Mothers’ Day. Just Add Compost.

The second week of May is International Composting Awareness Week Australia (ICAW) to promote awareness of the value of composting.

The slogan:  “Better Soil, Better Life, Better Future” – too right!

Sounds fun, yeah? – And timely, as it finishes on our Mothers’ Day weekend!

So this Mothers’ Day, I’m thinking Mum would love a nice big bucket of worms, and some new gardening gloves (you don’t have to touch the worms)!

I’m a mum too (hint/nudge), so perhaps a new watering can for distributing worm wee onto the plants that do their best to stay alive in my wannabe deck garden would be nice.

It might sound like I am taking the.. worm wee.. here, but I really do support composting.  I aspire to grow veggies like my mum does.  She is a composter from way back, and the flavour and abundance of crop she harvests (and thankfully passes to the lesser gardeners in the family) is A.mazing! The really great thing about compost is that it’s organic and it passes all that natural nutrition to the veggies that grow in it.  This is her composting recipe.

There are 2 ways to compost:

1. Have all the materials ready to make up a recipe
2. Add to a pile as you collect garden and kitchen scraps

The thing to remember is that the proportions of the recipe need to be maintained as you grow the pile, or you can end up with a slimy, smelly mess, if the compost is too wet with not enough dry ingredients, for example.

Your pile needs to be at least 1 square metre.  It can be bigger of course, but no small than a metre is recommended when getting started.

Mum says she has had the most success with getting all the ingredients, and making up a complete batch.  It is easier to manage, and you get the ratios right from the beginning.

What you’ll need:

• ½ dry ingredients– newspaper, shredded paper, dry garden stuff – high carbon stuff
• ¼ manure – chicken, cow, horse, rabbit, wallaby – taking straw out of chicken shed gives you manure plus dry, and composts so quickly.  It is nitrogen rich, and makes vegies “jump out of their skin”!
• ¼ kitchen scraps or green, wet grass clippings

What to do with it: 

Build the heap in layers (like a lasagne) so that the pile is wet throughout.

make up a mix and keep turning it.

Keep adding to the pile every day with clippings and scraps as you get them.

Remember to keep ratios as you are adding, so you will need to balance with dry stuff if you have just added a whole lot of kitchen scraps.

In summer it might be necessary to put the hose on the compost to stop it drying out.

The key is to keep oxygen in, so you need to move the compost from one place to another to jumble and get the air in, and turn it with a gardening fork.

Mum has 2 bins, side by side, 1 metre square when made up.  Each fortnight, she transfers the compost between the two bins to get the air in, mix it up and ensure it is wet enough.

3 bins would be ideal because you could add ingredients to the third while you are moving the main pile.

So, have a happy Mothers’ Day.  Make the most of one mum’s composting tips to another, and enjoy the new fruits of your organic gardening labour!

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