How to Start Composting at Home

If you’re looking to grow amazing produce and decorative plants at home, and you’d like to do it while
limiting your environmental impact and your costs, then at-home composting should be an essential
consideration.

While it might seem intimidating, this practice is actually very straightforward. By composting at home,
you’ll be preventing food waste from going to landfill, and reducing your spending on store-bought
fertilisers.

What goes in your compost?

Just about anything that comes out of your kitchen and will decompose can go in your compost bin.
So too can a lot of garden waste. Grass cuttings and dead leaves will break down nicely, as might
eggshells, spent coffee grounds, and sawdust.

What do I need?

You’ll need a space for all of these materials to intermingle and break down. It should be large
enough that you can easily insert a garden fork and turn it over. You can either buy your bin ready-to-
go, or you can build one yourself. The former option is perhaps the easiest, especially if you work for
the NHS. You can source these from large retailers like Argos, and make use of an NHS discount.

First steps

Your bin should be accessible to the worms and insects in your garden. This means allowing a route
up from the soil into the bottom of the bin. If you’ve just mown the lawn, you can put the cuttings in
there to get the process kick-started. Keep a container in your kitchen and dump the contents in the
outside bin regularly. Turn the contents of your compost bin once a month.
Other Tips

Generally speaking, it’s best to add to your compost bin gradually, and to use a diverse range of
different materials. Certain items, like potato peel, will tend to produce better results than others, like
citrus. Cooked starch, meat and fat all tend to attract rats, so avoid them. Try to avoid a sunny
location for your compost, as this will make it difficult to control moisture.
If the compost looks excessively slimy, then it’s not getting enough air. If it looks too dry, then you can
add a little bit of water. If you want to get advanced, you might add blood from the last joint of meat
you butchered. If you’re attracting flies, then this might be a sign that the compost isn’t properly
aerated. Cover any kitchen waste with garden waste, and turn thoroughly.
You’ll know when compost is ready, as it will become dark and crumbly.