Composting
Home composting is a popular way to reuse food scraps, leaves and grass clippings. Adding compost to your garden will build healthy soil, feed your plants and replace many chemical fertilisers.
Regularly picking up leaves and grass clippings for composting will also keep those nutrients away from storm drains, helping to keep our waterways healthy.
Making your own compost
Setting up and maintaining a composting bin is easy and low cost.
Choose a spot
Putting your compost bin in a spot in your garden that you can access easily will help you to ‘feed’ it with food scraps and garden waste regularly. If you're going to use worms, it's better to put it in the shade. Composting for meat or animal waste should be in a sunny spot to help the bin get to a good temperature and work properly.
Wherever you choose to put your bin should have good drainage and room for any material you need to rebuild your heap.
Choose a container
There are many systems to choose from. You can buy compost bins or make one from wood or wire. There are many sizes to choose from to suit all sizes of homes.
'Green cone' systems help to break down materials using a high temperature. Other types depend on aeration and mixing to help worms and other organisms to create the compost. Tumblers make it easy to mix your compost. Stationary bins are cheaper to set up and will need you to turn or mix it.
Getting the right mix of ingredients
Most composting bins (except green cones and tumblers) need a mix of air, moisture and organic matter. The four factors that make a healthy compost system are:
- Aliveness - the system has billions of living organisms that work to break down the materials.
- Diversity - it's important to make sure there's a mix of materials going into your compost. Check out the compost feeding plan below for help.
- Air - good air circulation will create compost with a sweet smell. Mix or turn your compost and add coarse materials regularly to it to help.
- Moisture - this helps break down the materials faster. It should be moist but not soggy.
Feeding your compost
A mix of ingredients will create a healthy and productive compost.
| Almost daily (green or wet material) | About once a week (dry or brown material) | Occasionally (boosters and balancers) |
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Applying your compost
Your compost should be ready to use in 3-4 months. This takes a little longer in Canberra over winter, but a large, healthy and active system will keep warm even in the coldest winter.
There are many ways to use compost:
- digging it straight into the soil
- spreading it as a surface mulch
- raked in to top dress the lawn
- spread around plants in the vegetable garden
- soaked in water to make compost tea (a healthy alternative to chemical fertiliser).
More ways to save garden and food waste
People who compost love to share advice online, you can even ask at your local garden centre. Many gardening or environmental and sustainability groups run composting courses.
When a small compost bin is full, some people set up a second bin to create compost in rotation. Other households simply use the green bin service to send their spare garden waste off for city composting.
At some times of the year there may be more leaves than you need for that healthy home compost mix. Some people set up a leaf pen/tower to turn leaves into a mulch, others pick up leaves for the green bin.