Clean, efficient, economic and highly sustainable! It’s my belief that everyone should be composting on some level. Whether it’s using up your household scraps, freely disposing of your garden waste or supplying your garden with locally sourced nutrition — creating your own compost is straightforward and hugely beneficial. Here’s everything you’ll need to know to start composting for yourself.

A simple way to reduce waste, keep your bin clean, feed the dwindling number of insects and supply your garden (whatever grows in it) with high quality, fertile compost. 

If you have access to a garden space then it’s likely that you have either grass or leaves. Perhaps both? If so then you have fertilizer! First, though, they’ll need to go through a short process — composting. 

Any organic matter can eventually be composted. Some faster than others and with greater effect. Read on and learn all you need to know to make high-quality compost of your own. 

Using Compost:

Most plants in the garden, from veggies to flower to trees, will thrive with a generous helping of fertile compost. But it’s important to know what's what, to ensure that you don’t kill with kindness.
Soil consists of a mixture of sand, silt and clay, with the addition of fertilizers that make the soil fertile (nutritious for plant life) and traces of ash and other materials. 

When a plant or plants have been growing in the same spot (they don't have legs) for so long, they will remove the goods from the ground, leaving behind the earth that needs feeding. This is where compost comes in!
Compost will restore the soil nutrients, add beneficial living organisms back to the soil and will retain much-needed moisture.
You can buy compost, but if you keep a garden or know someone who generates their own (green) household or garden waste, then you can make your own!
It's free, easy and is of great benefit to the life outdoors — not just the plant life.

Compost is the true bottom of the food cycle. Generate it and you’ll feed the rest! 

Gathering the Goods:

Collecting this free plant food is as simple as cutting the grass or sweeping up the leaves. You’ll want to avoid contamination of plastic and other non-compostable materials as well as slow composting materials such as sticks, shells, seeds and needles. Keeping your compost pile contaminant-free will ensure thorough composing, avoid rot and increase its value. 

Leaves and grass cuttings are of no use to your garden just as they are. First, they must be composted. Fortunately, this process requires very little effort of your own and is spectacularly beneficial for the life that surrounds your home.

Say Hello to My Little Friend:

To turn a pile of leaves and grass into highly fertile compost for your garden, you require the hand (more accurately the mouth) of thousands of varied life forms, mini beasts and bacteria, that will churn the plant matter. Eating, digesting and transforming your garden waste into excellent plant food. 

As if by magic, the little composting critters will find their own way to your compost pile without your input. In time, they will do all that needs to be done. 

Finding/Making Space:

You need somewhere to let your plant matter lie whilst the magic happens. There are a few options:

• A trusty pile: Yes! All of the work can be done, and done well, by simply piling up the garden waste. It’s free, easy and effective. But you may not like how it looks…

• Homemade composter: Using some old pallets, timber or metal frames or indeed purchasing the resources, you can easily construct a simple composter.
  It’s up to you if you add a cover (a plastic sheet will do or even a lifting lid) but you can simply leave it as some walled sections - just make sure that there’s room and access to empty it when the time comes. 

• Commercial composters: Of course, you can always buy commercial composters that are very convenient and come in numerous sizes. Only, you may have to buy more than one as they also need time to be left to do their thing - you want the compost to be fully ready when you come to use it.

How Long Will it Take?

Typically, your compost will need a year at the very least! Sometimes up to three to ensure thorough composting. However, there are ways that you can speed up the process: 

• Turning the pile: Turning a compost pile to introduce what is the top down into the middle, will assist the process of decomposition by keeping the non-composted materials fed into the ‘heart’ of the pile. This is where the conditions are perfect for decomposition to occur and it is where all the little critters will hang out. You’ll see them when you dig into the pile! 

• Keeping it covered: Though it’s not necessary, it will speed up the process if your compost heap is kept covered, both for warmth and dry. This creates a finer environment for the critters to thrive and keep munching away at your garden waste.

• Ensuring well-selected mixes: If the pile is carefully managed so as not to mix ‘fast composters’ with ‘slow composters’ then your composter should be ready as soon as possible. Read ‘composting segments’ for more info. 

How will I know when it is done?

Don't fear! It's easy to identify well-composted materials. With a soil-like appearance, dark colour when damp and without any obvious, protruding and well-formed scraps of leaf or plant — your finished compost should run through your fingers and smell like a rich woodland floor.

Separating Compost:

It is a good idea to have multi-segmented compost piles or indeed separate composters to allow for different stages of composting. 

Say you have three compost piles (or segments to a pile) then each segment can be a different year's worth of waste. By the time the final and third segment is filled, your first segment should have finished composting and will be ready to apply to the garden. 

Additionally, if you are composting things that decompose at different rates, then you will want to have them separate from one another. For example, small sticks and needles are indeed decomposable, only, this occurs at a far slower rate to the decomposing of leaves and grass cuttings. So, you may have a ‘slow decomposing’ compost pile and a ‘fast decomposing’ pile. This way, when the leaves and grass have finished decomposing, you won't have to separate them from the sticks and needles that are not yet finished in order for the compost to be of use. Equally, you won't have to wait longer for it to have all finished the process of decomposition.

Household Composting:

So far, I have been discussing garden waste & composting. However, all the same, rules apply with household composting. There are a few more things to bear in mind as the waste from the kitchen is far more varied and therefore likely to cause some disturbances to the composting process. Here’s what I look out for:

Keeping it raw: You can compost cooked food if you want to. Personally, I don't bother. Cooked food can lack nutrient quality. But more importantly, it is far more susceptible to moulding and more likely to attract unwanted pests (rats and mice). Mould is not something that you want a lot of in your compost. Finally, cooked waste usually contains many more ingredients, the likes of which have unnatural origins or inorganic derivatives.

Fast and slow compost: Like the differing composting rates between sticks and leaves, there are food scraps that decompose at a fast rate and others at a slow rate. Some examples of slow composting waste would be citrus fruits and peels, seeds and hard cases/shells. These could be added to a pile of their own (a slow composting pile) and allowed to decompose separately from the other fast composting waste, comprised of greens, vegetable offcuts, soft peels (banana peel, onion skin, carrot and other root peels), roots, and many other raw and soft food scraps. 

Keep it plant-based: Food scraps derived from animals are highly likely to rot/encourage mould and can also attract pests. Personally, I avoid adding any animal derivatives to my compost pile as I’m also sceptical of the medical and hormonal influence of the animals.

Having said this, these products (as well as cooked waste) are indeed compostable but should perhaps be composted underground where they are less likely to rot and attract pests and can simply be forgotten about. I personally don’t bother with these methods of composting.

Dangers of Partially Composted Plant Matter:

I’ve been talking at such length about compost rates, piles and quality to help you avoid a crucial error — damage or even death to your precious garden plants. 

As the composting process requires a plethora of living organisms to essentially digest the plant matter, the conditions of a compost pile need to be quite different to that of a vegetable or flower bed. You can have those thriving insects eating your living plants! This is why compost must indeed be compost when it is applied to your bed and not compost-ing. Introducing too much plant matter that has not yet been composted may pose a threat to your garden vegetation.