Autumn clearing
It can be very frustrating when Autumn clearing produces a mountain of rubbish but your home composter is working so slowly. The sun is weak, temperatures are low, so with the best will in the world, your compostibles won’t rot down quickly enough.

Don’t imagine an activator will help much. The important thing with composting is to get a good mix of soft, sappy material and more woody, fibrous stuff. It’s ironic that we have too much grass and soft weeds in the summer, and we’re now overwhelmed with the fibrousy kind. So what’s to be done?

Shredding
If you’re fortunate enough to have a shedder, this will help hugely. [I’m not talking about the smallest, cheapest types whose engines will burn out after you’ve shredded a box of matches but there are robust electric shredders which will cope with prunings and hedge clippings – you don’t need a massive petrol driven or power take off one]. When shredding this year’s growth, you’ll get a good mix of sappy leaves and the green, still sappy stems. This will generate quite a high temperature in your composter amazingly quickly. Older, dry branches, even shredded ones, should only be added sparingly to the heap; bag up the excess and keep to add to your heap next summer when you have a mass of green, sappy stuff.
When shredded, these woody branches actually make an excellent mulch.

Some climbers, like honeysuckle and clematis, have very stringy stems that will wind round the cutting blade and clog up the machine. If you encounter this problem, chop up the stems with secateurs or shears, if you can face it, or simply put them straight into your compost bin.

Chop and mix
Without a shredder, chop fibrousy and woody stems into small sections and mix them with kitchen scraps or the outer leaves of any vegetables. The pieces don't need to be tiny but the smaller they are the quicker they will rot. It will speed things along to mix in a decent amount of topsoil. Unlike spent commercial compost which is useless for this, the soil is crammed with micro organisms and will greatly help the process of rotting down.

Chop and store
If you have some space and the time, you can chop up the prunings into smallish pieces using secateurs, shears, a rotary mower or even a sharp spade. Then bag them up and put them aside for next summer when you can add them in with grass clippings. You will enjoy very good results by the end of the year.

We have found in trials, that a mix of chopped prunings and grass is one of the most effective ways of dealing with both ‘problems’. By breaking up the grass with the prunings, you prevent it from becoming a compact, airless, smelly mess. Problem solved!

A dead hedge
You can make a dead hedge in a discreet part of the garden where you stack up a lot of these prunings. See our leaflet, Woody Prunings, for information about this. You will be making an ideal wildlife habitat for insects, toads and birds. Be warned, it takes several years for this to rot down, so you will need some space to do this.

If, of course, your local council collects green waste, like Scottish Borders Council, you can always put any surplus into your green bin. Your conscience will be clear – your garden rubbish is being composted and is not destined for a landfill site.


Other seasonal tips you might find useful:
Recycle your Christmas decorations and use them in the garden.
Warm up your compost in readiness for spring
Making your own compost mixes
Is your compost slimy and smelly? Find out how to solve the problem.