Save money by making your own garden compost

As a nation we are encouraged to recycle as much as we can and one way is having a compost bin. Having a compost bin in your garden not only helps saves the environment it also helps you save money.

There are many types of compost bins which are usually made either out of wood or plastic and come in many shapes and sizes and depending on the size of your garden there should be a compost bin that will suit your needs.

All the designs work on the same principal, you put your waste matter into it and in the end, if you have done a good job, you get moist, nice smelling, crumbly compost for you to use in your garden or bag up to use another day. So choosing a compost bin is just down to personal preference. There are plastic compost bins that you probably would hide at the bottom of your garden, or a nice wooden ones that you can paint to either stand out or match the rest of your painted wooden furniture or fence panels. You can even get a compost bin that is already raised on a stand so turning the matter inside is relatively easy. You could even make your own out of old pallets - another recycling idea!

Now a days, recycling your waste matter isn't a messy or inconvenient job that is only confined to garden waste. Ceramic kitchen waste containers with sealable lids and odour filters are available that makes it easy to collect waste food. While preparing or after your meal just scrap the waste food in close the lid and next time you go out to the garden, just empty it in your compost bin. It all goes to make good compost.

If you save all of your vegetable peel, tea bags and coffee granules along with cardboard, egg cartons and shredded paper and your grass cuttings, it all makes a good mix for the insects, worms and microbes to get to work. And having your compost bin raised a couple of inches off the floor if it has no base, or place sticks at the bottom of your sealed bin and place in a sunny or warm position makes the process work even faster.

To be able to make your own compost is a very satisfying way to knowing that not only have you made it yourself and that you are putting the goodness back into your soil that you have also saved yourself some money.

If the right amount of grass and vegetable peel etc have been added, you have turned it and the sun has warmed up the microbe's, then in between nine months to about a year of turning your compost into a lovely brown crumbly mixture you can then either bag it and save it, or pot up young flowers or vegetables or spread it all over your garden knowing that it will feed your plants and help them produce healthy flowers or vegetables for you to eat, and then you can start the process all over again.

As it is more like an ornament than a compost bin you don't need to hide it away.

Choosing a compost bin depends on the three main points:
Space you have to place it.
The amount of compost you would like to make.
How much money you want to spend on it.

Having a cheap and cheerful compost bin will do the same as a dear pretty compost bin but spending money on a bin that can sit in your garden and not be hidden is also saving you money as it can be a garden feature at the same time.