Make your own compost

THIS New Year, make a resolution to get into the habit of recycling your garden waste.

Ideally, buy an insulated compost bin with a fitted lid and site it in a sunny spot on bare soil. To improve drainage inside the bin, put a layer of twigs in the bottom before filling with organic ingredients.

What a rotter

Quick to rot and providing valuable nitrogen are leafy vegetable tops and stalks, spent cut flowers and houseplants, coffee grinds and tea leaves and even SAVE bubble wrap from Christmas pressies it bought online – makes brilliant greenhouse insulation. orange peel. Add to this mix fibrous material that rots more slowly, such as shredded Christmas tree clippings, evergreen prunings, natural wine corks, nut shells and even used kitchen paper.

But never add bones, bread or cat litter and cooked food, meat or fish.

Press the accelerator

Top up your compost bin every week with the good ingredients and add an accelerator such as a nitrogen-rich fertiliser or urine. It takes between nine and 12 months for compost to break down enough to use.

In great condition

Only when your recycled waste has turned into a dark, crumbly earthy mix can it be used as soil conditioner to enrich borders and your vegetable plot. You can also put it to use as mulch.

Homemade garden compost has everything your plants need, including the main nutrients of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and will help improve soils that are very acidic or alkaline.