‘Synthetic auxins’ are a group of herbicides that have been quietly killing off backyard and market gardens in our region for some time now.

YIMBY Composters teamed up with Dig It MainFM program and Growing Abundance and took to the streets in the Castlemaine Show Parade this last week to make some noise!

Occasionally we get a distressed call at YIMBY informing us someone has fruit fly in their compost…Common names can be a bit misleading, and it turns out quite a few flying insects get the name ‘fruit fly’.

‘Gallus gallus’, the Red Junglefowl, once roamed wild in the forests of South Asia, but has, through long years of human breeding, become quite a different creature.

This week the Compost Conversation has enlisted the help of local vet and large animal specialist, Dr. Paul O’Connor, to better understand horse health and what that means for our compost. Paul grew up on a farm, has a long-term affinity with large farm animals and is a partner at Kangaroo Flat Vet Clinic.

Although horses no longer perform the major traction and transport roles they once did in our society, our increased human population, growing affluence and our enduring affinity with our equine friends means there are more horses in Australia now than at the end of the 19^th century. 

Animal manures can be fantastic additions to our compost recipe, in fact their use pre-dates deliberate compost making in the Western tradition.

Back in the early 20^th century, Sir Albert Howard brought the Indore method of hot composting from the farms of India and China to a ‘western’ audience. Hot composting, as we now practise it, is a direct descendant of that work.

Can I put wood ash from my fire in the compost? It’s a question we are often asked here at YIMBY. As with anything involving living systems, the answer is never an easy ‘yes’ or ‘no’. So, let’s have a little dive into ash and its potential uses.

Managing the outputs of a cool compost bin can get complicated, particularly if we only have one bin, where we can find ourselves with finished compost in the bottom and fresh food scraps at the top.