It’s best not to add fresh food waste to the pile like meat, fish or diary. Not only do they make the pile smell bad, but it can also invite unwanted pests to your garden. Too Slow?

Never add cooked food of any kind as this can attract vermin. Shred or cut waste into smaller pieces where possible, especially woody stems.Regular compost heaps can take up to 12 months to produce any usable compost. Compost Accelerator speeds up the process by naturally increasing the compost heap to give you quality compost in as little as 3 weeks. The one exception is when you are trying to create a biochar super compost - which requires the addition of a biochar and or compost humification agent (e.g. SoilFixer's CHA). Compost Accelerator can help increase the temperature of compost piles above 80°C to ensure that any harmful pathogens or diseases are killed off and your compost is sterilised. Garotta Compost Maker To start your compost pile, you’ll need 2 parts brown material and 1 part green materials (as show on the image in this article) The science behind how and why biochar works is constantly developing (e.g. new information on DIET (direct interspecies electron transfer) is speeding the process by0-30%).

There are then a number of what we call limiting factors that can limit or totally prevent decomposition. For example: if you have no nitrogen (or not enough) the reaction cannot proceed. Ifyou have no micronutrients in your waste, some of the bacterial enzymes cannot be made/proceed. If you have no oxygen or water aerobic composting cannot proceed or can be limited. The SoilFixer humification agent is a mixture of biochar,micronized oxides (tiny bits of trace minerals), and composting microbes (from SF60/compost). All these materials are 'soft' and 'easy' for microbes (bacteria) to digest. They have high nitrogen-to-carbon ratio (towards 10:1) and are hence goodC/N balancers where you havea lot of carbon-rich materials like straw,woody stalks or wood. The Q10 law of natural science (named after Arrhenius) states: for every 10ºC increase in (composting) temperature, the speed of reaction (rate of decay) doubles. Hot composting at 60ºC is x32 times faster than cold composting at ambient 10C. Hot composting can (and does) deliver compost in 30 days, cold composting delivers compost in 12-18 months). Avid readers of our blog will note that the compost Humification is 80% biochar combined with trace minerals.It contains microbial feed which gives microbes a boost of immediately available nutrients. This microbe food speeds up the process of decomposition. In gardening, the term compost activator is used to cover many products with names such as compost maker, accelerator, inoculator, catalyst, and humification agent also being used. In this article, we define the terms more precisely and use these to look at what they contain (the ingredients) and how well they work. The blog was updated in December 2022. Repeat steps 4 and 5 each time a layer is added. Your compost will be ready to use when dark, brown and crumbly. The time is takes varies from a few weeks, to several months. This is dependent on the weather, air temperature and the materials you use. Don’t be despondent if it’s not happening straight away, patience is a virtue here. This is a new term introduced by SoilFixer. During composting, compounds known as humus (or colloidal humus) are formed. These compounds are the real active items in compost (read here). Typically compost contains less than 1-5% of these valuable compounds. A humification agentincreases the amount of colloidal humus in your final compost typically to 15-30%. This is a new term introduced by SoilFixer. During composting, compounds known as humus (or colloidal humus) are formed. These compounds are the real active items in compost (read here). Typically compost contains less than 1-5% of these valuable compounds. A humification agent increases the amount of colloidal humus in your final compost typically to 15-30%.

For every 10C increase in bin temperature, the speed doubles, ie takes half the time to decompose. Heat will reduce the time by a factor of X8, X16, or x32 times faster.Biochar can be mixed with finished compost as a means of activating the biochar. Biochar can also be added to the compost mix to co-compost biochar and waste. This creates activated compost-biochar such as SF40 and SF60. Garotta is made from materials selected to help improve the structure of home-produced garden compost, maintain a neutral pH and speed up the process of decomposition. It provides food to promote bacterial growth which in turn encourages the temperature in the compost heap to rise, kill off weed seeds and hasten the conversion of garden and kitchen waste into a rich compost ideal for enriching garden soil. If heat (temperature) is the secret tofast composting, what benefit do all the compostingactivators on sale really have? To accelerate means to increase the speed (rate), so they should increase the speed of composting (ie reduce the time it takes to make good quality compost. We can define a compost accelerator as a product that increases the speed (rate) of decomposition. We do not believe commercial compost accelerators accelerate the rate of garden composting to any meaningful degree. (We explain why and the detail below). The only meaningful way to accelerate(increase the rate) of decompositionis to increase the heap temperature.