Composting

Making a compost heap is invaluable for remote communities. It will be your free supply of soil conditioner that is usually $16 per bag. Composting also recycles all the vegie scraps, lawn clippings, old straw and leaf litter and turns it into beautiful soil.   Composting is all about creating the right environment for the production of microscopic bacteria that actually creates the compost. The most important thing to know about composting is the carbon to nitrogen ratio : 40 parts Carbon (dry material) to 1 part Nitrogen (wet material).  Examples of things that contain Carbon and Nitrogen are listed below:

Carbon (40 parts)

Nitrogen (1 part)

Newspaper

Manure

Straw

Fresh grass clippings

Sorghum

Blood & Bone

Hay

Kitchen scraps

Sawdust

Fresh leaf litter

Eggshells

 

Start your compost heap with a layer of Carbon, then a small layer of Nitrogen, sprinkle some Blood and Bone then repeat and keep adding layers of material in the right amounts as it becomes available.  Other elements vital to successful composting are moisture and oxygen. If you are layering your compost make sure that each layer is watered. If your compost heap gets too wet or too dry, microbial activity will stop and so will the composting.

Allow the compost to heat up and when it starts to cool down, turn it every day. This process helps evenly distribute the microbes and provide an oxygen source for them to grow in.   Take care not to breathe in the compost dust when turning it.
The easiest way to compost is to make 2 boxes made out of tin so that one compost heap is being filled while the other is ready to use. The most ideal size for quick compost is 1 cubic metre.

When your compost is ready you can use it to top up your vegie beds and enrich the soil around fruit trees.

This is an example of some simple compost bins at Noonkanbah