The base of a mature tree can be a good composting site without having to dig a pit.

Compost in styro boxes.

By turning kitchen scraps into compost, you'll be ensuring a steady supply of good soil for your seedlings while helping to minimize the amount of waste that goes into our landfills. Composting is easy and is highly recommended. Here's how to make your own compost.

1. Select an area in your garden to dig your compost pit. A foot deep and around 2 x 5 feet should be sufficient but you can work with even smaller areas than this. Should it be difficult to dig a pit, consider re-using styro boxes.(Crates in which fruit are often shipped.) Otherwise, the foot of a mature tree will also suffice (without having to dig a pit.)

Coffee Grounds, veggy and fruit scraps for composting.

2.Used coffee grounds and uncooked vegetable and fruit scraps (fruit peelings, inedible portions of vegetables, etc.) make for an excellent mix of composting medium.(Coffee shops like Starbucks give away free used coffee grounds - visit your neighborhood shop and get a regular supply for your compost heap.)

Designated and properly labelled Compost Bin.

3. Designate one of your kitchen garbage bins for the above material to be temporarily collected there. Properly label the bin to ensure no other kinds of waste are thrown there. (A small piece of cooked food, animal scraps, or dairy products can ruin a whole batch of compostables. This will attract unwanted maggots and make the batch of compost unusable.)

Bin with a cover and removable inner container is ideal.

4.Contents of this bin can be emptied (into the compost pit ) 2-3 times a week. (If the composting medium is limited to the above, you will notice that no foul smells accumulate as the coffee grounds absorb these. Foul odors, you will find, are indicators of that batch of composting medium being contaminated with other cooked foods or animal matter.)

5.Simply dump the collected compostable material in the pit, crate or at the foot of the mature tree and cover with leaves. Segregate or place the different batches of the compostables in different sections (so that the fully decomposed material ready for garden use will not be mixed with fresher, less decomposed matter).

Compost heap at foot of a Talisay Tree.		Cover the heap with dried leaves to avoid build up of pests.		Sections containing compostables in various stages of decomposition

6.Cover the heap with dried leaves so as not to attract insects and pests.
7.Water occasionally (twice a week ) to ensure a faster decaying process.

		6-8 weeks compost (ready for use)					8 weeks old compost ready for use.

8. In 6-8 weeks, the material will have decomposed fully and should be ready for use. Simply take spade-fuls of the compost matter and apply to the topsoil of your your potted or bagged seedlings or ornamentals. The material may be too rich to use purely as bagging medium, but will be ideal to mix with whatever type of garden soil is available to you.

Applying compost to your bagged seedlings.				Applying compost to the top soil of a bagged seedling.