Members Advice on Composting

I'd always liked the theory of recycling garden waste by making compost, but having a very small garden and a council who obligingly took everything you can fit in the bin, I never quite got round to it.

Then last year, Runnymede council decided to start recycling, and along with the instructions for newspapers (in the blue bag) bottles (in the blue box), came an offer of a black plastic composter, delivered to your door for only £10

Never able to resist a bargain, I bought two, one for myself, and one for my sister as well. She immediately started and has now been chucking stuff in for 18 months, with no sign of it filling up.

I was a bit slower off the mark; took about 3 months to decide where to locate it, but eventually found a spare corner. By the way, they do need to go straight onto the ground, so don't be tempted to buy or build a base, as the worms need access to get at the contents. It is worth putting a slab in front though, if your composter is not close to the path, to avoid muddy feet, when you creep out in the dark to empty the peelings.

The wonderful thing is the way that the stuff just disappears, and as the contents start rotting down, you get a healthy composty smell, not at all unpleasant. The only drawbacks I've found so far, is that when I lift the lid, sometimes it is alive with pink wriggly worms; however, my four year old son sees this as a major bonus.
Also, flies collect inside the bin, which is a bit off-putting, though they don't bite.

I put mainly kitchen peelings, apple cores etc. grass clippings, small hedge trimmings, cardboard, (but not shiny cardboard, and do remove all sellotape). I don't worry too much about building it in special layers, as to me, the whole point is to get rid of the waste, so I don't want it lying around waiting for the right moment to add to the heap, but I do give the whole thing a bit of a stir every week or two in the summer.

My composter has got a little door at the bottom, where you are supposed to extract the compost, but it's actually too small to be convenient, so I am just letting the bin fill up, then I'll get a second one, and let the first one rot a bit longer, (3 months odd in the summer), before one day facing teh big task of spreading it around the garden.