Our compost bins work all year round. Whether you’ve a large New Zealand box, a plastic composter or live in a flat and only want some compost for house plants, carry on composting.
My open New Zealand box is still working away. After a couple of overnight lows of -4C, with my greenhouse frost-guard blower chuntering away, the composter still showed an impressive +17C.
When using my composter all the time, covering it is a right hassle, but this does keep the heat in. It’s feasible over the next few months as I’m only tipping in the occasional bucketful, not barrowloads as during the growing season. It’s even worth covering the pile in a lidded bin with a layer of damp newspaper.
Inevitably, most of our compostables are now raw kitchen scraps. This ‘green’ material is moist and sappy and, on its own, produces a soggy, smelly heap.
Prevent this by mixing in ‘brown’ items, like crumpled or shredded paper and envelopes and kitchen towel and toilet roll inners. This stops a dense, airless heap building up and soaks up surplus liquid. The odd handful of topsoil works like a compost activator.
Wood ash and coffee grounds can also be added, but teabags may be problematic. Traditional teabags were made from plastic, and even paper teabags were and often are sealed with polypropylene.
In September, researchers at McGill University, USA, published a paper in ‘The Journal of Environmental Science and Technology’. They found that a plastic teabag released about 11.6 billion microplastics into a teacup. Clearly these teabags should not be composted either.
Fortunately, safe teabags are now on the market: Abel & Cole, Clipper, Lidl, Teapigs, Waitrose and Yorkshire tea are completely plastic-free. Check other brands and if suitable, pierce bags before composting, so they’ll readily rot down in composters.
Whether to compost packaging is another grey area. Fortunately many manufacturers are developing alternatives to plastic. But as an ordinary punter, deciding what to do with ‘biodegradable’ or ‘compostable’ material is a nightmare. These items do break down chemically, but does this happen in a landfill site, a large-scale composting plant or a home composter?
Compostable products should not be put out for plastic recycling because they ain’t plastic, but they may need a commercial unit, not a home composter. These items should state whether they’re suitable for home composting, so get your glasses on and hope the font isn’t too tiny.
Home-made compost is always better for plants and you can produce your own, even if you live in a flat.
Wormeries take up very little space and can be kept in a shed or cupboard as well as outdoors. They cope with cool, not cold conditions, but work more slowly in winter, as do all composting units except Hotbin composters. Wormeries are perfect for peelings, banana skins and other raw scraps. The compost is very rich and liquid from the wormery is an ideal liquid feed.
A simpler alternative in a flat is to give a new lease of life to clapped out commercial compost. I call the process ‘composting in a bag’.
Put roughly 5-8cm of spent compost in a strong, empty, coloured plastic sack. Then lay 3-5cm of raw kitchen scraps on top, together with a sprinkling of compost activator. Cover with another layer of spent compost, loosely tie the bag up and leave in a corner till you’ve another load of raw scraps ready.
Repeat this process till the bag is full. Close, but don’t seal the bag and leave in a corner for 2-3 months, when the compost is ready to use.
Plant of the week
Cyperus haspan is a dwarf papyrus that grows to 50cm. An attractive houseplant for bright light or light shade. Needs to be kept constantly wet, you cannot overwater.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here