How to compost your organic waste

Producing homemade garden compost is a simple activity that anyone can start doing at any time, but the following pointers will make the task easier for you and far more productive

Gather it together

You don’t need a bin to make compost, although using one is tidier. Your local authority or waste-disposal company may sell cheap, subsidised compost bins; if they do, this is almost certainly your best bet. I find the most convenient is a one-piece recycled-plastic truncated cone with a removable lid.

Top tip Get at the compost by lifting the whole bin off once your compost is done. Set aside any undecomposed material on the top and put back in the same bin, or add to a second bin.

Add your weeds

Your heap will not get hot enough to kill seeds, roots or rhizomes of weeds. The best defence against weed seeds is vigilance, so that weeds are composted before setting seed. Top tip Deal with roots or rhizomes of perennial weeds, such as dandelions, docks and couch grass, by killing them before they go in the heap. Leave them somewhere dry and sunny until shrivelled, or bash them with a hammer!

Make it faster

You’re often advised to turn your compost heap – once, twice or even more. But there is no need; a turned heap might make compost slightly faster, but an undisturbed heap will make good compost in the end.

Top tip Chop up ingredients because, turned or not, your heap will compost faster if everything, and especially anything even slightly tough or woody, such as old stems of hardy perennials, is cut up into smaller pieces before being added.

…and your leaves

The leaves of beech, oak and many other trees contain a lot of the decompositionresistant material lignin, and are broken down very slowly, mostly by fungi. So if you have a lot, they are best quarantined in their own heap to make leafmould.

Top tip Stack your tree leaves for about two years in a compost bin, black plastic sacks or a chicken-wire cage. The latter is cheap and convenient, but the leaves will tend to dry out, so will need watering in dry weather.

Keep it warm

Don’t expect your compost heap to get hot. The typical domestic compost bin simply isn’t big enough to retain much heat, and will rarely get more than a degree or two above air temperature – but that’s all right. Don’t worry if your heap doesn’t get hot, because the bugs that compost your waste work perfectly well at ambient temperature.

Top tip Position it somewhere sheltered and sunny – your heap will stay warmer, and work faster, if you can keep it warm.

…and your grass clippings

To work properly, a compost heap needs food (plant material), water and air. A thick layer of grass clippings has plenty of the first two, and hardly any of the third, so can end up being slimy and smelly. The solution to this is to mix grass clippings with scrunched-up paper and cardboard to add air to the mix.

Top tip Compost old bank statements and credit-card bills. In these days of identity theft and data protection, this is surely the perfect solution.

In a small garden, you can use smaller bins, but there comes a point where home-composting is no longer a realistic option. For those with a very small garden, or even no garden, one option is a wormery. But wormeries are not quite as simple to look after as a compost heap, so do your research first. A wormery is best considered as a slightly challenging hobby. Top tip Consider joining, or even setting up, a community composting group. Try your local authority or allotment association.

Get to the end

Worrying about when compost is ‘done’ can be a source of much anxiety. Much of this is down to seeing gardeners caressing handfuls of lovely, crumbly compost from their own heap; somehow, yours never looks quite the same. But composting is not a beauty contest, and compost that looks a little bit stringy or lumpy works just as well.

Top tip Use two bins; one is being filled while the other is maturing. When the second bin is full, the first one is done (by definition).