If you’ve been wondering how to make compost, look no further. Here are some basic composting tips to help you on the way to producing your own natural fertilizer for your plants and garden.

Recycle your garden waste – Every time you mow the lawn, trim a plant or dead head a rose, throw the debris onto a compost heap rather than into your green bin.

Save your kitchen scraps – We all throw out huge amounts of kitchen waste every year and, ironically, much of this discarded foodstuff is perfect of composting. Items such as fruit and vegetable peel, eggshells, teabags and coffee grounds are exactly the kind of thing that you should be adding to your compost bins as they have a high nutritional value and help other organic matter to break down and begin working.

Variety is key – Good compost thrives of a varied diet of biodegradable organic materials. Having a mixture of different types of kitchen and garden waste makes for a healthy compost pile and a vigorous composting process. If you only put grass cuttings onto the heap, you’ll find that the process will slow down and the resulting mulch will contain fewer nutrients.

Big is beautiful! – If you’re going for large scale composting and have a pile going in the corner of your garden, you’ll find that bigger is generally better. A nice big, high compost heap produces plenty of heat and this really helps to breakdown all those wonderful compostable materials like grass clippings, leaves and vegetable scraps.

Moisture balance is important – For your compost to work at its best, you need to make sure that it is neither too dry nor too wet. If your compost bin dries out, the composting process will slow to a virtual halt. In contrast, if it is too wet, it will become too loose and begin to smell foul. The ideal balance is a mixture that is damp, but not seeping, like a rung out towel.

Good compost needs air – You need a regular supply of oxygen for all those fabulous little organisms that break the vegetable matter down to get working. This is one of the reasons why aerating compost bins like compost tumblers are so effective. If you are simply tossing your food scraps into a regular bin or onto a pile, make sure that you still get some air through the mixture on a regular basis. You can do this with a specially designed compost aerating tool, which pumps air into the mass of the pile, or try turning the heap regularly with a fork or spade.

Get it time and love– you’ll find that different materials will decay at different speeds and factors such as the weather and outside temperatures will effect the speed of this process over the course of a year. Don’t rush your compost. Feed it with a range of organic materials, keep it aerated and damp and let it do its stuff. With a little care, it will develop into a rich, healthy compost packed full of the nutrients that your veggie patch or flowerbeds need.

Love your compost and it will love you back.