Getting Started With Composting 

Introduction 

Today I have a gardening blog for you. This blog is on composting or rather getting started with composting. This blog covers a few of the possible techniques for composting as well as the basic ingredients of composting, plus how to collect the ingredients. 

To Start Off  

What even is composting? You might be saying. Well in its natural form, composting is leaves falling of a deciduous tree in autumn, onto the ground, staying there and rotting producing after a time lovely nutrient rich compost for the trees the leaves came from in the first place and for new other trees as well. But man being man wanted to do this more quickly than leaves falling off trees. So, they decided they would do it in a controlled environment and that is the composting we know and love today. 

So What Do I Need To Do It 

Composting at its simplest is just layering organic matter in a heap, but it can be a lot more complicated, and you can really go to town and buy aerators, compost forks, and thermometers to name a few. So, I will just label the classic things you might need.

• Compost bins 
• Organic matter 
• Fork 
• Spade 

As I said before you can get a lot more complex than that, but those are just the basics. 

What Can I Compost 

You can compost a lot of things and these things are divided into 2 categories. Greens and browns, some examples of each are listed below.

Greens 

• Grass clippings 
• fruit scraps 
• vegetable scraps 
• coffee grounds 
• Eggshells 
• manure from barnyard animals (but not cats or dogs) 

Browns 

• Dry leaves 
• plant stalks 
• Twigs 
• Straw 
• Manure (this generally includes straw or wood shavings) 

That is just a few of the ones you can use you can use many more some of these greens fall under the activator category. I will just list a few of these here 

Activators 

• Urine (men’s works better than women’s) 
• Grass clippings (use sparingly in thin layers otherwise you just get a slimy mess) 
• High nitrogen plants (any will do, examples are nettles, comfrey, and legumes such as peas and beans) 
• Manure (this is all types of material, but different manure has different properties, however chicken manure is the best.) 
• Coffee grounds and tea leaves (these are high in nitrogen) 
• Mature compost/soil (these contain lots of microbes that are essential to composting 
• Used Cooking Oil (however weird this contains lots of nitrogen and studies show that compost made without used cooking oil contains less nitrogen than compost made with it!) 
• Comfrey Tea (a thing made from comfrey leaves that you can also use for a fertiliser for plants!) 
• Beer (but you must monitor the temperature because if it gets too high it will kill the yeasts that make it a compost activator. And something else to note is that it can attract flies to your compost bin) 

The good thing about all of these is that they are free or almost free, even the beer can be free if you make it yourself. 

The Compost Bin 

I put this after the ingredients for a compost pile because this can be as simple as a forest floor! Anyway, there are several options that are a bit smaller than a forest floor. Here they are. 

• Electric composter 
• Home-made composter 
• Cold composter 
• Hot composter 
• Worm composter 
• Compost Tumblers 
• Bokishi Bin

Home-made Composter 

You can probably find any number of designs for these on the internet, but here is a very simple one here. 

Materials Needed 

• 3-4 Pallets (if you want to put a door on you need 4, if not you only need 3. We got ours for free from our local farm shop.) 
• Cable ties 

Building it 

This is very simple as I said before, you may need an extra pair of hands for this one. Also get an adult because pallets are heavy. 

1. Stand 2 pallets up at a right angle to each other 
2. Cable tie them together (use as many as you feel necessary) 
3. Repeat step 2 with the 3^rd pallet 
4. If you are putting a door on, just lean the 4^th pallet against it then cable tie it on. 
5. If you have a door on, to remove the door just cut though the cable ties to remove the door. Then of course when you are done cable tie the door panel back on again. 
6. Complete, use your compost bin 

Using Your Compost Bin 

There are a few methods of using your compost bin. My favourite is the 3-bin method. Here is how you do it. 

The 3 Bin Method 

To use the 3-bin method, you need to have 3 compost bins (different types of compost bins are listed above). Basically, you fill bin no 1 up then when it is full turn it over into bin no 2. Continue filling up bin no 1 again. Then when bin no 1 is full again, turn the stuff in bin no 2 into bin no 3 and turn the stuff from bin no 1 into bin no 2. Repeat. The idea with this is that by the time the organic matter has finish being in bin no 3 it will be compost. So, there you go the 3-bin method in a nutshell. 

Using Your Compost 

This part is easy, just spread it over your garden and you will find your plants thrive. Super easy the last part isn’t it. Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. I will probably be writing more blog posts on the topic soon. Just a quick warning though, composting is addictive and like me once you start and see the results you will do more and more and before you know it your entire garden will be filled with compost bins. Well maybe not quite like that. I haven’t got there yet but any composting is addictive so see you soon. JK 

My Composting Setup.