YIMBY composters
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Getting the compost goodness out of bones and shells
Adding bones or shells to our compost pile is fine – if we have good rodent control in place – but we will notice that these ingredients will still be present when the compost is finished, pretty much intact, just stripped of any meat and residue. Bones and shells are actually high in nitrogen, with…
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The nitty-gritty of rodent control
This week’s compost conversation is a follow on from last week’s article looking at the need for ‘secondary’ rodent management approaches to complement our good compost management. As we said last week, this can be a tricky subject. Everyone will have their own ethical and personal boundaries around taking the life of another creature, so…
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Rats, mice, compost and food growing
It’s a tricky subject, but one we can’t avoid, particularly as we head further into autumn and the harvest season: how do we deal with rats and mice in our compost, gardens and houses? Every person will have their own ethical and personal boundaries around taking the life of another creature or being, so let’s…
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I just made the worst compost I have made in years!
I was putting a finished compost pile out on the garden recently, but as I was forking it into the barrow, I realised, with disappointment, it was the worst compost I had made in quite a few years! The ‘finished’ compost was dry, woody and full of fine root filaments, not the rich, moist, greasy,…
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Are they maggots in my compost?!
Over the warmer months it is not uncommon, when turning our compost piles, to uncover a particular fly’s larvae (or maggots) in our compost. They are long, segmented grub-like creatures, ranging in colour (white – dark brown) and length (5mm – 20mm), depending on where they are at in their life cycle when we discover…
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What to do with a compost that is too hot?
In last-week’s Compost Conversation we looked at what makes some batches of compost go over temperature (over 68o Celsius), and why that is a problem. This week we’ll look at the remedies. The suggestions made in this article could be detrimental to a compost not suffering overheat, so please read this week’s and last week’s…
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Too hot to handle
A mistake we humans often make is to think that if something is good, more of it will be better. We can make this mistake with the temperature of hot compost. Hot compost has so many benefits, but only up to a certain temperature. If our composts go past this ‘sweet spot’ temperature, we start…
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Does composting really reduce greenhouse emissions?
I’m sure we have heard that putting food scraps in our general waste bin, then burying them in a landfill site produces greenhouse emissions and that home composting is a “climate action we can take now”. But isn’t it just the same organic material put in a different place? How can this make such a…
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Would you like chips with that?
Wood chips can contribute to making some of the best and also some of the worst composts, it has a lot to do with how much goes into the compost. Wood chips are the mulched-up branches and trunks of trees. Most of this woody material is made up of lignin, the hardest, longest-lasting carbon form…
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Be a better composter in 2025
Welcome back to the Compost Conversation for 2025, and a happy new year to all our readers. Here at YIMBY we are still bursting with ideas for compost articles, so will keep the conversation going into 2025. Do let us know if there is a compost-related article you’d like to read, or burning compost questions…
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Don’t kill your compost, it’s alive!
Good quality, home-made compost is teaming with life, and because of this we need to care for it, to the very end! When we have spent months making a great batch of compost, getting it just right, the last thing we want to do is kill it.At the heart of it, compost is about creating…
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Is that mulch or is it compost?
There is no agreed definition of what compost actually is or isn’t, and a huge array of commercial products sold as ‘compost’ look more like ‘mulch’ to me. Some people use the terms ‘mulch’ and ‘compost’ interchangeably, but that could get very confusing if I say, “it’s a good idea to mulch your compost after…