Make sure you don't put any meat or dairy in your compost - it will go funky and attract nasty interested creatures!!
My main tip is you need GREENS and BROWNS.
Green things are like veggie peelings, grass cuttings, etc, and are high in nitrogen.
BROWNS are things like straw, dried leaves, shredded soaked newspaper/cardboard, etc which are high in carbon.
If your compost is too wet, smelly, clumpy and mouldy, then you need to add more BROWN.
If your compost is too dry, or isn't breaking down, then you need to add more GREEN. Simple!
And finally, the more you turn it, it smells less, cooks hotter (killing weed seeds etc) and is ready sooner!
Compost seems so easy but is really confusing and intimidating unless you get good advice such as you have here!
I tried a compost heap so many times and in so many forms but just couldn't get it right... and finally, this year, I have it!! A week ago I just turned out my first beautiful compost which I dug into the garden beds and then planted the winter crop. It felt sooooo good.
What worked was all of the above advice!
Avoidance of meat and dairy
balance of brown and green (every now and again I would throw in a heap of ripped up news paper, DD loved helping me shred!)
Air circulation - I used a pole with a sort of hook, stuck in the compost pile which I would stab up and down a bit every time I added anything. It aerated the mix in a simple way
I recently saw a clip on gardening Aust where they placed chicken wire rolled up into a tube shape into the center of the compost bin (standing up) and dumped the compost around it. The wire tubes allowed air to get into the heap. I thought that was a great idea.
Just you wait till you realise that you wont have take the rubbish out to the bins as much anymore since food scraps all go a composting !
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