FAQ

There are a number of partners in the project who offer volunteering opportunities:

Incredible Surplus offer 3 weekly sessions at their allotments & all partners offer different seasonal sessions. Please visit the Get Involved page to find out more.

We have some capacity for setting up additional composting spaces. If you are interested, please get in contact project.incrediblesurplus@gmail.com.

Yes we do – but we have a limited capacity & a busy public programme. If no one in our team is available on the date you require, we can put you in contact with another excellent organisation who also run composting workshops.

If compost starts to smell sour or rotten, this is a sign that something is out of balance. Often, it is too wet. Add a dry carbon source (shredded paper is ideal) and use a fork or aerator to get some air into the mix. This will usually fix the problem. Hot compost does produce an earthy smell, but this is nothing to worry about.

Studies have shown that ‘finished’ compost (compost that has reached 60 degrees and then cooled) contains very low levels of harmful pathogens and is as safe as anything else in the garden - i.e. best to wear gloves when handling, wash hands after, and steer clear if you have any open wounds. Children should be supervised, too. When turning compost (or if it gets very dry) it is best to wear a face mask as there can be mould spores present.

Using a layer of rat-proof mesh (with holes smaller than 6mm) under your bin will keep rats and mice out. Compost does sometimes attract gnats, beetles and worms, and you may find larvae in it. These are all helpful decomposers, and nothing to worry about. If you compost meat, you may get large bluebottles - in which case turn the compost to encourage it to heat up.

Bokashi is a good solution for indoor composting – you can bring your bokashi bucket to one of our sites to add to the big heaps. Some people also find wormeries are fun to do indoors, although they need careful management, and probably won’t be able to eat all of your food waste every week.

Most definitely! If everybody saved their food waste, we could make tonnes of beautiful compost with it, instead of having it produce methane in landfill. Bring it to one of our compost sites, or try www.makesoil.org or www.sharewaste.org. Or if you have a garden, why not try setting up a ‘dalek’ composter and trying out this amazing process for yourself?

Yes, with some caveats. Most people exclude meat and dairy because they tend to smell and attract flies. However, if treated with bokashi, they can be composted in an outdoor system. They can also be added untreated to the centre of a hot heap that has reached 70 degrees, or to a Ridan composter, like the one at our Londonderry site. Some people have also found that HotBin can handle small amounts of meat and dairy.

If you live nearby you can bring your food waste to one of our compost sites, or try www.makesoil.org or www.sharewaste.org to find somebody near to you who composts.

Hot composting reaches temperatures of between 50 and 75 degrees C.

‘Cold’ composting is anything less hot than this! A cold compost heap is often still warm in the middle. Hot compost is ‘finished’ quicker than cold compost, but cold composting still creates fabulous compost, it just takes a little longer. On average, cold compost is ready in a year, whereas hot compost can take as little as three weeks (but often takes longer!)

To be in with the best chance of creating a hot heap, you need to put together about a metre square of material, and have an equal(ish) mix of wet, nitrogen-rich materials (e.g. veg waste, annual plants, manure) and dry, carbon-rich ingredients (shredded paper, cardboard, woodchip, twiggy prunings). Air also needs to get in, which usually means ‘turning’ the compost.

Introducing air, basically. With a ‘dalek’ composter, you lift off the dalek and then fork the compost back in to refill it. With a bay system, throw the compost over into the next bay, or rake it out and refill the bay. You can also use a compost augur (like a giant corkscrew) or a garden fork to stir and fluff the compost.

Bokashi is a bran that is inoculated with a helpful bacteria and yeast mixture. When added to food waste, it stops it decomposing, and pickles it instead. This means it can sit for longer, without producing greenhouse gases. It also breaks down faster in a compost heap. A white mould may form on the food waste - this is normal.

It feels good to take responsibility for your waste.

Composting is good exercise!

It can be a lovely, social activity, especially at a community site.

Your garden or community will get the benefit of the fabulous, nutrient-rich compost.

Compost heaps are biodiverse and support a whole ecosystem of creatures, from worms to springtails to nematodes to fungi.

It teaches us to slow down and see the big picture. Compost can’t be rushed! It is the cycle of life, in a one-metre heap.

You bought the food, so why not reap the benefits by making compost from it? Why give away all that brilliant fertility, all those fabulous minerals and nutrients?

(Of course, food waste collection is still better than landfill.)

One of the most common things that puts people off starting to compost is the thought of it attracting rodents.

Compost bins are often blamed for attracting vermin, when in actual fact the rats are already happily living in gardens and allotments. It is worth assessing if there are other things that are happening in your area that could be attracting rats – for example, garden decking is known to create a perfect home for rats to nest, or if there is lots of rubbish for them to hide in or find food.

There are some things we can do to prevent these local rats seeing our bins as a cosy hotel and restaurant!

Location. Rats prefer to stay under cover, so ideally place bins away from fences or buildings. Being able to clearly see around the whole base of the bin is useful for checking if there has been any disturbance.

Bin type. Use a bin with solid sides, and either place it squarely onto slabs, or line the base with wire mesh to stop rats tunnelling up underneath. Rats can chew through chicken wire, so some people use a double or triple layer, or a 6mm galvanised mesh is ideal. I buy mine from Screwfix,and it comes in a pack large enough to line several bins. (In the photo you can see that a rat has tunnelled underneath on of my Dalek bins, but since they were unable to get in they moved on).

If you have wooden bays these can also be lined with mesh – it is more cost effective to just line one bay, the one for the freshest ingredients, and leave bays for maturing compost unlined.

Avoiding composting meat and cooked food. There are ways of composting cooked food and meat etc, however, if you're just started out then it is better to hold off composting these scraps until you have researched how to do this well. Find out more about these methods here (have links to hot-composting, Bokashi, and Hotbins).

Rat-a-tat-tat. Disturbing the bins regularly by giving the outside a whack with a stick, or stirring the contents, makes it less appealing to rats looking for a place to settle down.

General good practice, such as keeping areas around bins tidy and free from food scraps, and the composting materials moist, all help too.

Finished compost smells beautifully earthy,like a forest floor. It is a myth that the composting is a smelly process. However,you may have experienced a slimy, wet, smelly compost bin before learning that you need to add plenty of ‘browns’ into the mix. If you find you have a smelly compost bin,this is a sign it needs more oxygen and carbon, which is very easy to fix. Just add in plenty of whatever browns you have to hand – shredded paper, ripped up brown card, woodchips, Autumn leaves - and give it a really good stir, breaking up and clumps of material. It is sometimes easier to pull out the whole contents of the bin into a wheelbarrow or onto a tarp, and to mix the ingredients all the way through. You will find that within a week or so that everything is smelling much better!

These pesky little flies are completely harmless, but can be annoying when opening your compost bin. They are part of the natural process, andwill help to break down materials, but there are a few tricks for keeping numbers under control.

– Use a container with a tight fitting lid to collect the food scraps in your kitchen. Add toilet rolls, torn up egg boxes etc to this tub to help soak up juices.

– When adding fresh scraps to your compost bin, mix them with brown materials, and cover with a good layer cover to prevent the flies from getting to them.

– If you do end up with a lot of fruit flies, try leaving the lid off your bin for a few hours. This will let many of them out, but also let predators, such as birds and beetles, get numbers under control – they provide a helpful snack for lots of garden wildlife!

Check your composter by digging into it, or taking out a handful. Look at it, notice the smell and texture.

Think about whether it has enough of the four key composting ingredients: Carbon, nitrogen, water and oxygen.

Carbon and nitrogen:
If your compost is slimy and smelly, this is likely due to too many greens. Add some more browns and give them a good mix. Check again in a week and add more browns/stir if necessary.

If your pile has a lot of browns that are not breaking down then they might just need watering, or you could try stirring in some more greens, such as grass clippings.

Water:
Do the ‘squeeze test’ to see if your compost materials are damp enough. It should feel like a wrung out sponge, and hold together when you squeeze it,with just a drop of water being squeezed out.

If more water comes out, and it feels very squishy, then the pile is probably too wet. This soggy environment is not good for the microbes as it can mean there is not enough little air pockets for oxygen. Add in some more browns and stir. Check back a week later and add more browns if necessary.

If does not hold together when squeezed it is probably too dry. Other signs of a dry pile can be ants nests. Give it a good water and cover to keep moist e.g. with a tarp or layers of brown card.

Oxygen:
Turning your pile will add more oxygen, and speed up the breakdown of materials.

Size of materials:
A heap full of large chunks of woody materials, sticks, big brassica stalks etc will take a long time to breakdown. Try removing larger pieces and chop them up with a spade or shears.