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How to give your compost go-faster stripes

Cheap and novel tips to activate your compost from the author of the Allotment Keeper's Handbook, Jane Perrone

You can buy what are marketed as 'compost activators' in the shops to speed up the process. Generally they contain high levels of nitrogen, as well as lime, which help to counter acid conditions that bacteria won't thrive in.

If your heap is set up correctly it should trundle along quite nicely without it, so they're not worth the expense. If you want to 'activate' your compost cheaply, sprinkle on a light dusting of ground limestone every time you add a new layer of material and include some human urine to boost nitrogen levels.

Yes, you did read that last sentence correctly. Your pee is a high-nitrogen treat for your heap, virtually sterile and not in short supply. What better way of saving water on toilet flushes and helping your compost break down?

However, unless your allotment is extremely well concealed from your neighbours, you may wish to consider collecting your 'activator' in a (preferably opaque) plastic bottle in private to take down to the plot rather than adding it directly. If all this sounds, well, just too wierd, grow nitrogen-rich comfrey and cut it for the heap, or harvest nettles and add them - the end result will be exactly the same.

Of course, there are potentially quicker ways of doing things, but in Val Bourne's book Seeds of Wisdom: A Handful of Seasonal Tips from Britain's Head Gardeners, David Standing, the manager of the eighteenth-century naturalist Gilbert White's garden in Selbourne, Hampshire, describes how one of the garden volunteers simply chops up and digs in plant material as he goes, saving himself a trip to the compost heap and earning him the title 'dig-it-in-Jim'.

Finding other ways of shortcutting the compost heap can make life easier and help to provide crops such as pumpkins and beans with the nutrients they crave. Every autumn I decide where the following year's courgettes and winter squash are going to go, and trench compost the area. I got this idea for quick, dirty composting from visiting the Garden Organic gardens in Ryton.

There, the gardeners dig a trench or hole where every row of beans or courgette plant is to be sited, about one spade deep, and add in uncomposted kitchen waste generated by their restaurant such as potato peelings, rotten fruit and so on. They cover the waste with soil to stop vermin getting to it, and continue adding and covering until the trench is full. It also helps to line the trench with corrugated cardboard, which will help to retain moisture and is particularly useful for free-draining soils.

It's a good idea to put a couple of markers in place so that you don't end up, as I did, crawling around your plot looking for trench-shaped indentations that might reveal where you've buried the compost. Give the trenches a couple of months before planting the crop so that the contents have a chance to rot down.

Jane Perrone is the author of The Allotment Keeper's Handbook: A down-to-earth guide to growing your own food. She also writes a regular blog

Jane Perrone is the author of The Allotment Keeper's Handbook: A down-to-earth guide to growing your own food, published by The Guardian and Atlantic Books at £14.99

This article was created: 28 March 2007.
This article was last edited: 24 April 2007.

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