Last week I showed my new compost bin to my dear friend Diane. “Ugh,” she shuddered. “I’m not looking in there – that’s disgusting.” Most people would happily concur. To the general population, a compost bin is a heap of rotting, slimy rubbish mixed with mould and manure. Stories of spontaneously combusting garbage heaps don’t add to the compost bin’s already failing PR. No one wants to find himself suddenly showered with boiling poo.

To a gardener, the compost pile is the cornerstone of the vegetable patch. Coupled with water, sunlight and fertiliser, compost is the most important element of your growing experience. It’s also easy to start one. There are multitudes of cafes around Brighton that will happily supply you with old 10 litre mayonnaise tubs destined for landfill. These are a handy size for the flat or balcony. Old plastic dustbins are ideal too, although they take up more space.

What To Put In Your Bin

The next things you need are the contents, and this is where your average gardener gets technical and a little bit obsessed. I have twittered the inside of my compost bin and readily discussed carbon to nitrogen ratios on open forums, just to warn you. What you are essentially aiming for is a 3 to 1 ratio of nitrogen to carbon, with an accelerant and some air. I had no idea what that meant before the twittering and open forums either.

What you want to end up with is the exact same material that you buy in plastic bags in garden centres marked “potting compost”. Only yours is rich and fertile and smells like the forest floor after the rain. So, like the forest floor, you need green material like plants and leaves and brown material such as wood and paper. When it all rots down it becomes soil full of minerals and trace elements to grow your plants.

Greens and Browns

This is what it means in plain English: Greens provide nitrogen and moisture and decompose quickly; good things for the greens pile are:

  • • teabags
  • • grass cuttings
  • • vegetable peelings, salad leaves and fruit scraps
  • • old flowers and nettles
  • • coffee grounds and filter paper
  • • spent bedding plants
  • • rhubarb leaves
  • • young annual weeds

Browns give your compost fibre and carbon and make the necessary air pockets for the decomposition to take place evenly; good browns are:

  • • cardboard
  • • egg boxes
  • • fallen leaves
  • • sawdust
  • • twigs, branches and bark
  • • paper (but not with coloured ink or a glossy finish)

Look at it every few days and adjust it as follows:

  • • If it’s too wet or smells rotten, then add more brown material
  • • If it’s too dry, then add more green material
  • • If nothing is happening at all, add more accelerant (such as urine – disgusting, but true)

It’s that easy and that rewarding and you’ll never have to buy a bag of potting compost again!