I'm a keen gardener, sometimes successful with compost, at other times the owner of a putrid heap of gunge with swarms of flies that no-one wants to walk past. My garden would grow more, look better and smell sweeter if I could perfect the technique.
The importance of getting this right across Wales is even more significant. Each year we put 1.3 million tonnes of waste into landfill sites, about 40 per cent of which could be turned into compost.
In Gwynedd the county council have been providing free compost bins, but only a small percentage of people have taken them and are using them effectively. Apathy or ignorance? An organisation called Sustainable Gwynedd is spearheading an initiative to promote better composting.
What they're looking for are compost leaders to champion compost making in their community, to get friends and neighbours enthused and equipped with the basics for making waste into a valuable asset. I signed up to become a compost leader and joined the training course.
There are many different ways of making compost but the basics involve mixing greens with browns and letting nature get on with it. Greens (full of nitrogen) are things like vegetable, fruit and grass, whilst browns (full of carbon) are things like cardboard, newspaper and garden prunings. A good mix would be 50:50 by volume.
Compost worms, which are much smaller than earthworms, will soon seek out the mix and, along with other organisms, start to work on it. About a year later the miracle will be complete and free compost ready to use.
A compost heap is a living thing that needs air if all the bugs are going to thrive and do their work. This can be injected into the heap by turning it, but the easier armchair way of achieving the same is to scrunch up cardboard and paper so that it forms small pockets of air. Grass clippings should be applied in thin layers (max four inches) to avoid creating impenetrable no-go zones.
Bins provided by the council look a bit like daleks and are ideal for kitchen waste or for a small garden. If you have enough space (and waste) a very effective design is to lash four pallets together, sticking cardboard down the sides of the panels to provide insulation and greater heat.
If you're keen to do your bit for the planet and don't have any garden there are always wormeries which can be sited on a balcony. The liquid, when diluted, makes a great fertiliser for pot plants. But you need to look after your worms. I left mine exposed to too much sun and they were killed off by the resultant heat.
Another option for people living in flats is to work with the council to establish a community composting scheme. There are several examples of successful schemes in our big cities with the end product being used to improve community gardens.
After two hours of discussion and demonstration I thought I'd heard it all, but then Dave from Friends of the Earth inducted us into the art of Bokashi.
It's an ancient Japanese system for converting food waste into fertiliser, but more recently refined into EM Bokashi where EM stands for Effective Micro-organisms.
The basis of Bokashi is fermentation, as opposed to putrefaction, a process similar to brewing or making silage. Left-over food is placed in an airtight container, a small amount of EM is added to kick-start the process and then sealed.
About eight weeks later the contents are ready to be buried in the garden. The mix is too rich to plant directly into, but if placed six to eight inches away from a plant, its roots will soon seek out the Bokashi and reward you with bumper crops or blooms.
There are lots of expensive kits and supplies for Bokashi making. but Dave explained how to do it for just a few pence.
Huw Jenkins
