The super easy way to be a lazy composter
Get some special friends to do it for you & grow a garden like this
Ben elms'first-
ever compost pile was an accidental success. But he discovered that even good compost can be problematic.
“I was of the idea that compost should be out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I did a straw bale heap where you use the bales as the sides and magically, somehow, I made compost.
“But it was at the bottom of the hill and the garden was at the top and while I was wheeling it up the hill my brain was going ‘ this isn't quite right, this makes no sense'.”
Ben would never treat his compost so poorly again. He has spent the last 21 years studying, reading and experimenting. The first experiments didn't end well. “I once filled a black bin full of food scraps and went back to it after six months expecting to see this amazing compost. But all I had was an anaerobic, smelly, putrid, rat-infested… mess.”
He's learned a lot since then. His alterego is Dr Compost, the resident rot expert of the Wanaka Wastebusters programme. His mission is to get people excited about making and using rich, rotting compost.
“The two complement each other really well. You keep food waste out of landfill, but if you can get people gardening then they'll want to compost. The link is there, they're interested in their vegetable garden, so we show them how to make their land more fertile and compost is a great pathway.”
When you've made as much compost as Ben, you quickly find the biggest problem for beginners is they're invariably missing a key ingredient.
“The number one problem is no-one is putting carbon into their heap."
Cardboard, paper, straw and hay, dried leaves, sawdust, woodchips and small branches are good carbon sources.
“Another key thing when people are making compost, they're putting their carbon in dry. It's a good idea to have it soaking in buckets of water. If you think of straw or sawdust or woodchip, they're almost hydrophobic, they're repelling water, so it's quite good to soak those things.”