Lawn Compost

Moisture control - miracle gro and west plus compost is great, but for a more cost effective solution for large areas is to make your own - I WILL TELL YOU HOW.

Lawn compost can be made from several materials. We will concentrate here on the most and cheapest materials: Palm Leaves, Pine Needles and other debris (like Oleander and Olive leaves)

You will need some large polythene bin rubbish bags (or old soil plastic bags) or 90L plastic dustbins, or the conventional way (if you have space) by making a square with old palettes.

The mixture needs to be grass cuttings, sawdust, horse manure, cut up pine needles, olive or oleander leaves. Although understood to take a long time to decompose, pine needles will actually work if you shred them into small pieces (dont just sweep them up) and use them. Not shredded they take forever, but shredded up only takes amonth or two.
Layer the material into several layers, and finally water the mixture.
Then either place polythene over the compost heap, lid on the dustbin or screw up the top of the bag and place in the sun, upside down.
You will need to turn the material every week and keep moist (keeping moist is really important as bacteria do not work on dry organic material).

Tip: To start the process grab a handfull of compost you made earlier or a handfull of soil from a bag of purchased compost. This will inevitably have enough bacteria in it to get the processs kicked off.
You should have compost in around 12 weeks.

The best lawn compost consists of four things.....

1) Clay

2) Silt

3) Sand

4) Organic material

You can make your own lawn soil compost by mixing the above components. 

Details are in our Customised Lawn Repair Project.

see also topsoil.