Composting (Something for nothing)

I love composting as I hate waste and it feels like I'm doing a little bit for the planet.

When I moved in my council had a deal with a delivery company for large black composting bins for just £10 each and 330lt water butts for £15. So I bought 2 bins and 5 butts (metered water here so I thought of the butts as an investment). Wish I'd bought 5 bins though as my 2 are always full. Some gardeners make their own bins with wood but I'm not the slightest bit handy at all.

Things I compost

• Shredded paper and junk mail,
• Coffee grounds and any un-drunk coffee (great activator), tea leaf's/bags,
• old wool and cotton clothes,
• egg shells ~ they don't really break down but they give off a lot of minerals into the compost
• fruit & vegetable peelings, apple cores, dead flowers, uncooked veg/potatoes going bad,
• the contents of the Dyson (mostly cat hair) human hair works too,
• kitchen roll and cardboard inners, bits of cardboard to small for the recycle bin,
• lint from the dryer,
• garden waste (I do leaf's separately for leaf mold),
• chicken poo and dirty wood shavings,
• Grass cuttings

The longer you leave it, the more it breaks down. After about 2 years (tops) it comes out the bottom looking like the stuff bought in plastic bags from the garden centre, but its much richer than potting compost so it must be cut down with top soil before use in planters/containers. But it makes excellent mulch to pile around trees and bushes. Dug into my crappie clay a couple of times a year I'm hoping it will slowly improve my soil for future growing. 

When I stripped out the last of my veg from the raised beds, I turned them over and added a good amount of well composted matter to the digging in, so they'd be ready for spring 2011.