How to Make Compost To Bring Joy and Save Money
A few years back I’d never have dreamed of writing on this topic. Now I am the proud owner of five compost bins. What’s more amazing is that I see this as the bare minimum of what we need for our two allotments and small backyard. I’m not ruling out them multiplying in the future. Who would have thought it!
I’m fascinated by the composting process. With a bit of heat and the help of some wiggies that find their way into my bins, what used to be common and garden kitchen and plant waste turns into crumbly black gold. It’s the ideal stuff for working its magic on my homegrown fruit and veggies, providing nutrients and helping them retain moisture. The whole process warms the cockles of my heart and makes me inexplicably happy. So for any novices out there I thought that I’d share my composting tips.
The Economic Benefits of Composting
One of the reasons that I might be in the market for more bins is that I hadn’t realised the money saving potential of composting until this year. Perhaps buying bags of compost had always been an add-on to the bill when we’d been at a garden centre, DIY store or even doing a supermarket shop. To be honest I hadn’t really noticed what I paid for it.
But then I made some recycled strawberry planters out of old leaky water butts. I sprained my wrist badly in the process but that’s another story. Let’s just say that I learnt that power tools know how to give you a good kick if they are not used properly. My new containers were huge and I used all the compost that I’d already made in them. Even so I only half filled them. So I had to make a trip to the local garden centre for more. I think that our joint account was forty pounds lighter as a consequence. That’s a lot of money for a poor pensioner to spend on a load of dirt!
Types of Compost Bin
Three of our bins are those Dalek-shaped ones made of black plastic. They’re readily available but we bought a couple of ours for a discount from our council’s refuse department. I suppose it’s a win-win situation as it makes the bin man’s load lighter. Check locally to see if the same scheme is available in your area.
Another good source of cheap compost bins are local online market places. Often I see them being given away for free. For twenty five pounds though I’ve picked up folding wooden pallet collars. There’s four layers that stack to make the bin. This is ideal at the moment as we are still clearing a generating a lot of waste from our second allotment. It was very weed ridden when we took it over and clearance is still an ongoing project.
What We Do and Don’t Compost
You can’t just dump any old food waste in the compost bin. Allegedly meat and any cooked food are a magnet to vermin. I read somewhere that egg shells too attract rats but I’ve taken the chance here and haven’t seen any rodents running around with improvised helmets!
Fruit and vegetable peelings and teabags are fine. And if there anything plant based rotting in the back of your fridge or fruit bowl that will do nicely too. I also don’t feel so bad when there are vegetables that I don’t get around to harvesting. They just go in the bin as well.
Just be ready for a surprise if you compost seeds. I picked seven butternut squash that I hadn’t planted last year. But we’re not limited to composting kitchen waste. Shredded paper and cardboard goes in the bin too. The contents from the ash collector under our log burner also gets popped in.
In terms of garden waste nearly everything goes except pesky perennial weeds and seedheads. All those grass cuttings and swept up leaves are great. Woody stuff gets chopped up with secateurs and anything bigger goes through the shredder.
Compost Care
‘Build it and they will come!’ That mantra applies to the wigglers that have appeared in our bins. But you can add commercially bought tiger worms if you fancy. You can also pop in activator with enzymes to speed up the process. Some experts talk about layering and turning their compost regularly too.
Now if all this sounds high maintenance don’t fret. We don’t really do anything special apart from squashing the waste down every so often. Sure composting may take a little longer but everything breaks down eventually. We normally empty the bins and collect the treasure once or twice a year. Our soil is thanking us for it. It’s much darker in colour and every forkful seems to contain a worm or two.
Of course you might want to take composting far more seriously than I do. So I’ve added a link to a book that’s on my own wish list, Compost by Charles Dowding. This guy is the king of no dig gardening methods. I’m sure that he’ll be able to teach me a thing or two.
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