Morning, my name's Ali Mundie and I work in the Kitchen Garden at Harlow Carr in Harrogate in
North Yorkshire. We have a lot of vegetable waste and plants wasted this time of year
so what I'm going to go through today is how to build a compost bin.
The first thing you want to think about is where you're going to put it. This is a good example of a
quite a nice size of compost bin. It gets a lot of material in, a lot of material means it gets hotter
which means it cooks quicker, and that's a good thing. But you can have smaller ones, it's
just a matter of managing it. So this is a good bin, it's got open sides for ventilation
so that the compost bin won't get too soggy, it's got a nice area you can work in front of
you can get your materials in you can get in to turn it, it's actually an interesting example
because it's made out of waste milk bottles. plastic milk bottles that have been recycled
so you're even doing more for the environment with this bin. You can make it out of wood,
out of old pallets, everyone has a choice, it's what you've got, don't worry too much about that.
So the first thing to say is we've got this space here now which is about a meter squared
it had leaf mold in it from last year and we've scraped that out now and it's onto the soil, that's
quite important so that the compost heat can drain but also the microbes and the creatures that are
in the soil can get up into the compost heap and start processing it. So, to start at the bottom
we've got some twiggy material. One of the important things that you have to consider
is getting air into the compost because that's part of the process, so
here we've got a range of twiggy materials, some old branches stuff that we've used for plant
supports, some quite tender woody cuttings have just been cut off the hedge recently
and the idea of this is to spread it out on the bottom quite loosely just to give you
like a bit of a support that will have a bit of air in there at the bottom.
If you see that's just a very loose scattering of that woody stuff in the bottom.
Just put a bit more in to make it a bit tidier and now you're ready to start building. So
a lot of the stuff we've got this time of year is quite woody material, so you've got things
like big plant stems of perennials and bulbs, you can see they've got quite soft material on there
as well as quite woody stems and the thing about composting that's the most important is that you
get that balance between the woody and the very soft green stuff, okay, so when you're building
try to have a bit of a mixture handy in your mixture of baskets when you've been cutting back.
It doesn't matter that you don't make it all at once, because most people don't, because they have
little bits of stuff at different times a year but every time you make a new layer, just try to mix it
nicely and try to get a balance between the woody and the green. One of the things we always have
people asking about is lawns. Everybody's cutting their lawns and they've got loads of green stuff.
This is very wet and very soft green stuff. If you put it in a big thick layer it causes one of the
problems with compost, which is it becomes anaerobic it doesn't have any air, because
it squashes down and excludes air. So looking at what we've got here, we can put a few cut down
perennials that I've done this morning, just some flowers that are going over, so you can
put a bit in there like that just cross it over.
Then if you've got a little layer of that put some of this in
scatter it over the top just loosely
a bit more than that now. It's quite handy to have your stuff in piles by the side of the bin
and you can just then
just add stuff as it needs to be. So you don't want a lot of this because it will
fall through and block all the air gaps, and then you just simply keep going like that.
So in the wheelbarrow here I've just collected some stuff this morning that I've cut back and these
are some perennials I've cut down and you might think that this is green because there is a lot
of green leaf on it but actually if you look at the stalks they're quite woody. The other thing you
might be concerned about is that there are some seed heads on there but if your compost bin works
properly and you get a good mixture of nitrogenous green stuff and carbon, which is the woody stuff,
they should heat up enough to kill those seeds. So I'll just put a mixture of these on here
again just loosely sort of cross them over so that they're not all pointing one way so
that they kind of form a little bit of a mesh, if you like, we've just got a lot more green stuff here
we get another layer, it's quite a satisfying job to do on an autumn day
yeah, really good. So a bit more of the grass now mixed in because you've got some woody layers
going on, so you can put just a bit more in there, this is usually the reason it stops
because you make it too wet and there's too much of one thing. It is like mixing thoroughly a cake.
And then it is just a matter of a bit of a bit of a feel for it, just you don't want it too heavy
and wet feeling, so I'm going to put a bit more sort of woodier things even now and make another
another looser layer on the top. Okay so you can put leaves in the compost heap, but not evergreen
ones, because they take a long time to break down and any deciduous leaves you put in, you're
probably best to try and break up by mowing them so they're in small pieces. Other woody stuff you
can add if it gets too wet, tonic newspaper, that sort of thing, straw not grass, so quite dry again
that sort of stuff will help bring it back from if it's too wet and heavy. But otherwise keep stacking
and eventually you'll get a nice full heap and then you can put some kind of lid on it because
if it has a lid on it'll stop it from getting too wet in the heavier rain in winter
give it a bit of protection and keep it warm and the heat is what will make it cook properly. So
that's that's the idea. So we've got lots of nice old courgette plant leaves here they're nice and
easy to break down, quite soft leaves. The other thing I've got here which
again if you if it stops cooking, if it stops working, usually because there's too much woody
stuff we've got a plant called comfrey, which some people will have come across, it's one of
the Boraginaceae family and this is Bocky 14 which is from Henry Doubleday, from their
researchers there. It's a great plant, it's got a load of nitrogen, it's got a load of potash in it
so basically you put this in, it breaks down quickly, releases those chemicals and starts
that thing working again. They're very easy to grow and they're not invasive, so it's probably,
if you've got a little patch it's quite useful to have one, they will help with that compost
recipe as well just break them up, put a few layers on. These are from the brassica plants that are
great at shedding leaves everywhere, so kales and cabbages they're producing quite a lot of a mixture
of leaves and woody stems, and I wouldn't worry about breaking these up too much, they're
not too woody in that respect, so again another nice layer like that. And then you just keep going
like that until you've got to the end of your leaves and whatever and then put your lid on.
Now once it's working away, you can keep adding to it but in layers again, mixed layers
and it will take, depending on how well insulated and if you're how good your mix is, it can take
six months to a year, but if you get this right you'll get some lovely stuff out the other end.
Just a bit more mixing and that'll be all that stuff in there.
Some other things you might not want to put in to your compost heap are things like cooked food,
especially meat, because that, you will potentially have problems with rats then
but if you don't do that that will be fine. The other thing maybe not too much citrus stuff if you
do mix it quite well, you might have come across sometimes a problem where you get a lot of flies
at the top of the compost heap, quite often it's because you've put lemon peelings, bananas that
sort of things, orange skin, and that attracts the fruit flies. All you need to do with that
is just bury it, put it underneath the compost that's already all the layers that's already there.
The other things to think about if it gets too dry you can need to water it as well, put a little bit
of water in if you're finding it's just looking dusty and not actually doing anything.
So now you've built your compost, you don't necessarily have to worry about turning it
too much, what will happen if you fill the bin is that the centre will get hottest and
the outside bit won't be as hot so it won't necessarily rot down as quickly.
So, but that's fine, you can just take the central stuff out and then just reuse
stuff that's not properly composted and start it off again next time you do your composting.
So to turn the compost heap, this one's quite a good box because you can take the whole front off
you really don't want to be trying to lean over a gated box or or anything like that because it's
bad for you back, so you need to basically fork out and you can put something like a tarpaulin in
on the thing, or have a wheelbarrow, fork out the stuff, extract the good stuff that's become soil,
and then the rest of it put back. So you're just taking it all out, putting it back in again. Yeah.
So that might be difficult for people to do, but as I say it's not necessarily a thing you have to do,
So one thing you do need to remember if you are turning your compost heap this time of
year, there's going to be hedgehogs looking for places to hibernate so be really careful
when you start to do that process, just have a very gentle poke in first. The other thing we found the
other year was a whole family of toads living in our compost heap, which we had to rescue and give
to another home. So yeah, just be careful about that. Okay, so that's basics of building a compost heap.
I can recommend it, it's very satisfying when it works, it's great for the environment, you're
putting back into the soil things that you've taken away, so happy composting!