It’s time to compost

It’s the time of year to start composting or ‘‘lasagne-layering’’ your garden beds with green waste and crop residue.

What is better than reducing waste in our own homes by composting our own food scraps, cardboard, garden waste and lawn clippings?

The benefits of composting are abundant. It enriches our soil while helping to retain moisture and suppress plant diseases and pests. At the same time, methane emissions from our landfills are reduced.

There are many types of composting styles like hot and cold composting processes, worm farms and bokashi (Japanese composting style).

Hot composting is a great way to process bulk organic matter and getting rid of pathogens, unwanted weeds and seeds.

It involves building a compost pile of at least one cubic metre , which will easily get up to 70 degrees Celsius. At this level, it’s killing off the pathogens and seeds. To carry this out, the four universal compost inputs – carbon, nitrogen, water and air – are layered like a lasagne.

Carbon ingredients are anything that is dry and brown, that is, straw, hay, scrunched newspaper, shredded office paper.

Nitrogen ingredients are really fresh and green, such as, animal manure, green lawn clippings, food scraps. Water and oxygen are needed as the beneficial micro-organisms and worms need them to survive.

Interested but not sure where to start? Our Let’s Compost workshops help you transform unwanted kai, cardboard, paper and hay into nutrient dense compost to help your garden thrive. You’ll learn different composting styles including hot composting.

There are two workshops this month at Egmont Village this Saturday at 274 Korito Rd, 1-4pm, and at Westown (Korito Gardens), on Saturday, April 30, 28A Trafalgar St, 10am-1pm.

Contact Mieke.Verschoor@ sustainabletaranaki.org.nz to get your tickets and learn how this council initiative is bringing gardens to life.

This article was written by Marsha Khoo from Sustainable Taranaki