YIMBY composters

Managing the outputs of a cool compost bin can get complicated, particularly if we only have one bin, where we can find ourselves with finished compost in the bottom and fresh food scraps at the top. Cool composting is so much easier if we have two bins that can rotate functions, an active one for…

I’ll let you in on a little compost secret. A well set up cool composting bin and a worm-farm are pretty indistinguishable. Scandalous, I know, but here’s the reason why. Good compost is made with a good balanced blend of materials (if you have missed it you can read up on our favourite topic at…

The logic of compost tumblers goes like this: Lack of aeration makes compost piles stinky and slow. By turning the compost regularly, we add air through the pile and the compost will break down faster and not smell. Sounds good… in theory. If our approach to composting is to ‘Tip and Run’, a tumbler will…

For many people, the compost pile is as far away from the house as it can be, tucked right down in a back corner of the garden. Unfortunately, most of the things we need to make good compost, like garden tools and access to water, can be out of reach in these neglected corners.Let’s have…

There is nothing quite so satisfying for me as heading outside on a frosty morning to feed the chooks, passing the compost pile and scratching the ice of the thermometer dial to reveal it is a very steamy 65 degrees in there, just under the straw. Now, you may have heard (because it is repeated…

“In a good economy there would be no such thing as waste” writes farmer and poet, Wendell Berry. We know this is true of natural systems, where anything that builds up too much, soon becomes a resource for another species or part of the system. Our industrial economy hasn’t quite comprehended this yet, with ‘wastes’…

When looking back at many early recipes for compost making, I often see soil recommended as an important compost ingredient. Yet, many modern composting resources don’t even mention soil as an ingredient at all, or some even recommend against using it. Despite this, some of my most respected composting sources do recommend the use of…

Between the chopping board and the compost pile there sits another piece of composting ‘equipment’ that often gets overlooked, but it’s a critical link in our composting chain. I grew up calling the thing in the kitchen we scrapped food scraps into the ‘compost bin’. But I have to admit it gets confusing when we…

It used to be pretty standard advice to add sprinklings of garden lime to our compost as we built them, it’s how I was taught to compost and a rule I followed for years without questioning, but is adding lime essential for a healthy compost? Garden lime is simply powdered limestone, a natural material that…

I first met Lisa Williams when YIMBY were out looking for new composters in her street in north-west Castlemaine. We needed to replace two of the original YIMBY composters who were ‘retiring’ and we already had neighbours in the street leaving out buckets of food scraps on bin night, we just needed to find a…