The response from Maryse Friot, President of the Société d’Horticulture de Touraine.
To make good compost use your green waste, eggshells, a little coffee grounds not too much, a pinch of ashes and coarser elements like branches (for 1/3 or half). The ideal is to have two or even three locations, side by side, from the most recent where you have brought your green waste all summer, to the oldest of three years of age where no green waste has been deposited this year. The oldest heap is dark in color, it looks like dirt.
In autumn, it’s time to sift the latter. For this, you take a wooden mesh frame with fine mesh (maximum 5cm in diameter). Place a bin or wheelbarrow under this frame to collect the potting soil. Sieving separates the elements according to their size. Coarse elements are blocked and remain on the mesh. They will be put back on the pile of the second year mixed with the fallen leaves.
The sieved soil recovered in the wheelbarrow is ready to be used.
You can put it at the bottom of planting pits for trees and shrubs that you will plant in November. You can mix it with the growing medium of planters of herbaceous plants with autumn flowering (heather, hellebore, cyclamen, etc.) and spring (pansies, daisies, forget-me-nots, ranunculus, wallflowers, primroses, etc.) or even in preparation for your beds. cultivation in the greenhouse.
If you don’t use your compost immediatelyput it in bins, containers, bags and sheltered from the vagaries of the weather (in a cellar, under a shed) until next spring.