Compost saves our bogs

IT’S been a long time since we’ve seen such a profusion of autumnal shades so late in the year.

Trees are holding onto their coats of many colours for longer than usual — prolonged calm weather being a factor here — but the leaves are beginning to fall on lawns, paths and forest floors.

Brushing and gathering leaves is a chore for many of us, especially when drains are blocked and walkways slippery. However, leaves can provide very useful mulch for gardens.

After two years, leaves will produce mulch that when spread on flower beds will suppress weeds, help lock in moisture during (hopefully) hot summer days and, due to the low nutrient content, help germinate seedlings.

Collected leaves can also be used in spring and summer to help make a nutrient-rich compost for the garden. Composting offers many benefits including the prevention of odours and leaching from our landfill sites. It also saves people money and helps protect some of our peatlands.

The Irish Peatland Conservation Council has tips on how to make good compost, which include adding a blend of materials, often referred to as greens and browns, into compost heaps. Green materials offer nitrogen to the compost heap and include grass cuttings, weeds and fruit and vegetable peelings.

Composting these green materials alone will create an offensively smelly and wet mixture. To avoid this, the council urges people to mix green materials with carbon-based, drier brown materials such as autumn leaves and shredded paper.

Blended together, these items will encourage natural decomposers such as soil bacteria and earthworms into your compost heap to turn organic waste into compost.

To help activate these decomposers, ensure materials added to the compost heap are small, as the smaller the pieces the quicker the material will break down and, where possible, add oxygen to the heap by turning it.

“It is amazing that autumn leaves and vegetable peelings, materials that we think of as waste, can be used to produce such a wonderful natural and peat-free compost for your garden” says Katie Geraghty, the council’s campaign officer.

Over the past 10 years, the Bog of Allen Nature Centre has established peat-free, wildlife gardens to show how harvesting peat from peatlands is unnecessary and unsustainable. Composting removes waste from landfill and helps to save Irish bogs.

The Bog of Allen Nature Centre is open all year round, Monday to Friday.

See: www.ipcc.ie