There are two basic ingredients in homemade compost plus a little water and air. The two basic ingredients are the "Greens" and the "Browns". Before you decide which composting method is best for you, lets take a brief tour of the things you can compost. You can identify just how much of the stuff you currently throw away, or give away to recycling, you can recycle into homemade compost, estimate what that looks like in terms of volume and then decide which approach is best for you.

The "greens" are nitrogen producers and contain a fair amount of water. They are made up of the fruit and vegetable matter we eat (apples, bananas, carrots and broccoli etc) and the squashy soft plant matter in our gardens (flowers, grass cuttings, weeds and plants etc).

The "browns" are carbon producers. They are made up of woody stuff in our gardens (twigs, woody stems and stalks etc) or the products in our homes that would have started out life as a tree (paper and cardboard, magazines, shredded paper etc).

The water element comes from the greens, rain water and damp from the ground, you should not need to add any

Composting is an aerobic process which means air is an essential ingredient. The air element comes by scrunching up the browns, trapping the air in layers, and turning the compost ingredients as they are being processed.

A 50/50 mix of greens and browns plus a little air and you'll get perfect compost with no effort.

Look through your rubbish and the recycling you put out for the rubbish collectors, including your garden waste. Think about how many 1 litre ice cream tubs you could fill will things that you can turn into free compost each week on average.  Is it 1, 10 or 100?

If you have got something and you're not sure whether it should go in please ask me.

If in doubt leave it out!