Learn About Composting Day 2024 is on Wednesday, May 29, 2024: Is paper safe to put in a compost heap?

Wednesday, May 29, 2024 is Learn About Composting Day 2024.

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Compost is an eco-friendly, affordable and efficient option for fertilising your yard, plants and crops. Learn About Composting Day urges you to discover the globe of composting, and to recognize all of the different types of household waste that can contribute to your composting efforts.

Some paper takes a long time to really break down, and some is rather quick. Toilet paper falls in the latter category, and typing paper is slower.

If you can run it through a shredder, or run over it with your mower a few times, to chop it up, it will mix with the other ingredients of your compost heap better.

You need to be aware that paper is all carbon and no nitrogen, and you need to make sure you have enough nitrogen-containing compost in the rest of your pile to maintain the composting process properly.

In order to make proper compost it needs to have sustained temperatures of 140% for many days, and even weeks. If you fail to achieve that you will be putting compost into your garden that likely still has diseases, bugs, and weed seeds.

I recommend you read The Zoo-Doo man in the FAQ section of www.growfood.com to learn the truth about compost.

Best wishes,

A question about composting and a canal?

There won't be enough oxygen in the bottom of the water for the material to compost properly- it will become anaerobic, smell vile, and release bubbles of swamp gas.

Also, excess nutrients in the water will cause eutrophication- algae in the water, which can build up and then suddenly die, killing everything in the water.

There is really no benefit to adding fertilizer to running water, human activity adds too much anyway. Water that humans consider to be clean is very low in nutrients.

If you really want to do this, you could learn what kind of fish are present, what time of day and year they are active, and what they like to eat. You are still adding nutrients to the water, but they will swim from place to place instead of accumulating below your house. You could be a pioneer for a new way for people to live in that environment- cycling waste through fish and then bringing the fish back to the dinner table. I do the same thing with chickens and table scraps.

Otherwise, vermicomposting or bokashi are good alternatives.

How should I do my project, about worms, compost, and the effects of it on plants?

What is vermic compost?

If you want to compare different brands of commercial compost, then you need to go out and buy a bag of the different brands from your equivalent of the hardware store, or garden centre/nursery, and/of feedstore.

Then you plant the same plant in different brands of compost/mix and treat each plant the same and see what happens.

If you want to learn about worms and composting, just collect all your household vege scaps and lightly bury them in the garden. Put a scrap of old carpet over the top as worms will come to the top if it is dark. Carpet will also let rain into the soil.

Hint, soak the old carpet in a bucket of water, each day for a week. Some carpets have insecticides impregnated in them and this will kill the worms.

Take a digital camera, and each day, peel back the carpet and take a photograph of what happens.

Good luck