Get composting in Autumn

Publication date: Tuesday 7 September 2010

Autumn is an excellent time to enhance your green credentials and help cut carbon emissions by using your household waste for composting.

Cllr Nilgun Canver, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, says:

"Composting is a cost effective and natural process that transforms kitchen and garden waste into a valuable resource. It reduces the amount of waste being thrown away, and it also helps households avoid the need to buy expensive chemical products to enhance their gardens."

Compost is a nutrient-rich food product for the garden, which helps to improve soil structure, maintain moisture levels, and keeps the soil's PH balance in check while helping to suppress plant disease.

At this time of year there is a great deal of nutrient-rich waste available. Spent bedding plants, grass cuttings, autumn leaves and prunings can all be composted throughout the autumn and winter months, to produce a rich compost ideal for spring planting.

It is essential to have the correct mix of materials in order to produce good compost, so if you have lots of leaves to put into your compost bin, put the excess into a bin bag, make a few holes in it and leave in a corner of the garden or shed where they will rot down and be a great addition to the compost bin in a few months' time.

A great tip is to use a lawnmower to pick leaves up - this shreds the leaves and helps the composting process.

As well as garden waste, much of the food waste in household bins can be composted.  A home composter allows anything from fruit and vegetable peelings to egg shells, tea bags and pet hair, or even shredded paper to be composted.

Try to aim for a 50/50 mix of ‘greens’ (vegetable peelings, old flowers, grass cuttings, spent bedding plants) and ‘browns’ (garden prunings, coffee grounds, tissues and paper napkins, cardboard, vacuum cleaner dust).  It’s also important to replenish moisture lost during the composting process by adding water if the contents are not moist to the touch.

Haringey residents can buy discounted home composting bins to get them started. For more information visit www.haringey.getcomposting.com or call 0844 571 444 (quote reference HAR03L).

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