Hello, Welcome back to HuwsNursery my name is Huw Richards and on this channel you can
find all sorts of videos from organic gardening were you are going to be saving lots of money
and growing your own fruit and vegetables, to then cooking them with lots of delicious
recipes. And today I'm next to my grape vine here uh losing it's leaves now cause we are
still just going along gradually picking some and eating them like that
and today I'm going to be sharing with you my top ten composting tips. Tip number one,
what green materials should I use in my compost bin? Now green materials are usually the ones
that have lots of nitrogen so stuff like grass clippings just use grass, leaves, you can
even use leaves but check out one of my other videos were I give you the basic rules of
thumb of if using weeds in your compost bin or not but basically just to be simple yes
you can use weeds but make sure that they aren't flowering and they haven't seeded.
Other things you can use is chicken manure, chicken manure is quite good as that's full
of nitrogen, loads of nitrogen, nettle leaves as well, comfrey and most importantly vegetable
scraps that you use in the kitchen. Just chuck them in the compost heap and those will be
very beneficial. And also something that some of you might not know is actually urine and
quite a few people collect urine and just dilute it a bit and pour it over the compost
and that is know as quite a wonder, quite a wonder thing for compost cause it has tons
of nitrogen and helps them (Compost) out. Now the best brown materials that you can
use are cardboard like egg boxes, make sure that it's not glossy like its got that plastic
cover over it. Newspapers and magazines that haven't got a glossy cover but still have
ink, I would actually recommend using it up if you haven't recycled it already. You can
also use bracken and I definitely encourage you to use fall leaves from the Autumn as
well, but even better you can make leaf mould and check my earlier video to learn how to
do exactly that and also sawdust and some some wood clippings as well. So those are
all really good nice brown materials. Okay so now for my third tip I'm going to give
you is how much green and how much quantities of brown material do you need? Basically generally
speaking just go for one part green material to two parts brown material, and just basically
keep it like that. You can use equal quantities of both but usually works better if you have
a bit more brown material. Like I said before these weeds can be composted, dandelion weeds,
they have long roots and sometimes can just sprout up again in the compost pile and just
start a whole another war against the gardener. So I wouldn't put dandelions but just make
sure like I said that the weeds haven't seeded and just put them in. Right so my fifth tips
it to not compost pet waste, the pets I'm speaking about are cats and dogs in particular
uh mainly because of their micro-organisms that are still in their manure but I would
encourage you to compost pet waste that are vegetarian for example guinea pigs and chickens
if you have chickens as pets. Definitely compost their manure, they are actually really really
good and beneficial for your plant but try and keep away from more domestic animals.
I wouldn't recommend composting any meat or bones, they can be composted but that would
just attract vermin and rodents and rats and you don't want really to happen around your
home. But we do put chicken egg shells and we don't have any problems with egg shells
but strictly speaking keep away from any meat. The compost pile wants to be in a warm spot
really, just it likes to have a temperature, a core temperature of around 130 degrees Fahrenheit
for my friends in America and 55 degrees Celsius here in the UK. That is like the perfect temperature
that worms like to live in, and it's just going to basically speed up the composting
process quite a lot. And now in the Winter months yes it does get cold and yes that temperature
will lower if you get freezing temperatures but what you can do to help make this better
is to just chuck over a fleece or a blanket just to act as an insulator like the insulation
in the house keeping you warm it's just going to keep the compost pile warm and the worms
warm to just let them carry on with their job, and then take it back off in warmer weather.
See how we've added the green mater here, under/over the brown matter there. Next you
want to every two to three weeks even just every month want to go in with a fork and
turn the pile over so tis allows oxygen to reach other parts that haven't decomposed
yet therefor also speeding up with the composting process. Now this compost heap does look very
moist and you want to keep it moist but not wet. If you're in a place that is open to
a lot of rain maybe just put a tarpaulin over it or a big plastic bag that has been shaped
to just cover it. Because the beneficial microbes don't like to be in flooded as you would expect
they just like it moist, moist like a sponge kind of that is what the texture you're looking.
Also the compost should then be ready in about six to twelve months usually around six to
nine months but six to twelve months is what you should give it if you follow the guidelines
and it should be dark brown in colour and crumbly when ready. The final tip I'm going
to tell you is if you're a bit short of green waste just go ask your neighbours your friends
and family kindly to save their vegetable scraps for you, so you get even more compost
for free so I hope you really enjoyed this video and if you haven't subscribed already
please do. I'll love to have you join us because I'm just going to share with you loads of
different gardening tips and cooking tips and yeah so thanks for watching and see you
again very soon. Good bye