://www.lakelandlimited.co.uk/product.aspx/solutions/recycle!20428). We rent our house and I don’t think the landlord would be impressed if we started composting, but my mum has had a composting bin for a couple of years, so as she literally lives round the corner we will save it in our crock and take it round. We are going to have vegetable patches in our own garden when we own our own house, so this is a start at least!
18 Oct 2006
We have just taken delivery of a wormery from the local council for the bargin price of a fiver! As we only have a small back yard this is an ideal way to compost all our leftovers. And it’s fun digging around to find the worms!
Maidenhead, GB , 18 Oct 2006
We have lots of lovely worms in our compost now. Don’t need to dig to find them!
17 Nov 2006
I am always worried about Rats!, but we have started again, so far it is good and not rats!
Manchester, GB , 06 Dec 2006
I use a plastic (recycled obviously) wormery ‘cause someone told me it was bad to have compost too near your house (flies etc. being hygeine problem I presume) I only have a small yard due to having a teraced house. Works great mostly cuts down on waste but every now and then get out some great compost (I’m no expert gardener so it could be rubish but it at least it looks good to me) But I can’t put fruit or acidic stuff in. Brown liquid that comes of (worm wee!) is also great for watering plants with. Worms also seem to eat much more if you keep the surface covered with cardboard etc.
Dublin, IE , 15 Dec 2006
I started composting in the summer having intended to get round to it for a while, but thought it was a bit ridiculous to buy a massive hunk of plastic in otder to get going!
Peckham, GB , 29 Dec 2006
We have just bought a bokashi em-powered composter: http://tinyurl.com/yhvulw
It is not supposed to smell so we keep it in the kitchen. Has anyone else given this a try?
Amersham, GB , 15 Feb 2007
This is a bit of a cheaty one for us – I’ve been composting for about ten years but I still get excited every time we dig out the new harvest of compost from the bottom. Composting (and recycling) keeps our trash output minimal. We are a vegan family of three, and are very chuffed that we never manage to fill a black sack for the fortnightly bin collection.
Eastleigh, GB , 24 Feb 2007
Just started to compost – have a new allotment and have very proudly built a compost bin (well, just a cylinder of wire fencing actually).
Am going to persuade my husband to pee into a bottle for me so we can walk it over and ceremoniously improve the workings :-)
26 Feb 2007
We have been composting for some time, but we have just bought a new composter. We have put the new one next to the back door, on slabs. Our other one is at the bottom of the garden on soil. I have read many articles on composting, some say put them on earth, some say on slabs. Anyway, we will see! The one at teh bottom of the garden doesn’t smell, so we are hoping that the one next to the house doesn’t, and if it does we’ll just have to move it!
Belfast, GB , 18 Mar 2007
I just got my wormery two weeks ago for my birthday and I am so excited. I have wanted one for ages and it all seems to be working well so far. it really does cut down on the rubbish.
Taunton, GB , 29 Mar 2007
3rd compost bin arrived today! Other two are well on their way. Plenty going in there from the garden and kitchen – but didn’t know you could add cardboard, so will add some of that from time to time to booze the carbon – same goes for hoover dust.
Bath, GB , 12 May 2007
Our wormery has been up and running for 2 weeks now – and they’re still alive so far!!
12 May 2007
Finally, after 3 years of composting, we’ve got some compost out and used it in the garden! It is heaving with woodlice (pill bugs) centipedes (or millipedes, i’ve not counted). Also some ants and even worse, slugs. But the man on the RHS helpline said that the insects were v. good and would only eat decomposing matter, so popping the compost full of insects into our raised beds (for the veg) would be OK. The slugs however, have earned my wrath this year and very ungenerously I’m using slug pellets (in the compost bin too, that’ll fox ‘em), alongside copper strips and gravelly stuff. It was too late for the tulips but they will not have my veg!
Bristol, GB , 13 Jul 2007
We only have one compost bin so we would have run into problems had our council not introduced a brown bin collection before our compost bin was full. The other advantage of the council scheme is that we can compost cooked food which we could not have done with our compost bin. There has been a lot of negative press about our council scheme but we are delighted with the reduction in the amount of waste that we now send to the landfill site.
Kingston upon Thames, GB , 01 Aug 2007
We’ve had a compost bin for over 5 years and it’s great – but a wormery is even better! Worms eat cooked leftovers eg bread, pasta etc – when you have a toddler there is often a saddening amount of uneaten food, so now the worms eat it and they make lovely liquid feed for our garden plants, bargain!
05 Sep 2007
Have just ordered my very first compost bin through my local Council website which also gave me a huge 75% discount! I’d recommend looking at local council websites as I know they are all under pressure to reduce how much rubbish they put into land fills and this is one way we can all help. I am also looking forward to some good compost next year too.
28 Sep 2007
We’re lucky at Westcott that there is not only composting going on for the garden waste, but we have a composting bin collection too. I need to slow down and remember that ‘straight into the bin’ when cooking isn’t the answer for the veg waste when it could be turned into brown gold for farmers, market and council gardeners, and the like.
Berwick-upon-Tweed , GB , 25 Mar 2008
If you live in a flat or in temporary accommodation, do what I’ve done and get a wormery. That way you can take you compost with you when you move on.
Sheffield, GB , 08 May 2008
Have just started composting as friends passed on their bin before moving house … with its contents! I now have a fine layer of their semi-decomposed veg peelings and hamster dropping over the boot of my car. Nice! (Thanks, Claire, if you’re reading this.)
London, GB , 13 May 2008
In the US we never got round to doing our own composting, but were lucky to have some friends around the corner who were more organised about it. Each week we’d wander round with a bag of decomposing materials to throw onto their pile. It often turned into a chance to stop and chat.
Now, back in the UK, we’re lucky enough to have a local council who handle the composting for us. In an area where few of us have gardens, that’s a bit of a godsend.
Leeds, GB , 23 May 2008
We’ve just started composting a couple of weeks ago, but I have a random question. I have a loofah that’s gone a bit nasty and was thinking about cutting it up and composting it, does anyone know if that will work?
Godalming, GB , 27 May 2008
We’ve recently acquired a pair of bokashi buckets for the food waste that can’t go in the compost bin. I thought we were wasting a lot of food, but after several weeks the first bucket still isn’t full.
This should give us some concentrated liquid to dilute for feeding plants and a pickled residue that is safe to compost or dig straight in the ground. I plan to update on our progress via my blog.
The cheapest option to purchase the buckets and special bran was via our local authority.
Godalming, GB , 27 May 2008
We’ve recently acquired a pair of bokashi buckets for the food waste that can’t go in the compost bin. I thought we were wasting a lot of food, but after several weeks the first bucket still isn’t full.
This should give us some concentrated liquid to dilute for feeding plants and a pickled residue that is safe to compost or dig straight in the ground. I plan to update on our progress via my blog.
The cheapest option to purchase the buckets and special bran was via our local authority.
London, GB , 16 Aug 2008
Started composting about April or so Potatoe and other veg/ fruit peelings and guinea pig litter. Fairly new to it but it is becoming part of my everyday routine. We got our composter from the council (They had a special deal with gardening company). Egg shells are another thing…
13 Nov 2008
we’ve been composting for over a year and its great