MAKING PERFECT GARDEN COMPOST

Garden compost is the best possible way to improve your soil and recycle all garden waste. Anything that has lived, from an oak tree to a teabag, will eventually compost, but you should exclude all meat, fat, cooked materials and the roots of pernicious weeds such as ground elder, bindweed and couch grass from the heap.

Divide your material into two piles. One should consist of ‘green’ matter (high in nitrogen) like grass clippings, fresh green leaves and kitchen waste and the other of ‘brown’ material (high in carbon) such as dried stems, cardboard, straw and shredded prunings. Most waste material from a garden and household tends to be high in nitrogen which is why it benefits from the addition of more brown material. The secret is to mix the two kinds of material as you add them to the heap, with at least as much ‘brown’ as ‘green’.

If you have a container, try to fill it all in one go. If you have room for bays – heaps enclosed at the sides, often made using wooden pallets – build them at least a cubic metre in size, and ideally 2m x 3m x 1.5m high. You will need at least two containers or bays, ideally three. When the container is full, turn it. This means putting the compost from one bay into the next empty one. Then you fill the first one, now emptied, again. When it is full you turn the second into the third, the first into the second and start all over again refilling the first. Or you can turn a single compost bin by emptying it out and forking it all back in again.

Compost is made not by decomposition but by it being consumed and digested by bacteria and fungi. Tiny worms called brandlings, beetles, slugs, snails and woodlice all help. But without the bacteria you have no compost, and they need oxygen to survive – and this is the reason you turn it.

Air is the most important element of compost. But water is also crucial. Even if you have the right mix of brown to green material your heap can become dry. Keep it moist by putting a sprinkler on it if need be. But if it becomes sodden it’s a sign you don’t have enough carbon in the mix.

With a good mix of material, air and water a compost heap soon gets hot and this heat is the energy given off by the bacteria, fungi and nematodes munching through your waste.

By adding compost you top up the ecosystem that converts plant and animal debris in the soil to humus. Humus is the ideal soil because it holds nutrients and water within reach of plant roots and gives it that lovely spongy, crumbly structure both plants and creatures of the soil love