Summer 08 Newsletter

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Composting

Here are some ideas on hot composting from Dr Compost’s November workshop at Wanaka Wastebusters. If you can get to one of his workshops, do it – because this can’t replace the experience of a hands-on learning experience where you can ask questions.

Hot Composting - Dr Compost’s way:

There’s no right way to compost, there are many ways which will work. Use local ingredients, and materials which you have easy access to (no treated timber though).

Hot composting depends on a mixture of “greens” and “browns”. Greens are nitrogen rich: freshly cut grass, weeds, comfrey, yarrow, manure, fruit and vegetable scraps. Browns are carbon rich: pea-straw, lucerne, spoiled hay, brown leaves, wood chips

Layer the greens and brown like a lasagna. Water each layer gently. The heap should be as damp as a wrung-out sponge.

To generate the heat that bacteria require, you need some volume – usually people go for at least a one metre square pile which is one metre high. You can use a container which lets air in (like wooden boxes or chicken wire), or just pile it up on the ground.

Good things to put in your compost heap:

• Any type of manure except human, dog or cat
• Comfrey and yarrow (great compost activators)
• Seaweed (rinse first and chop up)
• Freshly cut grass in thin layers
• Fruit or vegetable scraps
• Weeds or garden waste (not seeds, roots or invasive weeds like couch).
• Leaves
• Peastraw, lucerne or spoiled ha
• Woodchips (bacteria like bigger things to cling to)
• Soil in thin layer (adding micro-organisms)
• Compost in thin layer (adding micro-organisms)
• Lime (especially if using acidic material like rhododendrons, grape pressings)

Bad things to put in your compost heap:

• Human, dog or cat manure
• Diseased materials (eg from tomato plants or potato plants)
• Weed roots, weed seeds or any part of invasive weeds (like couch)
• Pine needles

Cover and Turn

There are two schools of thought on whether to cover. Covering your pile will help keep the heat in, and the moisture.

The pile will get quite intensely hot, then over a week or two will cool down again. That’s a good time to give it a turn.

You want to keep air in the pile. Turning will mix up the ingredients and aerate it. Have a look at the pile – is it too dry? If it’s smelly, then there is probably too much nitrogen in it and you need some carbon/browns.

How long you keep composting and how often you turn it is really up to you. Decide on your timeline – “m I in a rush for compost, or have I got time”? Keep turning as often as you can be bothered. You can produce compost in 20 days, as long as the temperature is warm and you start with very fine ingredients.

Where to put the pile?