Make your own compost

Your Challenge

Composting is a great way to turn food scraps and garden waste into nutritionally-rich compost, ready for using in your garden.

Compost is made when kitchen and garden waste breaks down over time with the aid of microorganisms, insects and molluscs. This composting process produces heat, which quickens decomposition and kills weeds and harmful pathogens. Composting can be a fascinating process and is easier than you think. Here are our simple steps:

1. Start by buying or making a compost bin for your garden. This could be a bin made from old wood (such as pallets), a pre-made option (there are lots to choose from), a simple pile, or you could upcycle an old bin into a composter by cutting holes in the bottom.
2. Put a pot or container next to your sink to collect your compost waste; you can take this to your outside compost bin at the end of each week.
3. Make sure you know what you can compost. Never add cooked food, oil or drinks. You can compost coffee grounds, loose leaf tea, rinsed and crushed eggshells, uneaten or mouldy fruit and veg (plus peelings), old flowers, weeds (except those with seeds), garden waste, wood ash, straw and torn up cardboard (no sticky tape or labels!).
4. Put a sheet of cardboard over the waste inside the bin too, to keep in the heat from the composting process.
5. If your compost bin gets full, stick a fork in it and turn the compost to aerate it: the pile will soon reduce down and this speeds up the process.
6. Finally, remember compost needs to be balanced, with two parts brown (carbon) to every one-part green (nitrogen), otherwise your compost will be too rich in nitrogen. A useful guide to what is brown and green can be found on the RHS website.