Five Steps to Composting Success | Maze Products

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MAZE PRODUCTS
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Aiming to provide quality, innovative and
sustainable products for the home and
garden. Maze combines innovation and simplicity
to bring you a wide and varied range of products
designed to suit your gardening and household
needs. Our products include Items like the Maze
Compost Tumblers and other solutions for
composting inside and out to a wide range of
backyard greenhouses and much much more. Our aim
is to help you enjoy, and make the most out of
your garden and home today and into the future.
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Five Steps to Composting Success
1. Choose the Right Composter For You2. Collect
Your Kitchen Waste3. Fill Up Your Composter4.
Let Your Compost Mature5. Use Your Compost
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1. Choose the Right Composter For You
Before choosing the size of your composter
estimate how much organic waste you will be
generating on a regular basis. If you have a
medium or large lawn and intend to put the grass
clippings in together with all your organic
household waste, a large composter is probably
for you. If you will just be disposing of your
day to day kitchen waste, a smaller composter
combined with an indoor Bokashi unit may better
suit your needs
The next consideration in your choice of
composter is whether to get a stand-alone model
or one that rotates. Tumbling composters while
generally smaller in volume produce compost in a
shorter amount of time. Stand alone composters on
the other hand, while generally able to
accommodate larger volumes of organic waste, can
take up to twice as long to produce usable
compost. They also require manual mixing on a
semi regular basis
Once you have decided on the size and type of
composter best suited to your needs, you will
need to find a good location in your yard.
Ideally try to find a sunny spot that will allow
for easy access. Direct sunlight increases the
rate at which organic waste decomposes into
compost. If possible your stand alone composters
should rest on bare soil to allow interactions
with microorganisms and worms.
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2. Collect Your Kitchen Waste
Most organic waste can be put into a compost bin
(see exceptions below). We recommend using a
kitchen caddy to collect your organic waste. This
not only avoids unwanted mess and odours but
reduces the number of trips you will need to make
to the outdoor composter. By an amazing
coincidence we have a few different caddies
available for purchase on this site together with
starch based caddy liners that begin to decompose
once added to the outdoor composter.
As mentioned earlier it is not a good idea to add
cooked food, meat or fish directly into your
outdoor composter. These products tend to fester
and attract unwanted guests (not referring to the
in-laws people!). For these tricky leftovers we
suggest using our Bokashi Kitchen Composter.
The Bokashi microbes contained in the liquid or
grains that are added to the organic contents
begin to break these (and other organic waste)
products down at the cellular level. Once the
Bokashi Composter is full, the contents can be
directly added to the outdoor composter or dug
directly into the soil. The microbes will
continue to do their work even after this is done.
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3. Fill Up Your Composter
Once your kitchen caddy or indoor composter is
full you will need to transfer the contents to
your outdoor composter. When adding organic
waste to your composter it is important to try
and get a good mixture of brown and green
waste. Examples of green waste include food
scraps, vegetable cuttings, freshly cut grass.
Examples of brown waste include dried leaves,
dead grass, newspaper cuttings, egg cartons.The
aim is to get a mixture whose consistency is
neither too wet nor too dry.
Dont forget to mix the contents of the composter
periodically. For stand alone composters this
will involve manually mixing the contents with a
pitch fork or compost aerator. For tumblers you
will just need to give the unit a turn every few
days.
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4. Let Your Compost Mature
The time it takes for compost to mature varies
widely. Factors such as volume of waste,
composition of waste, moisture content of waste,
frequency of aeration, and external
temperature/weather (just to name a few) all
contribute to your composters overall curing
time. There are, however, several things you
can do to help move the maturation process along.
1. Place the composter in a position in which it
is likely to receive the most sunshine. The
extra thermal energy will increase the rate at
which the chemical reactions that break down your
organic waste take place.
2. Aerate your compost on a regular basis. Your
outdoor composter relies on microbes and bacteria
to break down your organic waste. These organisms
require oxygen to carry out their jobs. The more
you aerate your compost, the happier your
microbes will be.
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3. The Goldilocks Principle. Just like the
famous fairy tale in which an innocent young girl
looking for a meal gets viciously mauled to death
by wild bears, your compost should not be too
dry, your compost should not be too wet- it
should be just right. If your compost is too dry
just add a little water. If it is too wet add
some brown waste such as dead leaves, dead
grass, newspaper etc.
RIP Golidlocks 1837-1845
4. Size Matters. Want to impress your friends at
parties? Tell them that the smaller an object
is the greater is its surface area in relation to
its volume. In a few months when you stop getting
invitations to parties and have time to focus on
composting you will realise how handy this fact
actually is. If you can reduce the size of the
material you put in your composter (e.g chopping
up loose kitchen scraps, shredding garden waste)
you will increase the area exposed to the
microbes and thereby decrease the time required
to break the matter down
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5. Use Your Compost
Once your compost has turned into a dark crumbly
material with a natural earthy smell it is ready
to use.
The method of collection will differ depending on
the type of composter you have. For stand alone
composters you will typically retrieve the
compost through a hatch/s at the bottom of the
unit. For tumbling composters you can empty the
compost directly onto the ground or into a bucket.
In either case, the compost you retrieve can
easily be mixed together into the soil. The same
applies to pot plants and vertical gardens. A
light watering to help the compost set and you
are done.
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CALL 03 9544 6999
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Contact Us
28 Buckland St, Clayton VIC 3168, Australia
[phone]
info_at_mazedistribution.com.au
www.mazeproducts.com.au
www.mazeproducts.com.au
CALL 03 9544 6999
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Thank You!
www.mazeproducts.com.au
CALL 03 9544 6999