I had the opportunity to visit the Northey Street Community Gardens in Windsor, Brisbane last week and learnt a lot about the way the gardens work and some of the wonderful community  partnerships they have.

It was impressive that all the stable sweepings from the EKKA are able to be used in the timber tree plot at Northey Street and that much of the compost used in the gardens comes from local contractors, who are able to dump lawn clippings and chippings in the big bins at the gardens for composting.

The compost system is on quite a large scale as you can see in the photographs.  These big mesh bins are lined with shadecloth and placed  on one end of the three board path you can see in the left hand photo, and then covered with tarpaulin.

Once filled the two halves are clipped together and they are rolled along the track, being turned a few centimetres at a time until they reach the other end of the track- at which time the compost is ready to use. Ingenious!  Comfrey is grown in the gardens to be used as a compost starter.

See http://www.cleanup.org.au/au/LivingGreener/composting.html for  good suggestions for a compost mix, but basically you should have both green ingredients (scraps and clippings) and brown (hay, dry leaves, sticks, twigs), make sure it is aerated by either turning or piping and that it is moist but not too wet.   A good compost mix should not smell.