Placing your Green Johanna

Put your Green Johanna in an area that is easy to get to all year round. This will make it easy for you to add new materials.

To help the composting process, choose a location for your Green Johanna that is out of excessive sunlight and is sheltered from the wind.

Ideally, your Green Johanna should be placed on the ground (either bare soil or grass), not on concrete, asphalt or patio slabs. This will make it easier for worms and other creatures, which help break down your garden and kitchen waste, to enter the Green Johanna. When using your Green Johanna for the first time, you should place a layer, about 6 inches deep, of brown materials (such as crumpled cardboard or branches and twigs) at the bottom of your bin. This layer will help air to circulate at the bottom of the compost bin as more materials are added. Good air circulation speeds up the composting process.

Using the Winter Jacket

The winter jacket helps to speed up the composting process in wintertime when the composting process slows down due to low air temperature. The jacket should be fitted when the average temperature falls below 40° F and removed when the temperature is consistently above 50° F.

It is important to remember to remove the jacket when the temperature rises. This is because if the compost becomes too hot the creatures which make compost can die, halting the composting process.

Emptying your Green Johanna

There are a number of methods for emptying your Green Johanna:

• Remove compost through the hatches.
• You can lift the Green Johanna from around your compost, cover the compost with a plastic sheet and leave it until all the materials have broken down.
• You can empty the contents of the Green Johanna into a standard compost bin and leave it until all materials have broken down.
• If using two Green Johanna units, you can start to use the second unit once the first unit is full. By the time the second unit is full, the compost in your first bin should be ready to use.

Please make sure that you return any materials that still look like food to your Green Johanna and leave them to break down for a few more months.