Garotta Compost Maker, 3.5 kg

Product Information

Never add cooked food of any kind as this can attract vermin. Shred or cut waste into smaller pieces where possible, especially woody stems.

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). If your heap is too wet the chances are it has too much water or nitrogen. Turn the pile regularly to aerate & keep the temperature under control. Add some brown materials like shredded cardboard, newspaper or small twigs to balance it out. Too Dry? 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!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.

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. 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. 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.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. 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 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. 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.

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. But here is the catch - unless your waste has no nitrogen (or not enough) then adding more will not change things. Most compost waste simply does not need extra nitrogen. 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. Compost can take a long time to create from your home organic waste. If you do not add much to your compost pile or bin then you can be in for a long wait of many months. However, there are some companies that have made 'compost accelerators' which speed this process up. We explore some below. Envii Compost Accelerator It contains microbial feed which gives microbes a boost of immediately available nutrients. This microbe food speeds up the process of decomposition.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%. 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). 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) By keeping the compost heap at a higher temperature Compost Accelerator helps to break down waste in to smaller pieces, whilst retaining all of the nutrients needed to help plants grow.

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. Using the above definitions of 'activator' and 'inoculator', the SoilFixer Compost Humification Agent (CHA) is both an activator and inoculator. We are not aware of any other compost additive that acts to increase humification. It also helps to reduce compost odours, lower nitrous oxide and methane (potent climate change gases). 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.Unfortunately the delivery company will be unable to remove items from the pallet or take the pallet away with them and delivery will be made to the kerbside. Garotta is harmless to children, pets and wildlife and its fast acting nature can help you produce your very own natural garden compost. 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. The SoilFixer humification agent is a mixture of biochar,micronized oxides (tiny bits of trace minerals), and composting microbes (from SF60/compost).