Most backyard compost piles aren’t consistently over 55 degrees Celsius for 3 days or more but can still make good compost if we follow a few simple rules.

It’s tempting to spread compost out before it’s fully cured. Let’s take a look at how long it really takes to cure and things to look out for.

Straw and hay are often used interchangeably but are quite different products and play different roles in our compost piles. Let’s see why.

This week we bid farewell to our very first composter, Melinda Jane, who reflects on her experience as a YIMBY composter.

It’s important to chop our compost ingredients fine enough so that they have the right consistency to break down perfectly in our compost piles. See what we use at YIMBY as a perfect chopping tool.

Learn how to make really good compost with our innovative YIMBY ‘Continuous Hot Compost’ method. Join Joel Meadows and Mikaela Beckley for this 3hr intensive, hands-on composting workshop. Saturday Feb 17, 9.30-12.30pm, Castlemaine.

If you want to hot compost and get your compost to heat up to at least 55o Celsius for at least 3 days, there are a few ways you can check its daily temperature.

When it comes to the work of composting, forks are the tool of choice. There are three broad fork categories; garden, pitch and manure/mulch. Let’s have a little dig around and see what we find.

With it’s large corkscrew-like shape, the compost screw is designed to be twisted into an active compost pile. Some find it too heavy to use. At YIMBY it’s an indispensable tool for taking core samples.

Paper and cardboard are readily available, free ingredients that are easy additions to our compost piles, and are very high in carbon - paper has around 175 parts of carbon to one-part nitrogen, and cardboard around 350:1!