GOOD compost is like gardening gold and the heart of any organic garden should be its compost heap.

Absolutely invaluable for enriching your soil with vital nutrients and improving its structure, composting is also a great way of recycling and reducing landfill, hence helping your garden and the environment. In an organic garden recycling as much as possible is all part of the natural cycle and saves buying in artificial fertilisers.

The compost you create from your garden and household waste will work miracles when added to your kitchen garden. Adding bulky organic matter such as compost to your soil provides food for a plethora of microscopic soil dwelling creatures who, in feeding on it, release the valuable nutrients for growing plants. Garden compost provides short and long-term release nutrients for your plants and is best applied during the growing season where enrichment is needed. It can be incorporated to feed individual plants such as when planting hungry pumpkins or squash, used to improve greenhouse soils or be dug in to vegetable beds at a rate of about two wheel barrows full per square meter per year to keep up nutrient levels and keep soil in good condition. It can be used as a mulch especially during dry weather around vulnerable plants to help retain moisture. Adding organic matter to your soil also helps improve its structure, mixing with the mineral components of the soil in a way that improves drainage in heavy soils and water retention in light soils. Compost can be applied over winter to guard against leaching of nutrients in the harsher weather, but it's best to either sow a green manure crop on top of it or to cover the patch with black plastic afterwards. Leafmould or fallen autumn leaves can be a good alternative if you don't produce enough compost.

The first consideration when you take on the compost challenge is what kind of bin you are going to use. There a loads available to buy, each with different benefits so consider your own gardening needs carefully. How much space have you got to devote to composting? How much compostable waste will your garden/household produce? You can of course make your own compost bin very easily and cheaply, often by recycling old wooden pallets or floorboards into a composting box with a lid. Ask at building sites or the rubbish tip for unused pallets etc. as these can be good places to find materials to make your bin. Garden Organic's advisory service (www.gardenorganic.org.uk) have produced a great factsheet on building your own bin. Whether you make or buy your bin, here are some points to bear in mind.

You will probably need two of what ever bin you choose if you are using the "cool" composting method (see below) if you want to ensure a continuous supply of compost so bear this in mind when making space considerations. A compost bin must be rain, frost and sun proof and the best material for a bin is wood as it provides good insulation and "breathes", letting out excess moisture. Plastic bins are not the finest way to compost as they don't retain heat so well but compact ones are very handy if you only have a small garden or backyard and setting up your compost can be really cheap. Many county councils around the country now offer greatly-discounted black plastic bins (anything from free to around £6). Metal bins can help if vermin cause problems. The bin must be strong enough to contain the weight of all that compost and heavy enough not to blow over. If however, you need to move your bin, say while turning your compost, it must be light enough to move when needed. A well-designed bin will have few gaps or holes as these will let out valuable moisture and heat. However, it will need a big enough opening to allow you to take compost in and out. A lid is important to keep out rain and keep heat in but make sure it won't blow away. For "hot" composting the minimum volume of your heap must be around 750 litres, but most bins on the market are smaller than this at around 200-300 litres and are better suited to cool composting. Any smaller and your compost will not generate enough heat for healthy decomposition. Most bins don't need a base as access to the soil allows drainage and lets worms in, but a metal base can stop vermin entering. A removable side or access door is necessary for turning the heap and removing finished compost. Compost tumblers are bins attached to a metal frame that allows them to be rotated daily. This allows really good oxygenation and mixing of the heap, giving composting microbes the environment they need to work at full speed. Tumblers can produce good compost very quickly via the "hot" method (i.e. fill up in one go) but can be hard work and need a bit more space than a standard plastic bin.

There are two ways of making compost, cool-composting which will take 6-12 months and can be built up slowly or hot-composting where you fill your bin in one go and keep turning the contents to encourage rapid decomposition. For the "hot" method tough items must be chopped or shredded and dry items will need to be watered. The heap should be turned two or three times by emptying it, mixing up the ingredients and putting them back with the addition of more dry materials or water as necessary. This can take as little as 6-8 weeks in the summer but unless you have a good-sized allotment you won't have enough material at one time to try this. Believe it or not, a cracking compost heap, decomposing at peak rate can reach up to 70C! Cool composting is better suited to small allotments, back-garden plots or just household use. It takes a bit longer as you add materials only as they are produced but can have great results. Again a mixture of ingredients is important so keep an eye on what's going in as it's harder to keep track over longer periods. Water the heap or add moist ingredients if it dries out or add more fibrous material if it seems soggy. After six months or so, check out the progress of your heap. The finished compost will form at the bottom so remove this and replace any un-composted items. After a year or so your bin will probably be full in which case, leave it to finish composting and start a new bin for the following year. Give your first bin six months or so further and then your compost should be ready.

Getting to grips with what you can and can't compost is pretty straight forward. Generally, anything of living origin can be composted with the exception of meat and cooked food, which will act as an open invitation to unwanted visitors such as rats and mice, and animal waste such as dog or cat faeces. It's also not a good idea to put the remains of diseased plants in your bin as this can spread infection especially in a cool compost heap. It may seem obvious but glass, plastic and tins are a no-go for compost and large amounts of paper/card such as telephone directories and magazines are best recycled elsewhere.

Good compost ingredients include veg peelings and kitchen scraps, tea bags, annual weeds, egg shells, small quantities of grass mowings and autumn leaves (don't dump on too much at once as these are best mixed with other ingredients), kitchen paper, loo-roll tubes, egg boxes and other cardboard (I tear this up a bit first), plant pruning's and other kitchen-garden debris, and rabbit/hamster bedding. A well-built compost heap will contain a balanced mixture of ingredients, active wet stuff and fibrous dry stuff. Dumping a huge amount of one thing on will only slow down decomposition and you also don't want to end up with compost that is so gooey it slides out of your bin!

An average household or allotment usually throws out more than enough to keep a compost heap ticking over nicely.

If after eight weeks to a year (depending on your method), you check out the stuff at the bottom of your bin and it's dark, crumbly and moist and almost sweet on the nose you will have succeeded in becoming a compost connoisseur.

Happy composting!