Garotta Compost Maker, 3.5 kg

Product Information

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?

The only other activity on the list that gets close to helping increase the speed of composting is increasing the surface area of the waste to be composted. To reduce the particle size - i.e. shred, shred, and more shredding. 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. Garotta is harmless to children, pets and wildlife and its fast acting nature can help you produce your very own natural garden compost. Avid readers of our blog will note that the compost Humification is 80% biochar combined with trace minerals.

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.

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%). 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.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). You can use this 'rough rule thumb': take the length of time your composting takes at ambient temperature in months (e.g. 36, 18, 12, six months) and convert to days (so 36, 18, 12, six days) for how long it will take for hot composting. If your current compost takes 18 months (cold system) it will take approx 18 days at 60C (hot). Composters are a great way to reduce food waste while simultaneously benefitting your garden. They are both compact and mess-free as they keep any materials that you add to them inside the composter until the compost is ready to use. Adding organic matter to your soil helps to improve its health and structure by letting it retain additional nutrients and moisture. Using compost in your garden also means that you’re less likely to need to add fertilisers and pesticides to your soil and plants.

When you buy composters from B&Q, you’ll be helping to reduce your carbon footprint by cutting down on the amount of rubbish that your house sends to landfill. You can use both kitchen and garden waste in your composter, so if you often have grass cuttings or fallen leaves, you can use them to benefit the rest of your garden. You will often see urine (pee) listed as a compost activator. We are highly dubious of the real value of adding pee to compost. Urine has a tiny amount of urea, which in turn has tiny amounts of nitrogen. If you are hot composting - the addition of +99% water (which takes heat to remove it as steam) is negative. In a cold composting system, if the heap is very dry urine is OK. If the heap is damp, it compounds aeration issues. Our expertise says those seeing really positive impact probably have compost bins that were too dry and the water is improving the process. Never add cooked food of any kind as this can attract vermin. Shred or cut waste into smaller pieces where possible, especially woody stems. Unless you are a commercial composter, it is unlikely you going not going to notice the 10% reduction in days. However, the difference between the time at 10C and 60C is huge - 14 vs 486! We only use natural ingredients in Compost Accelerator which makes it 100% organic. This can give you the reassurance that it will help produce healthy, organic compost that can contribute to the growth of organic plants.

The SoilFixer humification agent is a mixture of biochar,micronized oxides (tiny bits of trace minerals), and composting microbes (from SF60/compost). 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). We are often asked why is my compost not breaking down? It has been 18 months and I still don't have any compost - how do I get my compost faster?