Composting at home

Even people without gardens can do at least some composting at home – even a small balcony can house a wormery and a large house with lots of outdoor space will have lots of material to compost and plenty of space to make and use it. Compost systems exist for every eventuality and there’s plenty to explore here. There are a few different systems and equipment depending on what materials you are looking to compost.

Composting garden waste

This is pretty straight forward as garden clippings, hedge prunings, weeds, stalks and leaves etc tend to have a fairly good natural balance of air and water, although very wet materials, such as fresh grass clippings, will need to be balanced out with dry and tougher materials to balance the moisture and allow airflow too. If you want to know more about it visit the garden composting page.

Composting food waste

Food waste tends to be more wet, dense and, if not composted well, can lead to flies, smells and rats. There are systems for composting food waste on a household scale which avoid these problems. Visit the food waste composting pages to find out more.

There is so much that can be written on the subject that Nicky has written and published three books and booklets so far on composting – go to the Links and Resources page to see them. He has also made various films that go into the finer details! Some of these films can be viewed on from the films page and include ‘the Happy Heap‘ a short animation as well as a film about how to get the best out of your Dalek composter. Of course there are loads of other books and films out there, and Nicky’s own personal guru and teacher was the late and great Dick Kitto, so if you can find any of his books they are highly recommend them. See Links and Resources section for more.