Composting at SDF Community Garden

 Some tips for helping make sure we maintain our compost properly: 

1. Fresh scraps (preferably cut up) should go in the green #1 bin along with dry leaves. This bin is mixed roughly once per week by garden volunteers.

2. Decomposed material is then transferred to the yellow #2 bin, along with more dry leaves to accelerate the composting process. 

3. Material from #2 is then sieved and transferred the to the final #3 orange bin, resulting rich compost for the entire garden to boost their plots!

Some notes:

3. 1. Remove fruit stickers and any plastic before dropping off scraps. "Commercially compostable" items are also not accepted at the community garden - the temperatures required to break down these materials are significantly higher than what this small operation can achieve.

   2. Brown paper bags can be great dry material to aid the process, but this doesn't work well when they are simply thrown in  en masse. If they aren't opened and ripped up, they create dense pockets of paper that take months to break down, and are tougher than kevlar when trying to turn the piles. 

   3. Similarly, avoid dumping whole fruits and vegetables as they take significantly longer to break down than something that is simply cut in half before dumping.

   4. During times of colder weather, more regular turning and watering of the piles is important to keep things churning. We have a Compost Turning Schedule shared among gardeners who previously expressed interest. 

   5. Anyone interested in contributing to this schedule, please contact Billy Schaefer (our current volunteer coordinator) using this form.