Exercise for your compost

I am not going to kid with you all, to make good compost requires a little effort, think of it as exercise that benefits you and gives you a boost and most importantly the soil is healthier too. Same same but different!!! When you get it right the garden will encourage you to keep it going, rewarding you with terrific results, just watch it grow!!. You will also encouraging comments from your neighbours like "Nice rake!!!"

So hows it done:

First my preference is to use materials you find in the shed, you will need star pickets (8), wire, chicken wire or mesh. Use these to construct 3 bays each to be a minimum size of 1 cubic metre, so 3 cubic metres. A cubic metre is 1 metre wide, 1 metre long and 1 metre high. You make the bays adjacent to each other, sharing sides so that they are in a line, the idea being you have one for loading in new material, one brewing and one that you are taking beautiful compost from and placing around the garden.

Now for the materials to add into the compost use veg scraps, foliage, leaves and bark, avoid meats, bread and newspaper concerns some people because of the inks. Meat and bread attract mice and dogs. Try and secure the compost away from your dogs as they nose around and eat all sorts of things out of compost.

Get some cow manure, cheap mulch like sugar cane and have it on hand to add to your compost maintaining a balance of air and water, not too wet or dry. Also what is known as carbon to nitrogen ratio sounds techo but its not think of brown and green. For example avoid a mushy sloppy mix this can happen when you add too much green that is grass clippings, veg and fruit and you will know when this happens as it stinks. In this case add your browns, like shredded paper, bark, cow manure. Get the idea

When loading up you first bay try and follow these guides. If you put a bucket of veg scraps add about 2-3 buckets of carbon rich material like dry pulverised cow manure or lucerne hay or a mix. Keep building up layers trying to keep with the proportions. 1 green 2 or 3 brown but it is like making a cake look after your mix.

Then get your yourself active and begin the turning over process, when the first bay is full it should smell sweet, be hot towards the middle and you will notice it shrink over time. Move the contents of bay 1 into bay 2, and start on bay 1 again. Over time you will be able to move compost into bay 3 where the mix will not be hot but is ready for the garden. How much time depends on the size of the material added to the compost, small shredded material will breakdown quickly. The same material will be quick in summer and slower in winter, the difference sometimes being weeks compared to months, but again that depends on how much work you are prepared to devote to your compost. A regularly turned heap will break down quicker regardless of the season.