Compost Bins

Composting is a practical and conventional way to handle your household wastes. By encouraging home composting, communities can reduce the costs and environmental problems associated with municipal garbage collection and processing.

Composting can be easier and cheaper than bagging these wastes and best of all it can improve your soil and plants growing in it. If you have a garden, lawn, pot plants, shrubs, you have a good use for compost.

By using compost you return organic matter to the soil in a useable form. Organic matter in the soil improves the structure of the soil. Compost particles hold soil together and give it a crumbly texture. In heavy clay soil, compost binds with clay particles to form larger particles to give it a better texture.

Improving your soil is the first step towards improving the health of your plants. Healthy plants help clean our air and conserve our soil, making our home a healthier place to live.

What can go into the Compost bin?

• Vegetable and fruit scraps
• Eggshells
• Tea leaves and coffee grounds
• Cut flowers
• Lawn clippings
• Dead snails, slugs and other insects
• Hair from brushes
• Dust and other floor sweepings
• Leaves
• Seaweed
• Weeds (except hard to eradicate types)
• Ashes from wood fires
• Animal Manure

It is not recommended to compost the following:

• Lime
• Red or fatty meats
• Detergents
• Chemicals and insecticides
• Non vegetable food scraps
• Diseased plants
• Paper
• Ashes from coal flues
• Branches or twigs

Mulching

The purpose of mulch is to make a barrier between the top of the soil and the elements. Mulches are most often used as a means to reduce water loss from the soil to the atmosphere and/or to stifle weed growth, but can and are also used to reduce erosion of topsoil by wind and water.  Mulch also helps stabilise soil temperatures in the root zone reducing temperature shock.

If your garden is mulched and you are still having problems with weeds growing through, you have not applied the much thick enough.  For best results, the mulch needs to be at least 75mm (3") deep to control weeds.

Mulch can be readily made at home by chipping tree prunings and the like with a mulcher.  Larger amounts of mulch are available form commercial suppliers within the area.