How to harvest your compost
November 7, 2018
How to harvest your compost
Written by David, a Leicestershire Master Composter
I spent a pleasant few hours in the wonderful early November day sunshine breaking down my two home compost bins. It’s an annual job that I tend to put off but really enjoy once I get going!
One bin is a larger 330ltr ‘dalek’, the other is my original upcycled 240ltr green bin.
They are filled mostly with garden clippings, paper shredding / cardboard and green kitchen ‘waste’.
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- 1. Tip over the whole bin into a large plastic sheet and then scoop out / turn over / chop up the output with a spade. Like most composters, I don’t bother trying to get it out of the little hatch!
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- 2. Pick out the bigger sticks (glad I chopped up my input materials!)…
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- 3. …and plastics (like tea bag ghosts)
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- 4. Separate out the compost into ‘good stuff’ (which was at the bottom of the bin), ‘almost there’ and ‘still to compost’ (mostly at the top)
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- 5. Bag up the ‘good stuff’ and put to one side to mature for a few weeks.
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- 6. Use the ‘almost there’ stuff to dress your garden beds, shrubs and trees. You can bag it up and leave it a bit longer to mature but this saves a lot of extra effort.
Clean out and restart one of the bins using any ‘still to compost’ stuff from the old bins to create green / brown layers – adding some moisture (rain water if possible) plus a natural accelerator (nettle tops, comfrey, borrage, well rotted manure, diluted urine, etc).
Finally, I added the twigs to my woodland wildlife pile behind the shed and put the thankfully few plastics bits in the council black bin.
So no excuses – get out there and harvest your own black gold!
Regards David (Leicestershire Master Composter)
