How to make your own organic compost

Sometimes referred to as black gold, compost gradually enriches the soil with nutrients and balances its moisture levels. Here's how you can make your own.

To make a good compost, carbonaceous material (dry waste, brown and woody, such as dead leaves) and crude protein (green waste, cool and wet, such as grass clippings) inputs must be balanced.

• The ideal proportion is 25-30 to one: a considerable amount of brown waste is needed and a relatively small amount of green waste.
• The compost pile should be moist but not soggy. Although moisture facilitates the degradation of the material by microorganisms, excess water effectively creates foul-smelling anaerobic conditions (lacking in oxygen), when the materials need oxygen to degrade properly.

• Feed your compost with brown and green garden waste, your fruit and vegetable peels, the straw or sawdust used as bedding for your herbivores (like rabbits), add a handful or two of bone meal and dried blood, and turn it over at least once a week.
• You can also add cow, horse or chicken manure and dust from the vacuum cleaner. Add to that an activator to raise the temperature and speed up decomposition.
• Although garden centres offer powder activators, comfrey, a natural activator, is just as effective.
• It is useful to have two or three compost bins, filling each in succession; when the third is full, the compost from the first is ready for use.
• The content of organic matter enriches the soil and promotes vigorous plant growth.

• As the excreta of earthworms are rich in nutrients, vermicomposting is an excellent source of fertilizer and a good way to recycle soft organic materials.
• Vermicomposters can be bought from garden centres, by mail order or online.
• They consist of a stack of three or four perforated trays. The lower tray collects liquid flowing from the upper levels, which is then collected and used as fertilizer.
• Earthworms are placed in the second tray, lined with litter (coconut fibre for example). Food scraps are placed on the upper level.
• In order to feed, the worms migrate into the upper tray, producing manure (worm castings) that can be used as a fertiliser.
• Only a few species of worms are suitable for this use. The most commonly used is the Red Wiggler Worm (Eisenia foetida).
• Given that you will need around 1,000 of them, the easiest way is to get them from a supplier. Ordinary earth worms are not suitable.

By making your own compost, you will avoid buying chemical fertilizers. You'll then be able to develop your own organic garden!