The Compost Safari at Hinckley Library today (4^th April) was attended by 28 children and parents. The final Safari in this school holiday is at Coalville Library, High Street, Coalville, Leicestershire, LE67 3EA  on 6th April at 10:30  Spaces must be pre-booked

 Tel 01530 832019. Email coalvillelibrary@leics.gov.uk

The Compost Safari encourages children to search for worms, worm eggs and small creatures e.g. slugs, woodlice, mites, that live in your compost bin or wormery turning plant and food waste into compost. This event is for children aged 4-11 years. Details of the current LCC special offer on compost bins will be available at the session.

The photograph shows todays event at Hinckley library

Compost Top Dressing 

Top dressing a lawn with compost can improve the soil structure and provide  nutrients. It will also improve drainage and by adding organic matter to the lawn. It can also be used to fill holes and depressions

A top dressing of compost is often applied to the lawn in the autumn. However, the value of more frequent but lighter applications of compost as a top dressing is now being recognised and easter is a good time to start.   If adopting this routine of treatment, the first treatment is best applied early in spring when the lawn will be receiving less footfall, reducing the likelihood of compost being carried indoors. It and can be repeated every month where the lawn is used regularly.  It is best to sieve or break up the compost as smaller particles can drop between the blades of grass and become incorporated into the soil easily.  It is best applied it dry.

Mow the lawn's grass to 1 inch tall. That height helps compost reach the soil between grass blades. Rake the lawn with a metal rake to collect dead grass, leaves and other lawn debris  

Compost can be used to top dress the lawn in the autumn but it can also be used in the spring to start the season but do it early so that the lawn will be looking good when you want to use it. The use of compost to make liquid feed is given on a separate page Liquid Feed

A full, and free,  Compost Creatures session at Oadby library today. this is one of the sessions for younger children allowing them to hunt through compost from two of the wormeries looking for composting worms, potworms  woodlice and other winter visitors to the wormery. Very few slugs or snails yet this year. Tomorrow it is a repeat of the session at Glenfield library.

PG tips have announced that they are to introduce a fully biodegradable pyramid teabag made from 100% plant based materials next week with the objective of making all of their teabags plastic free by the end of the year. This means that the teabags will be compostable without release microplastics into the soil.