Composting

Everyone should deal with any unneeded organic matter grown on their plots - on their plots.  There's no green waste dumping site at the community gardens anymore. In any case, why would you remove fertility from your plot and dump it elsewhere? Everything you grow on your plot can be either eaten or composted.

If you have woody cuttings, these can be shredded with the community gardens mulcher. The Gardens leadership will probably notify everyone when the next mulching session will be (normally Autumn/Winter).

Keep in mind that there are endless ways to compost. Different methods might suit different materials available at the community gardens or that you bring into the gardens ie. horse manure.

Aerobic Composting

Here is a quick slide show of basic theory about aerobic composting which includes:

  • Why you should compost
  • What ingredients you need
  • The importance of the Carbon:Nitrogen ratio for your ingredients
  • Why your pile gets hot
  • The lifecycle and anatomy of the pile
  • Why you need to turn the pile

 

Methods to get rid of couch grass / weeds ie. dock, that you don't want to put in your compost bin:

Get a 200 litre blue barrel with a screw top lid, fill it with water, put your couch grass rhizomes in, screw the lid on, leave for 6-12 months. Dilute the anaerobic fermented liquid and put on your soil as a compost tea.

These barrels are often dropped off at the gardens for members to have for free.

You might want to have a number of barrels so you don't run out of space to put weeds.

How big should I make my compost bins?

As a general rule, a cubic metre is the minimum size you'd want to to make your bin. Wooden pallets are roughly a metre wide so these can easily be used to contain green waste. Size matters for bringing your pile up to heat if you are aerobic composting.

I have a lot of weeds, surely I'll need a lot of space dedicated for composting?

Having 10-20% of your plot dedicated to compost / waste conversion makes a lot of sense. You are literally investing tin he fertitlity of your plot's soil. You will end up growing more food if you make more and better compost. As a minimum you'd want at least 2 x cubic metre compost bins available. Three would be even better. Three bins plus space for barrels making compost / weed teas would be even better still.

That sounds like a lot of work. All that turning of the compost. Urgh. Isn't there something easier?

What's easy is dumping your green waste for someone else to deal with. That's unsustainable and costs the gardens money and time to deal with.

It's not a lot of work if you employ a more passive method to make compost on your plot. Barrels of water and putting weeds in is one way. Here's another way.

All organic matter will break down and compost eventually. You could make cubic pallet bin, line it with weed mat to help retain moisture later, mix wood chip and horse poo together in a roughly 2:1 ratio. You'd need to get it pretty wet to start before you put it in the bin or as you put it in the bin. You could then set up an irrigation timer and drip line coiled on top of the pile, and set the timer to water for 10mins every second day. Cover the top of the pile with black plastic. Once the pile has heated and cooled, you can add some composting worms into the pile to help break everything down faster. In 6-9 months you'll probably have some great fungal dominated compost with a high proportion of worm castings (the best possible organic fertiliser).