If you use your gardening bin to create compost, you will definitely know about the many benefits that come with it. However, whilst you may use your compost when it is ready, many gardeners have no idea that there are actually things that they can do to speed up the process.

Compost is known to be created naturally as bits of waste break down; such as food scraps and cardboard. However, whilst it is mainly a natural process, you can help it out by doing simple little things.

How to Help Out Your Compost

Helping out the compost in your gardening bin is actually not that difficult. It needs certain things in order for it to develop fully and they include:

· Water
· Nitrogen
· Carbon
· Oxygen
· Microorganisms

Each of the above has its own purpose within the compost and without any of them, the compost simply wouldn’t develop as well as it needs to in order for it to be of any use. So how can you ensure that your compost gets the right things into it? Well for a start you can add green plants or grass clippings.

Green plants tend to be quite high in nitrogen. So if you combine them with fallen brown leaves which in turn are high in carbon, you will ensure that the compost is developed as quickly as possible. However, you really will need to make sure that you give an even layer of each of the leaves and green plants; otherwise there will be an uneven amount of either carbon or nitrogen. That would in turn affect the way that the compost is created.

You should also keep in mind that waste materials do not decompose if they become too dry. So you will need to ensure that your gardening bin is actually kept quite damp. With the leaves and the grass clippings for example you should aim to keep them just as wet as a wrung out sponge would be.

It is worth keeping in mind that compost can take up to six months to occur if you do it passively. It can even take longer and so it is not a process that you can rush or use straight away. Passive basically means when you leave the compost to develop on its own. If you find that you cannot find many brown leaves around your home, then shredded newspaper can be just as good. It gives off a good level of carbon and it can also be ideal if you want to place worms in the gardening bin.

You can however, actively help your compost. That way it will take a lot less time to get the results you require, though it will generally be a lot harder to achieve.

Overall it can be hard work making compost in a short amount of time. You also need to ensure that you have the right sized bin. I f you purchase one which is too small then it will not get hot enough. So always try to purchase a gardening bin which is at least 3×3x3 feet.

Editors’ notes:
NowRecycle.co.uk is a trading style of Plastic Omnium Systems Ltd - a European market leader in waste containment solutions that provides a wide range of waste containers and services including wheeled bins, litter bins, banks, composters and sacks. It is part of the International Plastic Omnium Group, a world leader in contract waste container solutions with worldwide sales of more than £1.8 billion. It employs over 9,000 people in 25 countries, across four continents, in manufacturing and service solutions for the automotive, environment and performance plastic products.
Press Contact: Simon Dutta, N European Marketing Director, Plastic Omnium Urban Systems Ltd
Telephone: 01952 582 583

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 11:00 am and is filed under Recycling Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.