Compost program update - Plate to Plant

We’ve also been collecting the food wastes from the Mayflower Community, Lucy Cat Coffee, and Relish! Every week we take in around 200-300lbs of compost material, which is still being processed at Marvin Gardens in our bins made of up-cycled materials.

And a shout out to Paul’s Ace Hardware for helping us source new and better compost buckets as well!

We expect to have our first batch of finished compost at the end of this year, since the compost soil must go through various stages before it is considered ready and safe to use. Once we have the finished compost, it will be both freely available to people who participate in the compost program for personal use by-request, as well as used at Marvin Giving Gardens, to grow even more nutritious, free-to pick produce.

Composting at home is so easy, and it really does make a difference to the weight and smelliness of your regular trash bin as well as making a big impact by putting those wasted nutrients back into soil.

If you’re interested in learning more about the program, signing-up, or getting in touch. Please go to the Plate to Plant website to learn more.

It’s been almost a year since the conception of the idea for a local composting program, and we’ve been operating for seven months now! How time flies when you’re biking around with a trailer full of buckets.

Our composting service base, which started at a 12 house pilot project, has expanded to around 40 households. Collection services happen on both Wednesday and Thursdays to accommodate for that, and we’re still using our bicycle and Surly trailer hauling setup, which can carry 10 buckets at a time.

This spring we will be implementing a few changes to how we manage our compost material, to make it safer, easier and a better quality product. These two innovations are to begin using composting worms (also known as vermiculture) as part of our composting setup, as well as something you may never have heard of: bokashi composting.

Using worms to compost is a well known technique. Essentially, the worms eat the compost material, and what comes out the other end is practically soil already and breaks down really well in the larger compost pile. Bokashi is a kind of compost pre-treatment using wheat bran and specifically formulated bacterial cultures to ‘pre-ferment’ the compost before it goes into the larger pile. This amazing Japanese method allows for safer, smell-free and pest deterring incorporation of more meat and dairy products into the compost!