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I’ve always thought about creating the Greatest Hits (or Greatest Myths) for gardeners. There are so many things you should and shouldn’t do when gardening and creating compost.��

Starting a compost system: Do we really need a “Compost Starter” to kick it off?��

The easiest way to make compost is by sticking (roughly) to a ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen of something like 30:1. If you chuck a big heap of chipped wood (C) in the bin, you will need some grass clippings (N) to fire it all off. Even a simple pee on the heap will do the trick, or some Urea fertiliser, or even some old soggy lettuce.��

Crushed egg shells around your vegetables are said to stop the slugs and snails as they won’t be able to cross the sharp egg-edges with their soft and tender “foot”. Molluscs do not actually come in contact with the sharp substrate as they glide over the slime they produce themselves!��

And if you put the crushed shells into the compost bin, the calcium will eventually turn into useful calcium – eventually means “a few years later at least”, so don’t bank on a quick-release fertiliser!�� Besides: they don’t really add a lot of value to your compost.��

Ah! To speed up composting waste material, do we need to turn the heap every now and then?��

Good question! Aeration will indeed help the process a bit… but so do mice and rats digging tunnels for their nests. Perhaps the question should be: how much time do you, personally, have to “turn” the compost? Every 3 or 4 weeks.��

Cooked food in the compost bin? ��

Why not? It’s basically the same as un-cooked food, so why chuck it in the rubbish bin?��

Dead Animals or left-over meat in the compost bin?��

Everything that once lived is compostable – simple as that. Animals and old meat will take longer and it might start to smell somewhat, but it certainly will compost.��

Can weeds be composted?��

Of course! Weeds are simply plants too and when you pull them out, they will decay and form compost, just like any other organism, but should you?��

That depends on the kind of weed it is and if it has set seeds or survives on a vigorous root-system.��

How fast can you make compost?��

Depends on what you make it from; You’ll need C and N plus support from fungal organisms and microbial life-forms. In general, it’ll go quicker when you are in a warm part of the world and slower in a cool area.��

Here’s another bit of science: a compost tumbler is usually quite a bit smaller than a wooden compost bin, sitting on the soil. That means the tumbler won’t heat up as much (or at all!) as the larger bin and that may slow the process down – but it certainly will work albeit not so fast.��

What can we Learn FROM Nature making its own compost?��

Leaves fall down; twigs and sticks break off and join the leaves. Fruit and seeds join the party and every now and then a big branch with deliver a lot of Carbon.��

“Recycling insects” and Microbes help the compost process out; worms transport the end-product to deeper layers in the soil where it’s needed by the roots… and it just carries on in its own tempo…��

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