Four essential gestures for a good composting: mix the categories, stir, aerate and moisten.
Aerate and stir because micro-organisms need oxygen. They are suffocated if the air does not circulate in the compost. It is thus necessary to stir and to aerate the organic waste to facilitate the aeration and avoid the waste to rot away.
The humidity must be watched!
The preservation of an adequate humidity is indispensable for the good progress of the process. Neither too much, nor too little.
If it turns out that the humidity of your compost is insufficient, the waste becomes dry, micro-organisms die and the process stops. In case of excess of humidity, the temperature of the heap of compost falls, the consequence of this is to slow down the process of fermentation and to give off unpleasant smells.
ADVICES :
It is during the summertime that the surveillance of your compost must be increased because it is the period when the compost bin is fed by the important supplies.
A perfect composting has to ally the presence of air and humidity. For that purpose, help you with your ventilator.
If you begin to compost during the winter, be patient, the starting up of the compost is slower than in the warm season. During frosty period, make sure that your compost bin is well closed and do not cut the compost heap because this risks to damage the micro-organisms. In this period, you can use your compost to protect the perennial plants and the fragile shrubs against the cold.
The best period for the compost bin is spring. Your garden springs up again and produces in abundance. It is then the moment to intervene and to supply your compost bin with your garden rubbish: lawn, hedges cuttings etc. without forgetting your kitchen waste to respect the balance between the indispensable materials to a good compost. Your compost bin will have to digest this important filling, it is thus necessary to aerate and to stir well your compost (twice a month) and to keep watch on the rate of humidity.
USEFUL ADVICES
- Rake your lawn, remove the dead plants of the flower beds and put the foliage and the green waste in your compost bin.
- Crush the trees and hedges cuttings (or cut them with a pair of secateurs in about 5 centimetres long pieces) and add the issued product to your compost bin.
- You can store this issued crushed wood to add it to your compost all the year long as structure material.
- Only spread the mature compost during spring so that the germination, due to warm and wet weather situation, can be made in the compost heap and not in the vegetable garden.
- The spring was generous and the lawn, very rich in nitrogen, must not be put in the compost bin in too important layers. Leave a part of it outside so that it loses a part of its humidity. You just have to spread it in small heaps near your compost bin, by watching that it does not form an impermeable and putrid layer. After 3 or 4 days spent in the sun, you can put the lawn heap into your compost bin.
- The sieving allows to refine your compost and to use it more easily. A simple wire mesh put on a wooden frame is enough to achieve a good sieving. This gesture allows you to eliminate the elements which were not completely composted and to obtain a more homogeneous compost. The refusals of sieving can be remixed in the compost heap.
SOME ADVICES TO SE YOUR COMPOST
In the vegetable garden: plants with bulbs are big consumers of compost: – garlic, onion, celery, shallot: 1 kg/m² – strawberry plant, melon, tomato, carrot, leek, asparagus, salad, endive, gourd: up to 2 or 3 kg/m²
In your window boxes or pot plants: 1/3 of compost for 2/3 of rich in humus soil.
Use it in spreading, for your trees, shrubs and lawn: 1 to 25 kg/m².
Use your compost as a mulch at the feet of the trees, shrubs and hedges to protect them from the cold. The compost can also be used as an organic amendment; that is to say if it is incorporated into the ground in great quantities (from 1 to 5 kg/m²), it will make your soil more fertile.Selling price of the composting kit: 10 €
Ask it at the following phone number : 04 67 98 45 83
