8 min read

Do the world a favour and compost!

Posted in: Ideas and Advice
10 October 2022

With enthusiasm for ‘growing your own’ flourishing over lockdown and beyond, getting the best from your soil, whether you grow in raised beds, or plant and harvest traditionally, or just have a few flower beds, compost is key to reaping the rewards. It’s also a brilliant way to be sustainable and benefit the environment in the meantime. 

What’s Good about Composting?

It’s easy to create your own compost, building on the nourishment that it gives soil, but also a really handy way to clear your garden without those regular trips to recycling. Compost bins also attract insect-life and can be a fantastic home for bugs during the winter months. The kind of bugs and insects you want in your garden! Compost bins will also attract more wildlife into your garden, including beetles, slow-worms, toads and centipedes which love compost heaps, and many eat the bugs, slugs and aphids you don’t want in your garden, so it’s a win-win. Compost bins allow nature to take its course, making a healthy, thriving garden, loosening clay soils, and helping sandy soils retain water. If created properly, compost is a fantastic natural fertilizer, often suppressing plant diseases and pests.

How to Make the Best Compost?

The micro-organisms (bacteria and fungi) that create compost from your garden and kitchen materials like constancy so find a spot that doesn’t experience extreme heat or moisture. Compost likes a shady or partly shady area best. Compost is best created on an earth surface for drainage and air flow, but if you are adding to a hard area, like a patio, then add a layer of sand to the base. Allow a minimum ratio of 25% up to 50% of green clippings to brown, then you can utilise your organic kitchen waste and woody clippings (brown -preferably shredded) for the remainder. Try not to over fill with one waste product, such as grass clippings, as composting works best with a good mixture. Compost is usable all year round, but your first yield is best in late summer, and early winter. Find out what’s good for compost? Plant waste, grass clippings, leafy plants including annual weeds, rotting fruit and vegetables, some pet beddings (check before adding), prunings, hedge trimmings, leaves, woodchip, and kitchen waste such as peel and scraps, and household such as paper and cardboard. Turning is also vital to mixing up the different types of material you have added, and with nature ready to go, you shouldn’t need to add any additional materials, such as lime, to get the best from your compost.

Find out what’s bad for compost?

Diseased or insect-ridden plants, meat, fish, egg or poultry scraps, fats and oils, coal or charcoal. Shredded wooden trimmings are great to add, as they increase air flow and give your compost the best chance to be its very best but not too much as they take longer to break down. Why it’s good to have more than one compost bin? All our compost bins are made from certified wood, pressure treated and come complete with a 15 year Anti-Rot guarantee. They work best placed on earth. Check out our range to see what suits you. You can also add a number of compost bins to your garden to create a variety for different needs. If you go for two or more, you can always have one compost ready to use, and one mid-bacterial decay which you can continue to add to - there’s no excuse not to go truly green this year.

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Gripsure decking installed at BluebellsGripsure decking installed at Bluebells
©2021 Tom Nicholson. 12/04/2021. St Austell, UK. Gripsure decking installed at Bluebells, Boswinger, St Austell, Cornwall. Photo credit : Tom Nicholson
Gripsure DeckingGripsure Decking
Gripsure Decking lifestyle shots for Homebase at Bluebells, Boswinger, Cornwall, Britain on 8 August 2016.

Gripsure Decking lifestyle shots for Homebase at Bluebells, Boswinger, Cornwall, Britain on 8 August 2016.

Gripsure Decking lifestyle shots for Homebase at Bluebells, Boswinger, Cornwall, Britain on 8 August 2016.

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