Lazy composting. It is my favourite way to make fantastic homemade compost and is perfect for anyone looking for a simple way to make compost in your own vegetable gardens. backgardens or allotments. Whilst methods like hot composting have their benefits, they often need a lot of intensive work in a short space of time, as well as a lot of ingredients all in one go. Lazy composting is far more accessible for homegrowers and there is only one simple rule you need to follow when it comes to adding things to your compost bin.
This video is suitable if you’re a beginner looking up ‘how to make compost’ as well as seasoned gardeners who are after a more ‘no rules composting method’ to follow. I am sharing the composting technique we have been using for over 15 years to make fantastic homemade compost for our permaculture kitchen garden.
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Green Materials:
Used coffee grounds & plastic-free teabags
Unseeded weeds
Fruit & veg scraps
Lawn clippings
Horse & cow manure
Finished plants/plant tops
Comfrey & Nettles
Seaweed
Spent brewery grain if you have a local brewers
Hair clippings from the barber
Brown materials:
Dust from vacuuming
Cardboard & newspaper
Wood chippings & sawdust
Autumn leaves
Hay & straw
Autumn & winter prunings
Pine needles
Woodash
Tissues
Both:
Pet bedding from herbivores
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:39 What to Expect
1:02 What is Compost?
1:14 Size of bin needed
1:54 Greens and Browns
2:22 Grass Clippings Tip
2:57 Adding Ingredients the Lazy Way
3:49 The One Rule
5:04 When a bin is full
6:29 When is Compost Ready?
7:30 A Note on Rats
8:20 How Many Bins to Have
#compost #permaculture #kitchengardening
Thank you.
I loved your videos Huw. What you do it what I do myself, seems most natural but I always think my way is wrong, now you've confirmed it's fine this way. Thank you
I thought it was essential to add manure to make compist?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hilander+hoanh
do you turn your compost?
Hello, I'm new to composting. Will try my first one this week. I see you never watered or turned yours. Is that correct? Is that why your method is not considered "hot composting"? Is that why yours take longer (not watering)? Even though you don't water yours, does it still sometimes get too hot and you have to turn it? Thanks ahead, Woody
Your videos are so informative and very interesting. Thank you!
Are we not gonna talk about all that great dill you just cut to compost?
It’s the end of the summer garden here in Colorado. I just cleaned my chicken coop. I use pine shavings there. Can I dump the clean up onto a couple garden beds and allow it to process over the winter?
THANKYOU
dude, your videos are top quality. Can't believe I'm just finding this channel
Your video is very useful. It seems like we have to wait a little bit of long time to get the nice and rich soil by your showing way, but no expense. What I also see is a handsome man. Thank you.
I alwys learn something new, from Huw!
I'm not sure I trust this man due to his beard and English voice. Seems suspicious to me
Like the Dalek composer reference, nice video.
I have used the method shown in this presentation in the past, but after running three small pilot composting operations on the municipal level, and also making fifteen to twenty tonnes of compost every year for a half century, I now use a completely different method. I will summarise a few of the main points:
Excellent compost can be made at C/N ratios of seventy to one. This means that it is worth the time and effort to import carbon if you don't have enough on your property. This is usually the case for most people. A trailer load of sawdust is worth its weight in gold for the small composter. Your home is a nitrate factory!
I live in a forest that is vulnerable to fire, so I harvest the forest fuel overburden as a fire management strategy. I also import dry leaves, pine needles, wood chips and any other organic material that is currently often wasted, and always carry tools, bags, and take my trailer when I go to town, usually to get a load of free woodchips. Nitrogenous materials are basically only a starter, and using ratios of one to one means that you are potentially only getting a tiny amount of compost compared to ratios of fifty (or more), to one.
If you fail to use your household waste in the compost, you are missing out on many brilliant and biodiverse sources of potassium, phosphorous, and nitrogen, and it is high carbon ratios, plus the most absorbent carbon for protection and absorption, which guarantee vermin free compost that will never smell bad for long. (A smell means add carbon.) I always have the dry, covered carbon, winter and summer for this purpose.)
I build my compost heaps with no bins whatever, as in your case, with high bins, you have a LOT of lifting to do! My compost heaps are a few feet from my kitchen door, so I can put all of my rich kitchen wastes, especially the wet stuff, into my heap every day, often many times. I rinse my food cans, my pots, my frying pan fat, all meat scraps, milk bottle washings, and so on, directly onto the top of my pile. I then immediately cover it with dry carbon. I usually use hay or dried grass of any sort, leaves, or chopped forest litter, (fuel hazard and weeds only), for covering the additions. When the top of heap shows signs of being too high in nitrogen and putrescibles, the heap gets a big top layer of forest litter to cover. This prevents flies, bad smells, and there will be very few rats or mice as the smells are constantly covered over with enough carboniferous material to COMPLETELY stop sanitary issues from developing.
I have no bins or other structures which allow easy turning in any direction, with minimal lifting. I use a proper, long handled manure fork which reduces strain by 75%. I turn my heaps as I build to develop a hot, bioactive base, and I repeat this as the heap grows, making the base size grow with every turn. It starts out as a half a single mattress size. This is built up until no more can be added, and then turned to make a full mattress size. This then is built up to overflowing and turned and fluffed again until it is the size of a double bed mattress, then two queen sized, then finally a mattress about 10 feet by sixteen feet. This heap is built till it is about four feet high and then it is covered with shade cloth or other breathable material, not plastic sheet.
At this point, there have been three to four turns, no water aside from waste water from the kitchen and rain has been added and urine used as a starter, is applied every day. (This is covered every day or two as it is the 'smell signal') It is the BEST starter, and an amazing way to get rid of urine in the best possible way. It is wise to pee into a container, then empty this into one small area rather than peeing directly onto the heap. This reduces smell and evaporation.
I rarely use sawdust or woodchips on the compost, only when I have to enclose something really smelly such as a dead animal. The sawdust is mostly used to manage my toilet solids to eliminate smell, flies or vermin perfectly. This solid waste is then composted separately, though it can be composted safely in the daily heap if you have high C/N ratios. The wood chips are used as ground cover, weed suppression, and as bedding for hen houses, cat litter material, dog droppings management and other special uses. I always have hay and forest litter, which has been chopped with an electric chaff cutter, on hand and dry. A chipper can be used, or a garden shredder. Even a comfortable low stool, a chopping block, and a very sharp tomahawk is wonderful for chopping material up by hand. It is not necessary to chop too finely, just enough to avoid making turning much harder than it needs to be. Sticks and tough weed stems will not break down and they make turning 10X harder. (One reason that people fail in composting.)
Sincerest apologies for barging into your space like this, but your method is neither simple or easy, and the C/N ratio is extremely wasteful. Lazy composting is seen to be some sort of virtue, but the truth is, proper composting pays huge dividends. Peace and Blessings to a fellow composter.
OMG we wont sue you if we make a booboo jumping off our compost heap. Bit tired of PC culture TBH.
Lazy composting also includes no turning of the compost then? I think I'll like this method. 🙂
oh so wonderful!
I like your garden
Love your work man! Thanks for sharing!
Ty for informative video!!
what type of plants are those in the very beginning
I have a compost bin on my terrace its normal bin but its full of worms and gnats is there a way to save it or its best just to throw everything in the skip?
Hi, I have a question about composting but in a different climate – I'm located in Israel and our weather is very different than in the UK, the spring, summer and fall it gets upwards of 40c and in the winter we have a lot of rain, should I take a different approach to composting? I'm just starting out and hoping to start my very own home vegetable garden