Confused about compost?

National Compost Week (March 13-19), which encourages more people to compost, is coming to an end.

Compost is called “garden gold” by many professional gardeners.

The more you can recycle garden clippings inside your garden, turning them into compost, the more nutrition stays in your garden. That means you’ll need to spend less on fertilisers or mulches. When I first started composting, I got confused. Some people told me to throw anything organic into it – plants, flowers, grass clippings, eggshells and egg boxes, coffee grounds, cardboard, paper, teabags and raw fruit and veg peelings.

Others talked about the importance of achieving balance between “green” and “brown” materials.

Eventually I realised that they were talking about different composting methods.

If you want to make lots of compost fast, then you need to learn hot composting, which requires specific percentages of green and brown materials.

You’ll need to cut everything up quite small and turn it weekly with a garden fork. You’ll get good compost in about six months or sometimes less. But the easy way is called cold composting. It takes longer, a year to eighteen months, but you can throw it all in, give it a turn with a fork when you remember and generally ignore it.

It’s a very easy way of getting rid of garden clippings and kitchen peelings. However, the turnover is less. You won’t be able to compost as much garden waste and you won’t get as much compost.

Both fast and slow compost are equally good for the garden. I prefer the easy way, and I’ve never worried about green or brown, although I do add torn-up newspaper if I’m throwing in lots of grass.

If you’re trying to avoid using peat-based potting composts, the RHS says that you can mix around one third of your own garden compost to two thirds of garden soil and use the mix to pot up plants.