Home composting

Compost bin suppliers

Low price, home composting kits are available from most garden centres for £10:

Belles Fleurs Nursery
Bonny's Country Garden
Le Quesne's Nurseries
Longueville Garden Centre
Ransoms Garden Centre
St Peter's Garden Centre
Stanley's at Holme Grown

A home composting kit contains composter, a kitchen caddy and an instruction guide. If you would rather make your own composting unit, then the spare materials you will need are:

wood
old pallets
bricks
breeze blocks
chicken wire

Make your own compost bin on the BBC website

Where to put your compost bin

Your compost bin needs to be sited on bare earth in a sunny spot. You should put woody material or large stones underneath it to help with drainage.

How to use your compost bin

Mix your compost occasionally and keep it covered. It can take three to 12 months for it to be ready. You should end up with a dark brown, soil-like material.

Always use compost from the bottom of the bin, and add new material to the top.

Home compost bin guide

What you can compost

Do compost	Don't compost
fruit and vegetable scraps	meat or fish
tea bags and used ground coffee	pet droppings
egg shells	dairy products
cooked vegetables	vacuum cleaner contents
grass cuttings	timber, plastic, glass or metal
leaves	tough woody material
weeds, dead plant material	perennial weeds
small amounts of cardboard and kitchen roll	diseased plants

Noxious weeds

Some common plants cannot be composted as they may be harmful to human or animal health or to the composting process. The following plants have been identified as ‘noxious weeds’ and should be disposed of by incineration at the Energy from Waste Plant at La Collette.

Ragwort
Curly leaf and broad leaf dock
Japanese Knotweed

Noxious weed leaflet

Jersey slow-worm survey

Please join our survey to help us find out more about the slow-worm in Jersey and Help us to build up a picture of how important compost heaps are to slow-worms and what sort of conditions suit them best.
Jersey slow-worm survey